Latest observations, tips, and discoveries from the cosmos
August 2026 night sky guide for the UK: darkness returns, Saturn climbs high after midnight, Venus hits greatest elongation, and a deep lunar eclipse lands on 28 August.
Ian Clayton
16 August 2026
Declassified CIA UFO files show the agency quietly investigated a science fiction magazine in 1948, until a red spider from Mars ended the whole thing.
Ian Clayton
15 August 2026
Space mirror light pollution would be severe, a new study finds. Reflect Orbital's mirrors would shine 40 times brighter than the full moon in the beam.
Ian Clayton
15 August 2026
The 28 August 2026 partial lunar eclipse from the UK began at 3:33am BST and peaked at 5:12am, with the Moon 93% eclipsed, low in the west-south-west.
Ian Clayton
14 August 2026
New FBI UFO files describe federal agents watching red lights and black-hot objects over the western US in 2026, and a watch that gained 25 minutes.
Ian Clayton
13 August 2026
What happened during the 12 August 2026 solar eclipse, how UK observers experienced it, and when the next eclipse will be visible from Britain.
Ian Clayton
13 August 2026
The Manchester Airport UFO near miss of January 1995 is still officially unresolved. Here's what Airmiss Report 2/95 says, straight from the MOD's own file.
Ian Clayton
12 August 2026
The sharpest image of the Sun ever captured shows tiny whirlpools swirling across its surface, and they may help solve the Sun's biggest mystery.
Ian Clayton
11 August 2026
A metal sphere, a four-metre crater and a dead crewman. The 1963 Brazil UFO story is back, and the same Pentagon files that revived it also show it never happened. Here's the evidence.
Ian Clayton
10 August 2026
Voyager 2 was on course to lose another instrument this year. NASA's 'Big Bang' power swap has bought the 49-year-old probe at least another year of science.
Ian Clayton
9 August 2026
The Pentagon's fifth UFO file release, 7 August 2026: 41 files, from a 500ft triangle over Bagram to 25 'cold orbs' round a US gunship. What stands up.
Ian Clayton
8 August 2026
Is Venus geologically active? New ETH Zurich simulations say yes: its giant rift valleys are still growing up to 10 cm a year. Venus is far from dead.
Ian Clayton
7 August 2026
An ISS spacewalk was scheduled for 6 August 2026, with NASA's Jessica Meir and Anil Menon due to head outside at 1:35pm UK time.
Ian Clayton
6 August 2026
A spent SpaceX Falcon 9 stage hit the Moon this morning near crater Einstein. Here's who was watching, what we know so far and when we'll see the new crater.
Ian Clayton
5 August 2026
The JFK UFO memo says Kennedy ordered a CIA review of UFO files ten days before Dallas. We put the famous scan next to the genuine NSAM 271.
Ian Clayton
5 August 2026
'Three-headed' asteroid 44 Nysa looks like the first three-lobed asteroid ever found: 75km wide, with a 1km moon. How telescopes on Earth beat Hubble.
Ian Clayton
4 August 2026
Six planets at dawn, a 91% solar eclipse at teatime and the Perseid peak after dark: the UK's busiest sky day of the decade, hour by hour, and what each part looked like.
Ian Clayton
4 August 2026
How did Mars lose its atmosphere? A new study caught giant plasma waves from the solar wind stripping it away, seen by NASA's MAVEN and China's Tianwen-1.
Ian Clayton
3 August 2026
The Swift rescue mission has hit trouble: the LINK spacecraft is spinning in orbit after two reaction wheels failed. Here's what went wrong and what's next.
Ian Clayton
2 August 2026
The 2026 Perseids peaked on 12–13 August under a new Moon, the best Perseid conditions in a decade. UK viewing times, where to look and how many to expect.
Ian Clayton
1 August 2026
NASA has confirmed the Roman Space Telescope launch date: 30 August 2026 on a Falcon Heavy. The most powerful survey telescope ever built is fuelled and ready.
Ian Clayton
31 July 2026
The Late Heavy Bombardment has been in textbooks for 52 years. The first rocks ever returned from the far side of the Moon show no sign it happened.
Ian Clayton
29 July 2026
Declassified file DOW-UAP-D017 is the US Air Force's own logbook of 209 UFO sightings around America's atomic weapons sites between 1948 and 1950.
Ian Clayton
29 July 2026
AARO's FY2025 annual report, the Pentagon UFO report of 2026: 319 new cases, 114 resolved and 191 unexplained. What those 191 share and what it leaves out.
Ian Clayton
28 July 2026