August 2026

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.

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Astrophotography

Hubble captures a corner of M20

An ESA artist's illustration showing the JUICE spacecraft performing a gravitational slingshot maneuver around Earth. The spacecraft, with its distinctive cross-shaped solar panels, is shown close to Earth with a bright green line tracing its curved orbital trajectory looping around the planet. Earth is shown from space with North and South America visible beneath cloud cover.

Space Exploration

How do slingshot maneuvers work to propel spacecraft?

AI outgrows Earth

Features, Science

How gravitational waves transformed our universe

A Hubble Space Telescope image of Sirius A, the brightest star in the night sky, appearing as an intensely bright white-blue point of light with four prominent diffraction spikes extending diagonally across the dark blue background. Sirius B, its much fainter white dwarf companion, is visible as a small distinct point of light in the lower left of the frame.

Observing, Science, Stars

Which naked-eye star is richest in metals?

An artist's illustration of the ESA Comet Interceptor mission, showing the large main spacecraft in the foreground with its deployed solar panels, flanked by two smaller sub-probes, all approaching a comet whose bright white nucleus and two-toned tail — blue ion tail and golden dust tail — dominate the upper right of the image against a starry black background.

Science, Solar System

Could we send a spaceship to Comet 3I/ATLAS to collect samples and bring them back for analysis?

A side-by-side pair of lunar eclipse images. On the left, a total solar eclipse shows the Moon as a black disc surrounded by the Sun's white corona, with several pink solar prominences visible along the edge. On the right, a total lunar eclipse shows the Moon glowing in deep red and orange hues — a "blood moon" — with a bright sliver of normal white moonlight still visible along the upper right edge.

August 2026: What’s in the sky this month? Solar and lunar eclipses, plus the Perseid meteors

A twilight photograph taken along a narrow urban canal, with rows of silhouetted terraced buildings lining both sides and their lit windows glowing warm orange. Venus shines as a bright point of light in the deep blue evening sky above the center of the scene. A string of red pathway lights and a bright white light reflect off the still water of the canal below.

August 2026: What’s in the Southern Hemisphere sky this month?