October 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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Observing Basics

Understanding celestial coordinates

JWST tours Orion’s hidden stellar nursery

Features, Gear Guide, Telescopes and Equipment

Our 16th annual star products

Illustration depicting a dark, rocky planet filling most of the frame, its surface shadowed on the left and faintly lit along the right edge. A small reddish star glows at lower right, set against a starry background streaked with faint blue nebulosity.

Cosmology, Exoplanets, Science

What can we learn from gravitational lensing?

How do professional astronomers book time on JWST or Hubble?

A photoillustration of a thick crescent Moon against a black sky, filling the right side of the frame. The sunlit crescent curves along the left edge, showing gray maria and many craters, and the rest of the Moon's disk is in shadow. Just off the Moon's lower-left limb sits Jupiter, a small tan disk with visible cloud bands, lined up with its four Galilean moons as tiny points of light: from left to right, Ganymede, Jupiter, Io, Callisto, and Europa. The scene shows the jovian system a few minutes before the Moon occults it. Empty black space fills the left side of the image.

Observing, Planets, The Moon, Upcoming Events

See the Moon occult Jupiter October 6

Photograph of Saturn against a dark background, seen nearly edge-on with its ring system stretching horizontally across the globe and casting a thin shadow band on the planet. The pale gold and tan cloud bands are visible, with a bright white storm feature swirling in the planet's southern hemisphere.

October 2026: What’s in the sky this month?

Photograph of Saturn against a black background, tilted so its northern hemisphere faces the viewer with wide ring system encircling it. The planet's disk shows subtle bands of tan, cream, and pale gold, with a darker hexagonal-tinted region visible near the north pole. The rings display distinct concentric divisions, including a prominent dark gap, and cast a soft shadow onto the upper part of the globe.

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

Features, Science

How Roman will unlock the universe

Science, Solar System

Astronomers map ancient waterways on Mars