May 2015

The world's best-selling astronomy magazine offers you the most exciting, visually stunning, and timely coverage of the heavens above. Each monthly issue includes expert science reporting, vivid color photography, complete sky coverage, spot-on observing tips, informative telescope reviews, and much more! All this in an easy-to-understand, user-friendly style that's perfect for astronomers at any level.

Features

The little stars that couldn't

by Jesse Emspak

Brown dwarfs — objects that form like stars but without enough mass to fuse hydrogen — are shedding light on the births of both stars and solar systems.

Web Extra: Brown dwarfs take center stage

by Richard Talcott

Brown dwarfs are so faint that astronomers didn't find one until the 1990s. Some even qualify as our next-door neighbors.

A northerner's view of the southern sky

by Stephen James O'Meara

Contributing Editor Stephen James O’Meara weighs in: Does the Southern Hemisphere really have all the good stuff?

Web Extra: A gallery of southern sky splendors

by Michael E. Bakich

Northern observers may never see this stunning objects through a telescope, so images will have to do.

The fight to save Lick Observatory

by Eric Betz

As the University of California constructs the largest telescope the world has ever known, a group of astronomers is working to fund a century-old observatory.