April 2011

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

Hunting for earthlike planets

by Ray Villard

First astronomers have to find a nearby planet in its star's habitable zone, and then theyт??ll need to characterize its atmosphere to determine if life might exist there.

Web Extra: Extrasolar atmospheres

by Liz Kruesi

Studying the atmospheres of earthlike planets may be a few years in the future, but astronomers are analyzing weather on the largest worlds now.

Messages from Mercury

by Richard Talcott

The MESSENGER spacecraft enters orbit around the innermost planet in March to explore its geological history, thin atmosphere, dense core, and the strange stuff at its poles.

Web Extra: Mercury in the cross hairs

by Richard Talcott

NASAт??s ambitious MESSENGER spacecraft will have company by the end of this decade, when the BepiColombo mission reaches the innermost planet.

Star-struck in Iceland

by Stephen James O'Meara

The tiny North Atlantic island nation boasts a large amateur astronomical society, inspires the worldт??s space artists, and features some of the most dazzling auroral displays anywhere.