ASTRO SPACE NEWS

A DIVISION OF MID NORTH COAST ASTRONOMY (NSW)

(ASTRO) DAVE RENEKE

SPACE WRITER - MEDIA PERSONALITY - SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT ABC/COMMERCIAL RADIO - LECTURER - ASTRONOMY OUTREACH PROGRAMS - ASTRONOMY TOUR GUIDE - TELESCOPE SALES/SERVICE/LESSONS - MID NORTH COAST ASTRONOMY GROUP (Est. 2002)   Enquiries: (02) 6585 2260       Mobile: 0400 636 363        Email: davereneke@gmail.com

WANT A HOLIDAY THAT'S LITERALLY 'OUT OF THIS WORLD?'

   NOW IN OUR FIFTH YEAR ON NORFOLK ISLAND

WHAT THEY'RE SAYING.....

"Absolutely amazing!! I Learned so much. Dave's knowledge is amazing, and he made it sound so simple. What a great night, not what I expected! It's an awesome introduction to the night sky for first timers through the large telescope. Maureen Rivendell." Port Macquarie.

"This evening changed forever my understanding of the night sky. We saw 100km wide Moon craters, Jupiter and Saturn up close, amazing star clusters. Highly recommended for the entire family!" Ken Sorenson. Adelaide

" Thanks so much Dave for a night we will never forget! The impact has been huge on our kids, especially those incredible close-up views of the Moon, and I have pics I took to prove it . Will re-book." Karen Amato. Wauchope NSW See the                                                                  * WANT  MORE DETAILS  AND A FREEE INFO SHEET?  https://norfolkislandtravel.co/stargazing-with-dave/                                * Check our Video of NF Island here: https://www.facebook.com/reel/1019728771019070/?fs=e&fs=e

 On our spectacular 4-day Stargazing Tour to Coonabarabran. Its  Australia's Astronomy Capital and one of the country's premier dark-sky destinations. With visits to Siding Spring Observatory, the breathtaking Warrumbungle National Park, the Milroy Observatory and the Australian Museum Megafauna display, this journey combines fascinating science, dramatic landscapes and unforgettable evenings beneath a canopy of stars. 

Making this inaugural tour even more special, we are thrilled to be joined by renowned Australian astronomer and science communicator Dave Reneke, bringing more than 40 years of astronomy experience, stories and insight to the journey. From behind-the-scenes telescope access and guided stargazing to local touring, country hospitality and time shared with fellow travellers, this is a truly unique Port Bus adventure designed to leave you looking at the night sky in a whole new way. $2,595 pp twin share | plus $ 375 single supplement | $500.00 per person deposit. 

For More Information:  Phone 02 6583 3330   Email: mailto:admin@portbus.com.au  Website: https://www.portbus.com.au/sites/default/files/2026-08/4%20Day%20Stargazing%20Tour%20Port%20Bus%202027.pdf Book Online: https://events.humanitix.com/star</p>

       FOR SALE Celestron CPC 925 GPS Computerized Telescope 

Used but in excellent condition with pristine optics and fully working electronics. We are using Sestars Now

The Celestron CPC 925 GPS Computerized Telescope is a superb, high-performance instrument that combines a powerful 9.25-inch Schmidt-Cassegrain optical system with advanced GPS-guided computerised tracking. Includes heavy-duty tripod, NexStar+ hand controller, finderscope, and eyepiece. Ready to use tonight.

Renowned for its exceptional optical clarity, impressive light-gathering power and rock-solid tracking, it delivers breathtaking views of the Moon, planets, star clusters, nebulae and distant galaxies.

With its fully automated GoTo system and GPS alignment, finding thousands of celestial objects is remarkably easy. A truly impressive telescope for serious amateur astronomers, astrophotographers and anyone wanting to explore the night sky in spectacular detail.

Price: $900 FIRM. Location: Wauchope, NSW (Pick-up if possible Due to size/weight) Ph: 0400 636 363. Serious buyers only.

200,000 UFO Reports — And the Mystery Continues, For more than half a century, people around the world have looked into the sky and reported seeing things they simply could not explain.

Now, the National UFO Reporting Center, or NUFORC, has reached a remarkable milestone — its 200,000th UFO sighting report, 52 years after it began collecting reports from the public. The organisation has built one of the largest collections of UFO reports in the world, recording accounts from people who believe they have witnessed something unusual in the sky.

But there is an important point to remember. 200,000 reports does not mean 200,000 alien spacecraft have been discovered. The figure represents reports made by people who believed they had seen something unusual, and each sighting still needs to be considered on the evidence available.

One recent case occurred in California (See illustration panel above) where an adult couple was inside the Sardine Peak Fire Lookout when they noticed something unusual above a distant ridge near Stampede Reservoir.

They reported seeing between 20 and 30 metallic, oval-shaped objects moving together in the sky. The objects appeared to catch the sunlight, and what really caught the witnesses' attention was the way they moved. According to their account, the objects changed direction together while maintaining their spacing, almost as though they were part of one organised formation.

There was no obvious sign of wings, rotors or exhaust, and the witnesses reported hearing no sound. They said the group disappeared from view, then reappeared farther south before vanishing again.

The sighting lasted only a short time, but the witnesses were watching from a high fire lookout with a wide view of the surrounding countryside. From their position, the objects appeared unusual enough for them to report what they had seen. That makes the report interesting — but it does not solve the mystery.

There are many possible explanations for unusual things seen in the sky. Aircraft viewed from unusual angles can sometimes appear to behave strangely, while balloons, drones, satellites and atmospheric effects can also create confusing observations. Human eyesight can be remarkably good, but judging the distance, size and speed of an object against the enormous background of the sky is surprisingly difficult.

That is why scientists place so much importance on additional evidence. Photographs and video can help, while radar data can provide even more information. Flight records, satellite tracking, weather conditions and observations from other witnesses can sometimes turn an apparent mystery into something quite ordinary.

In other cases, however, the available evidence may simply not be good enough to reach a conclusion. And that is really what the word "unidentified" means. It does not automatically mean extraterrestrial. It simply means that, based on the information available, the object has not yet been identified.

Still, a database containing 200,000 reports raises an intriguing question. Even if most sightings eventually turn out to have ordinary explanations, could a small number represent something genuinely unusual? That remains an open question.

The value of a large collection like NUFORC's is that it preserves these reports so they can be examined, compared and, where possible, checked against other information. A witness may see something unusual today, but years later a photograph, radar record, satellite observation or aircraft record could potentially provide the missing piece of the puzzle.

For now, the California sighting remains exactly what it is: a fascinating witness account of something the observers could not identify. Perhaps one day additional evidence will reveal what they saw. Until then, the sky remains a place where strange things are occasionally reported — and sometimes, despite all our modern technology, we still don't know exactly what we're looking at.

Have you ever seen something in the sky that you simply couldn't explain?

Mercury may be the smallest planet in the Solar System, but it has a surprisingly dramatic story hidden beneath its battered surface. Scientists have discovered evidence that Mercury has been shrinking faster than previously believed — and the reason could tell us a great deal about what is happening deep inside the planet.

New research suggests Mercury may have contracted by 10 to 30 per cent more than earlier estimates. In total, the planet may have lost as much as 23 kilometres from its diameter since it formed about 4.5 billion years ago.

So, what is making a planet shrink? The answer lies deep inside Mercury. When Mercury formed in the violent early Solar System, countless rocks and asteroids smashed together to build the young planet. Those collisions generated enormous amounts of heat, and Mercury has been slowly losing that heat ever since. As its interior cools, it contracts, forcing the rocky outer shell to adjust. The result is a series of enormous geological wrinkles across the planet's surface.

These wrinkles appear as long cliffs, ridges and scarps. They are, in effect, the planetary equivalent of wrinkles appearing as something gets smaller. But there is a problem. Mercury has been bombarded by asteroids and other space rocks for billions of years. Those impacts created countless craters and scattered debris across the surface, hiding some of the geological evidence of Mercury's contraction.

Scientists have now taken a fresh look at the planet's surface. By comparing existing geological maps with measurements of Mercury's surface roughness, researchers noticed something interesting: the roughest areas tended to have fewer visible contraction features. That suggested the wrinkles hadn't necessarily disappeared. They may simply have been buried or obscured by impact debris.

The researchers therefore examined areas where the surface was less affected by this debris and used the visible scarps and ridges to estimate how much contraction might have been missed. Their calculations suggest Mercury could have shrunk 10 to 30 per cent more than earlier estimates indicated.

And that matters for more than simply working out Mercury's changing size. The amount of shrinking provides scientists with clues about what lies beneath the surface. More contraction could indicate that Mercury has an even larger metal core, or that its core contains fewer lighter elements such as silicon. It could also mean the planet began its life considerably hotter than previously thought.

In other words, Mercury's wrinkles are telling us about its hidden interior.

There is also a strong possibility that scientists still haven't seen the full picture. The latest estimates are largely based on observations from NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, which orbited Mercury until 2015. MESSENGER could not clearly detect geological features smaller than about five kilometres across, meaning some evidence of Mercury's shrinking may have remained hidden.

That is about to change. The European-Japanese BepiColombo mission is due to begin detailed scientific observations of Mercury in November 2026. Its instruments will examine the planet at much higher resolution, potentially revealing smaller scarps and ridges that earlier spacecraft could not see.

Scientists hope those observations will provide an even clearer picture of how much Mercury has contracted — and what that contraction reveals about the mysterious interior of the planet. For a world that looks like a battered, lifeless rock, Mercury still has plenty of secrets. And some of those secrets are written in its wrinkles.

For generations, the Moon has represented exploration, discovery and human curiosity. But that peaceful image is now being joined by a very different reality.

America's highest-ranking military officer has issued a striking warning: future military forces may need to operate across an extraordinary range of environments — from the seabed to the region around the Moon.

General Dan Caine, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, used the phrase "from the seabed to cislunar space" when describing the increasingly complex environment in which future conflicts could unfold. It sounds like something from science fiction, but there is a serious message behind it.

Cislunar space is the region between Earth and the Moon, including the space around the Moon and, depending on the definition, the lunar environment itself. It is becoming increasingly important as spacecraft venture farther from Earth and plans for a permanent human presence on the Moon gather pace.

Caine's warning is essentially that military planners can no longer assume space will remain a peaceful or uncontested environment. Future forces could find themselves operating while communications are jammed, satellites are threatened, navigation systems are disrupted and vital supply routes are under pressure.

And the timing of his comments is significant. Only days earlier, US Air Force Secretary Troy Meink publicly confirmed that the United States possesses "on-orbit space control weapons" capable of defending American forces against hostile actions.

He did not reveal exactly what those weapons are or when they were deployed. That admission nevertheless represents a significant change in the language coming from Washington.

America has operated military satellites for decades, providing communications, navigation, surveillance and missile-warning services that are vital to modern military operations. But openly acknowledging weapons designed for space control takes the conversation into another realm.

The Moon is becoming increasingly important as well. The United States, China and other nations are developing sophisticated spacecraft capable of operating around the Moon, while future missions are expected to place more scientific instruments, communications equipment and eventually people on and around the lunar surface.

China has already demonstrated its ability to operate spacecraft on the far side of the Moon and has a communications relay satellite operating in cislunar space. That raises an intriguing question: Could control of the space around the Moon eventually become as strategically important as control of key regions on Earth?

Military planners are clearly considering that possibility. However, Caine did not announce that America intends to send soldiers to the Moon to fight a war. He did not describe a planned lunar battle or identify a particular enemy.

His message was about preparation — recognising that future military operations could extend much farther from Earth than they have in the past.

There is also a major legal question. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibits nations from placing nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit. It also establishes principles governing the Moon and other celestial bodies.

As technology advances, questions about exactly what military activities are permitted in cislunar space are likely to become increasingly important.

For most people, the idea of a potential military battlefield stretching from the ocean floor all the way to the Moon sounds extraordinary. But this isn't necessarily a prediction of war on the Moon.

It is a recognition that space itself is becoming an increasingly important part of national security.

The new race to the Moon is therefore about much more than planting flags, collecting rocks and conducting scientific experiments. It is also about who can see, communicate, navigate and operate reliably in the vast region between Earth and the Moon.

And that could make the next great contest in space very different from the Apollo era.

The James Webb Space Telescope has done it again — and this time it has peered deeper into the Universe than ever before.  Astronomers have discovered MoM-z14, a remarkably ancient galaxy whose light has travelled across the cosmos for more than 13 billion years. Webb has detected the galaxy as it existed just 280 million years after the Big Bang, when the Universe was still in its infancy.

That makes MoM-z14 the most distant galaxy ever observed, pushing the cosmic record even further back in time. Webb's extraordinary ability to see faint infrared light has transformed our view of the Universe's earliest era, known as the cosmic dawn. This was a mysterious period when the first stars and galaxies were beginning to ignite, gradually transforming a dark, young Universe into the vast, glittering cosmos we see today.

And MoM-z14 is raising some intriguing questions. The galaxy is not simply a faint smudge from the distant past. Its light contains clues suggesting that it was already surprisingly active and chemically interesting at such an early stage in cosmic history.

That is important because astronomers once expected the young Universe to be relatively simple. The first galaxies were thought to need considerable time to grow, form stars and develop the heavier elements produced inside stars. Yet Webb keeps finding evidence that the early Universe was busy, bright and evolving far faster than expected.

MoM-z14 follows another Webb discovery, JADES-GS-z14-0, which previously held the record for the most distant known galaxy. That record has now been broken once again — highlighting just how quickly Webb is rewriting the history books.

Imagine looking at the night sky and seeing a galaxy whose light began its journey towards Earth before our planet had even taken its modern form. When that ancient light finally reached Webb's mirrors, it carried a message from an almost unimaginably distant chapter of cosmic history.

There is also something wonderfully mysterious about these discoveries. Every time Webb pushes farther into the darkness, astronomers gain another piece of evidence about how the Universe emerged from its fiery beginnings. But instead of simply confirming everything scientists expected, the telescope is repeatedly presenting new puzzles.

How did galaxies become so large and active so quickly?  How did the first generations of stars transform their surroundings?  And could there be even more ancient galaxies waiting beyond MoM-z14? For now, MoM-z14 holds the cosmic distance record. But if Webb's track record is anything to go by, it may not hold it for long.

The Universe has been hiding its earliest secrets for more than 13 billion years. James Webb is proving remarkably good at finding them.

The Moon may look peaceful from Earth, but its ancient surface is still being bombarded by space rocks. Now, scientists have discovered something extraordinarily rare — a brand-new lunar crater created during our own time.

Named McGetchin crater, the feature appeared sometime between April 11 and May 22, 2024, when an asteroid or fragment of a comet slammed into the lunar surface. What makes the discovery remarkable is that scientists have images of the Moon before and after the impact. That gives researchers an extraordinary opportunity to study exactly what happens when a space rock collides with another world.

McGetchin is about 222 metres across and 43 metres deep — roughly the size of a large city block and deep enough to swallow a multi-storey building. NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter identified it by comparing incredibly detailed images taken before and after the suspected impact. According to NASA, it is the largest newly formed impact crater ever identified in the Solar System.

The numbers tell only part of the story. The impact was powerful enough to excavate enormous quantities of lunar rock and soil and blast that material outward across the surrounding landscape. What had been an undisturbed patch of the Moon was suddenly transformed in seconds. Imagine a desert being struck by an object travelling through space at enormous speed. There would be no warning, no atmosphere to slow the incoming object and no protection for the surface below — just an instantaneous release of energy.

And that is what makes McGetchin so interesting — and slightly unsettling. On Earth, our atmosphere protects us from many smaller space rocks. They burn up as meteors, sometimes producing spectacular fireballs. The Moon has no substantial atmosphere, so there is effectively nothing to stop an incoming asteroid or comet fragment from reaching the ground.

Scientists estimate that an impact capable of producing a crater as large as McGetchin happens on the Moon only about once every century. That makes the chance of scientists being able to study one so soon after it formed exceptionally unusual.

The crater itself is only half the story. Two new studies published in Science Advances examine both the crater and the enormous area surrounding it. One investigation used Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter observations to study the crater and the debris thrown across the lunar surface, while the second examined a much wider region using data from LRO's Diviner instrument.

Researchers found that the impact had physically altered the lunar surface far beyond the crater itself. That gives scientists an unusual forensic record. Normally, researchers examining lunar craters are dealing with features that may be thousands, millions or even billions of years old. Over immense periods, tiny impacts, radiation and other processes gradually modify the lunar surface.

McGetchin is different. Scientists essentially have a before-and-after photograph of a cosmic collision. They can examine what the lunar surface looked like before the impact, measure the crater afterwards and trace where the blasted material landed. This provides a natural laboratory for understanding how impacts reshape planetary surfaces.

There is also a bigger lesson here. The Moon is constantly being struck by objects from space, although we don't see most of those impacts because they are too small, too distant or occur on the far side of the Moon. Earth is being hit by space debris too, but our atmosphere destroys many smaller objects before they reach the ground.

The Moon has none of that protection. McGetchin therefore represents more than another hole in the lunar surface. It is a snapshot of the violent environment surrounding Earth and our nearest neighbour — and a reminder that the Solar System is far from a quiet place.

The Moon may appear unchanged when we look up at it tonight. But somewhere out there, the cosmic shooting gallery is still operating. And occasionally, something big enough to leave a crater the size of McGetchin comes crashing down.

Five Famous UFO Shapes — And What Could They Really Be? Look up at the night sky and you might expect to see stars, planets and aircraft. But occasionally, someone reports seeing something that seems to belong in an entirely different category — a strange object with an unusual shape, moving in a way that appears difficult to explain.

Over the decades, UFO — or UAP, Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena — reports have described a remarkable variety of shapes. The National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) maintains a large database of reports, with categories including discs, triangles, spheres, cigars and ovals. Importantly, these are reported descriptions, not confirmed spacecraft designs. So, what are the five shapes that keep appearing?

1. The Disc — The Classic Flying Saucer

Nothing says "UFO" quite like the flying saucer. Witnesses have described disc-shaped objects since the early days of modern UFO reporting. Some reports describe a simple flattened disc, while others mention a dome on top or lights around the edge. NUFORC currently lists more than 9,500 reports classified as "Disc." The mystery is that a shape alone tells us very little. A distant object viewed against a bright sky can look dramatically different depending on its angle, lighting and distance.

2. The Triangle — Dark and Mysterious

Large, dark triangular objects have become another familiar feature of UFO reports. Witnesses sometimes describe three lights positioned around the corners, with the object apparently moving silently across the sky. NUFORC's database contains more than 14,000 reports classified as triangles. But there's an important reality check. Some apparent triangular UFOs can turn out to be conventional aircraft, drones or groups of lights viewed from an unusual angle. The shape is intriguing — but it isn't proof of extraordinary technology.

3. The Sphere or Orb

Sometimes there isn't a saucer, triangle or aircraft-like shape at all. Instead, witnesses report seeing a glowing ball or apparently metallic sphere moving across the sky. Spheres and orbs are among the most frequently reported forms in the NUFORC database, with thousands of cases recorded. And here science offers a useful reminder: something that looks mysterious may have a surprisingly ordinary explanation. Balloons, bright planets, aircraft lights, satellites and atmospheric effects can all produce confusing observations. In fact, AARO has resolved several UAP cases as balloons after analysing their appearance and movement.

4. The Cigar or Cylinder

Long, narrow objects — sometimes described as silver, metallic or glowing — have also been reported for decades. The cigar shape is particularly fascinating because it doesn't resemble the stereotypical flying saucer at all. NUFORC records more than 4,000 cigar-shaped reports. Could some have been unusual aircraft, rockets, atmospheric phenomena or other objects? Certainly. Some cases remain unidentified simply because there isn't enough information to reach a firm conclusion.

5. The Oval or "Tic-Tac"

Then there's the shape that has captured enormous modern attention: the smooth, white, elongated Tic-Tac. It became famous following U.S. Navy encounters reported by military personnel, including the well-known 2004 USS Nimitz incident. Witness descriptions included an object resembling a large white Tic-Tac, apparently without wings, rotors or obvious exhaust. That naturally raises a spectacular question: if such an object really was a physical craft, how could it move? Ideas involving gravity manipulation, electromagnetic fields and even distortion of space-time have been proposed. 

The accompanying illustration shows one hypothetical concept — a craft somehow altering the gravitational field around itself and using that effect for movement. It is a fascinating idea, but there is currently no demonstrated technology that can propel a craft this way. General relativity tells us that gravity and space-time are intimately connected, but turning that knowledge into a practical propulsion system remains firmly in the realm of speculation.

And that's where the real excitement lies. UAP research isn't necessarily about proving little green visitors are flying around Earth. It's about finding out what people are actually seeing. Some reports can be explained. Others remain unresolved because the data simply isn't good enough. AARO's current database contains both resolved cases and genuinely unresolved observations.

The next breakthrough could therefore come not from a mysterious photograph, but from better cameras, multiple sensors, radar, satellites and careful scientific investigation. Whatever these strange shapes ultimately turn out to be, the night sky still has plenty of mysteries left to solve — and that's something worth looking up for.

We live in an age of remarkable medical achievement. We can replace organs, edit genes, develop vaccines and examine the human body at a microscopic level. Yet cancer, Alzheimer's and countless other terminal illnesses continue to claim lives. or a civilisation capable of interstellar travel, it is reasonable to imagine that medicine might have reached an entirely different level. Perhaps disease is detected and corrected before symptoms appear. Maybe microscopic medical machines repair damaged cells, reverse genetic errors and restore organs we consider beyond saving.

Imagine a world where the word terminal no longer carries the same meaning. Where children born with serious genetic conditions can be treated before disease develops, and ageing is understood as a biological process that can be slowed or partially reversed. This is speculation. We have no evidence that extraterrestrial civilisations possess such technology. But it offers an inspiring possibility: our present medical limitations may not define the future of intelligent life.

Then comes an even greater challenge—war. Humanity has created magnificent art, music, science and civilisation, yet repeatedly turned its ingenuity against itself. Wars have destroyed cities, displaced families and consumed generations. Even today, conflict continues over territory, resources, ideology and power. Would a civilisation a million years old still fight wars?

There is no guarantee. Advanced technology does not automatically produce wisdom, compassion or peace. In fact, powerful technology can make conflict even more destructive. But perhaps an ancient civilisation eventually learned that war is an extraordinarily expensive way of solving problems. Maybe it developed institutions capable of resolving disputes without violence, reduced extreme inequality and discovered that cooperation was more rewarding than conquest.

Perhaps it experienced a catastrophe so terrible that its people finally understood the necessity of peace. The greatest achievement of an advanced civilisation may not be crossing the stars, but learning how not to destroy itself. And what of UFO reports? People around the world have reported unidentified flying objects, or UAP. Some describe objects behaving in unusual ways, while others involve observations that remain unexplained. The reports and observations deserve investigation. However, an unidentified object is not automatically an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

NASA's 2023 UAP study found no conclusive evidence of extraterrestrial origins, while a 2024 US Department of Defence historical review reported no verifiable evidence that UAP sightings represented alien technology. Some cases remain unresolved because the available data is insufficient. If one day we confirm that some UAP are genuine extraterrestrial craft, it would be a historic discovery. Yet advanced propulsion would not automatically prove that their occupants had eliminated disease, abolished war or achieved perfect wisdom.

Still, imagine the possibility that somewhere in the universe, a civilisation has already passed through the struggles we face today. Perhaps they endured epidemics, devastating wars and the dangers of their own technology—and learned from them. Maybe their progress came not from being perfect, but from recognising mistakes and choosing a better path. We cannot assume such a civilisation exists, but the possibility encourages us to examine our own future.

When we look at the stars, we see more than distant suns and galaxies. We see potential. Humanity has already achieved things once considered impossible. Our future is uncertain, but our capacity to learn, adapt and improve is real. Perhaps the greatest discovery will not be finding an advanced civilisation among the stars. Perhaps it will be becoming the kind of civilisation that deserves to join them.

Have you ever looked up at a clear night sky and wondered how many stars are actually up there? From a really dark location, away from city lights, you might see several thousand stars with the naked eye. It looks like an enormous sea of light. But here's the astonishing part: almost every star you can see belongs to just one galaxy — our Milky Way. And those few thousand stars are only a tiny glimpse of what's really out there.

The Sun is a star. It is about 150 million kilometres away. Beyond it are vast numbers of other stars scattered through space. And the Milky Way is only one galaxy. A galaxy is a huge collection of stars, planets, gas and dust, all held together by gravity. Galaxies come in different shapes and sizes. Some are beautiful spirals like our Milky Way. Others are giant elliptical galaxies. Some are irregular.

So how do astronomers count something they can't possibly count one by one? They use observation, measurement and mathematics. Astronomers photograph tiny areas of the sky and count the galaxies they find. They then use those results to estimate how many galaxies exist across the observable universe.

And this is where the numbers become almost ridiculous. Current estimates suggest there may be around two trillion galaxies in the observable universe. Two trillion! But we're still not finished. Astronomers estimate that the Milky Way contains roughly 100 billion stars. Other galaxies may contain far fewer, while some contain vastly more. But using the Milky Way as a rough guide gives us an idea of the incredible scale.

Take 100 billion stars and multiply that by two trillion galaxies. The result is about 200 sextillion stars. Written out, that's 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. It is a number so enormous that the human brain struggles to visualise it.

And remember, these aren't just tiny points of light. Every one is a sun. Some are enormous blue giants, burning fiercely and living relatively short lives. Others are tiny, faint red dwarf stars that can survive for astonishing lengths of time. And many stars have planets. So when you look into the night sky, you're not simply looking at lights. You're looking at other suns — and potentially at countless worlds orbiting them.

There is an important catch. We don't actually know the exact number of stars. We can't count them individually. The figure is an estimate based on observations and mathematical models. As telescopes become more powerful, those estimates can change.

And there's an even bigger mystery. The estimate of 200 sextillion applies only to the observable universe — the part whose light has had enough time to reach us. We don't know how large the entire universe really is. It could be vastly larger. It may even be infinite.

So next time you stand outside on a clear night and see those familiar stars, remember this: those few thousand visible points of light are only the tiniest sampling of an almost unimaginable cosmic population. Somewhere among those hundreds of sextillions of stars may be planets, moons and worlds we haven't even discovered. The night sky doesn't just contain stars. It contains possibilities.

What happens when you drop a hammer and a feather on the Moon at exactly the same time?

It sounds almost too simple to be a scientific experiment. Surely the heavy hammer would plunge towards the ground while the delicate feather floated slowly behind? That is exactly what most of us would expect. But on the Moon, something extraordinary happens: they fall together.

In 1971, during NASA's Apollo 15 mission, astronaut David Scott stood on the lunar surface holding two very different objects: a 1.32-kilogram geological hammer and a lightweight falcon feather. With the television camera watching, Scott held them at approximately the same height and released them simultaneously. The hammer dropped. The feather dropped. And, despite their enormous difference in weight, both reached the lunar surface at virtually the same time. Scott had just performed one of the simplest—and most visually dramatic—experiments in the history of space exploration.

So what was going on? The answer is gravity. Gravity accelerates falling objects at the same rate, regardless of their mass. Near the surface of the Moon, that acceleration is about 1.62 metres per second squared, roughly one-sixth of Earth's gravity. But here on Earth, there is a problem: air. Drop a hammer and a feather side by side on Earth and the hammer wins the race easily. But gravity isn't actually making the feather fall more slowly. The feather is being held back by the atmosphere. Its large surface area and tiny mass make it particularly vulnerable to air resistance.

Remove the air, and the story changes completely. The Moon has virtually no atmosphere—certainly not enough to produce the kind of aerodynamic drag we experience on Earth. So the feather has nothing to slow it down. Gravity gets a clear run. The result beautifully demonstrates a fundamental principle of physics: in a vacuum, objects fall at the same rate regardless of their mass.

And this was not a new idea in 1971. More than four centuries earlier, Italian scientist Galileo Galilei had challenged the ancient belief that heavier objects must fall faster than lighter ones. Galileo's work helped establish the idea that the acceleration of a falling object is independent of its mass when other effects, such as air resistance, are removed. Centuries later, David Scott effectively took Galileo's experiment to another world.

There is something wonderfully poetic about it. A physicist's idea developed on Earth was demonstrated on the Moon, before a worldwide television audience, using two objects that could hardly have been more different. Scott later described the experiment with characteristic understatement: "How about that?" And that may be the perfect reaction.

Because beneath the simplicity lies something profound. The experiment isn't really about a feather and a hammer. It is about the fundamental behaviour of nature—and the fact that gravity doesn't care whether it is pulling on a feather, a hammer, an astronaut, or an entire planet. The Moon simply provided the perfect laboratory. With its almost airless environment, it stripped away one of Earth's most familiar distractions and allowed gravity to reveal itself almost nakedly.

So, if you had been standing beside David Scott in 1971, watching that feather and hammer tumble together towards the dusty lunar surface, would you have believed your eyes? Perhaps the most amazing thing about the experiment is that the answer was hiding in plain sight all along. Sometimes, you don't need a billion-dollar experiment to reveal the universe. Sometimes, all you need is a hammer, a feather—and a world without air.

Look at the Moon tonight and it seems the very definition of permanence. It has watched dinosaurs come and go. It illuminated the nights of our earliest ancestors. Civilisations used it to measure time, sailors navigated by it, poets wrote about it and twelve Apollo astronauts eventually walked across its dusty surface.

Yet new computer simulations suggest the Moon's own birth may have been astonishingly fast. Perhaps just five hours.

The story begins about 4.5 billion years ago, when the young Solar System was a chaotic construction site filled with growing worlds, debris and collisions. Earth itself was still developing when another protoplanet — generally called Theia and thought to have been roughly Mars-sized — collided with it.

It was one of the most consequential accidents in Earth's history. The leading giant-impact explanation proposes that material thrown into space by this collision eventually produced the Moon. But exactly how that process happened, and how long lunar formation took, has remained the subject of continuing research.

New simulations led by Adeene Denton of the Southwest Research Institute have added an important ingredient: temperature.

Instead of treating the colliding bodies simply as lumps of planetary material, the researchers considered how their internal temperatures would affect their strength and behaviour during impact. The difference turns out to matter enormously.

A hotter Theia would have been physically weaker.

During the collision it could therefore have been ripped apart far more thoroughly, blasting material around Earth and creating the conditions from which a Moon could assemble with extraordinary speed. In some simulations, the process could occur in roughly five hours.

Five hours. That is shorter than a long-haul airline flight. Short enough to begin in the morning and, in the simplified language of planetary formation, have a Moon by afternoon.

Of course, nobody was there with a stopwatch. The result comes from sophisticated computer modelling, not direct observation, and it does not mean that every detail of lunar history has suddenly been solved. But it offers researchers another way to explain some of the Moon's puzzling characteristics.

Temperature also provides a possible clue to when the giant collision occurred. A warmer Theia could point towards an earlier impact, when planetary bodies retained more heat from their formation. A cooler, stronger Theia could survive the collision differently and lead to a more gradual lunar-formation process.

The implications may stretch beyond our own Solar System. If large moons around rocky planets can form extremely quickly after giant impacts, the debris discs that create them may also disappear rapidly. That could help explain why astronomers searching young planetary systems do not necessarily catch many such moon-forming events in progress.

There is something almost comical about comparing those violent hours with the tranquillity of the Moon today.

Imagine the young Earth glowing from catastrophic impact heating, surrounded by incandescent debris, while enormous quantities of planetary material collided, melted and reorganised themselves under gravity.

Out of that chaos emerged the object that would eventually stabilise important aspects of Earth's behaviour, raise ocean tides and become humanity's first destination on another world.Four and a half billion years later, astronauts have carried pieces of it back to the planet from which much of its material may have originated.

The Moon looks peaceful now. Its birth was anything but. And if these simulations are pointing us in the right direction, one of the most important events in Earth's history may have unfolded not over millions of years — but during the course of a single extraordinary day.

Maps have always told the story of human curiosity. Early explorers drew coastlines. Surveyors measured continents. Sailors charted oceans. Eventually we mapped the entire Earth so thoroughly that a person carrying a phone can summon an image of almost any street on the planet within seconds.

Astronomers have now attempted something considerably more ambitious.

They are mapping the universe.

The latest results from the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys have produced an extraordinary view of the cosmos containing about 5.6 trillion pixels and approximately four billion celestial objects. The survey covers roughly 75 per cent of the sky, combining observations in visible and near-infrared light.

And unlike the precious maps once locked away in explorers' cabinets, this one can be explored online by the public.The scale is difficult to comprehend.

Every tiny patch of sky can contain galaxies. Each galaxy may contain billions of stars. Many of those stars probably possess planets. Zoom deeply enough into the survey and what initially appears to be darkness becomes a landscape crowded with cosmic structure.

The project grew from years of work associated with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument — DESI — operating at Kitt Peak in Arizona. More than 160 scientists were involved in collecting the imaging data, building upon 13 years of groundwork and five years of survey observations.

The ultimate mystery behind much of the work is dark energy. We know the universe is expanding. More surprisingly, that expansion is accelerating. Astronomers use the term "dark energy" for whatever is driving that acceleration, but its true nature remains one of the greatest unanswered questions in modern cosmology.

To understand it, scientists need to know how matter is distributed through enormous volumes of space and how that distribution has changed through cosmic history.

That means mapping galaxies — lots of them.

Earlier DESI work measured distances to some 47 million galaxies and quasars, allowing astronomers to reconstruct roughly 11 billion years of cosmic history. Intriguingly, combined observations have produced hints that dark energy might not remain constant with time, although the question is far from settled. Analysis of DESI's complete five-year data set is expected in 2027.

There are unavoidable gaps in the new imaging map. We live inside the Milky Way, and our own galaxy gets in the way. Stars, dust and gas obscure portions of the deeper universe, rather like trying to map a distant city while standing inside a brightly illuminated forest.

Astronomers work around the obstruction by looking above and below the Milky Way's flattened disc, where the view into deep space is clearer. What makes this project particularly appealing is that the universe has effectively been handed to the public.

You do not need an observatory dome, a doctorate or a multimillion-dollar telescope. You can explore the survey from a computer, moving across a celestial landscape containing galaxies whose light began travelling towards us long before humans existed.

Professional astronomers will use these data for years. Artificial intelligence will increasingly help researchers sift through the immense quantities of information, searching for patterns and objects that human eyes might otherwise miss.

But there is still something wonderfully old-fashioned about the whole exercise.

Despite the supercomputers, giant databases and trillions of pixels, it begins with the same instinct that made someone thousands of years ago look upwards and wonder what was out there.

We once drew maps to find our way around Earth.

Now we are drawing one to find our place in the universe.

Somewhere in the constellation Pegasus, a star has died. There was no sound. No warning visible from Earth. No shockwave sweeping across our planet. Yet for a brief period, one star in a distant galaxy has become one of the most fascinating objects in the night sky. It is called SN 2026aaiv, a newly discovered supernova in the spiral galaxy NGC 7331, roughly 45 million light-years away.

It was first detected by the ATLAS survey on September 1, 2026. Since then astronomers and astrophotographers have been turning their instruments towards NGC 7331, hoping to catch something that no human being can ever replay: the light from an exploding star arriving at Earth.

And there is a delicious twist to the story. The explosion did not actually happen this month. It happened about 45 million years ago. When the light now entering our telescopes began its journey, humanity did not exist. Our distant primate ancestors were still millions of years from appearing. The continents looked different. The planet was inhabited by creatures that could never have imagined that one day another species would build telescopes capable of detecting the death of a star in another galaxy.

For 45 million years those photons crossed intergalactic space. Now they have arrived.

SN 2026aaiv is a Type Ia supernova. Such explosions are associated with white dwarfs — the compact remnants left behind by stars roughly comparable to our Sun after they exhaust their nuclear fuel. Under the right circumstances a white dwarf can undergo a catastrophic thermonuclear explosion, releasing an astonishing amount of energy.

The result can temporarily shine with the brilliance of billions of ordinary stars. Its host galaxy is itself worth finding. NGC 7331 is a magnificent spiral in Pegasus and is often compared with the Milky Way because of broad similarities in size and appearance. William Herschel discovered it in 1784, long before astronomers understood that objects such as NGC 7331 were enormous galaxies far beyond our own. Now one tiny point of light inside it is stealing the show.

Astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy had a remarkable piece of luck. He was already undertaking a long imaging project involving the galaxy and obtained data from before and after the supernova appeared. Tom Masterson at Mount Wilson Observatory also photographed the event on September 10 using the observatory's 60-inch telescope.

For backyard astronomers, however, this is not a naked-eye spectacle. The supernova was reported at magnitude 15.7 on September 11 and remained a challenging target visually. Imaging equipment, smart telescopes or larger conventional telescopes offer a much better opportunity of recording it.But perhaps that difficulty makes the chase even more rewarding.

A photograph may show only a tiny pinpoint beside the ghostly glow of a distant galaxy. It does not look like the spectacular artist impressions of exploding stars we see in books. Yet that insignificant-looking dot represents an event of almost unimaginable violence.

The atoms blasted into space by supernovae become part of future generations of stars and planets. Stellar explosions helped seed the universe with many of the heavier elements from which worlds — and ultimately living things — are made.

So photograph SN 2026aaiv if you can. You are not merely photographing a bright speck. You are catching ancient light from a stellar catastrophe that occurred before human beings existed — a cosmic message that has taken 45 million years to reach your camera.Not bad for a night in the backyard.

Imagine waking one morning and discovering that thousands of satellites circling Earth were suddenly in danger. Communications are disrupted. Navigation becomes uncertain. Military surveillance is affected. Weather forecasting, banking networks, aviation and countless services that quietly depend upon spacecraft face potential problems.

Then imagine discovering that the cause was not a solar storm or an accident. It was a nuclear explosion in space.

That disturbing possibility lies behind renewed concern over reports and allegations surrounding Russian development of anti-satellite capabilities. Some dramatic reports have gone considerably further, suggesting that a nuclear detonation could threaten huge numbers of American and commercial satellites, including the enormous constellations now operating in low-Earth orbit.

The important distinction is that claims that Vladimir Putin is preparing to destroy "11,000 US satellites in one go" should not be treated as an established plan. Public concern over Russian counter-space capabilities is real; the precise intentions attributed to Moscow in sensational headlines are another matter.

But the underlying physics is serious enough. A nuclear weapon detonated high above Earth behaves differently from one exploded over a city. There would be no familiar mushroom cloud rising from the ground because there is virtually no atmosphere in space to produce one. Yet the explosion could release intense radiation and energetic charged particles capable of damaging spacecraft electronics over a wide region.

That makes satellites particularly vulnerable. Modern civilisation has quietly built an enormous amount of its infrastructure above our heads. Navigation signals help aircraft, ships, farmers, emergency services and ordinary motorists. Communications satellites move information across continents. Weather satellites watch storms forming over oceans. Earth-observation spacecraft monitor fires  crops, floods and climate. Military satellites provide communications, early warning and intelligence.

Then there are the huge new commercial constellations. Instead of a handful of extremely expensive spacecraft, operators can now deploy thousands of smaller satellites. The result is an orbital network on a scale scarcely imaginable during the Cold War. The irony is that a large-scale attack in orbit could be extraordinarily indiscriminate.

Spacecraft do not conveniently separate themselves into neat groups marked "friend" and "enemy." Satellites belonging to dozens of nations share orbital regions. An event capable of damaging large numbers of spacecraft could therefore threaten commercial, scientific and civilian satellites as well as military ones. Depending on the nature and altitude of an explosion, the consequences could extend well beyond the original target.

There is another danger: debris. Destroying satellites can create fragments travelling at orbital speeds of many kilometres per second. At those velocities, even a small piece of metal can strike another spacecraft with enormous energy. One destroyed satellite can therefore become a cloud of potential projectiles, increasing the risk to other objects sharing its orbital neighbourhood.

That is why the growing military importance of space worries scientists and strategists alike. Space is no longer an exotic arena used by a few superpowers. It has become part of the everyday machinery of civilisation.

The frightening part is how little most of us notice it. We buy something with a bank card, check tomorrow's weather, navigate with a phone or watch live television from another continent without thinking about the machines silently racing overhead.

Every ninety minutes or so, many low-orbiting satellites circle the entire planet. They have become the invisible infrastructure of the modern world. And that is what makes the possibility of warfare in space so unsettling. A nuclear explosion hundreds of kilometres above us might make no sound that anyone on the ground could hear. Yet its consequences could be felt by millions.

Saturn is famous for its beautiful rings, but the giant planet has another feature that is just as fascinating — its enormous storms and powerful winds. Now, scientists have spotted something particularly strange: a ten-sided pattern, or decagon, in the clouds around Saturn's south pole.

The feature was observed by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, and it has scientists asking a very simple but puzzling question: Why is it there now?

A decagon is a shape with ten straight sides. On Saturn, however, this is not a solid object. It is a pattern created by the movement of gases and clouds in the planet's atmosphere. Saturn's atmosphere is constantly moving, with powerful winds travelling around the planet.

Scientists have known for many years that Saturn's north pole has a famous six-sided pattern, called the hexagon. It is a huge jet stream — a fast-moving river of air — that circles the north pole. The hexagon is so large that several Earths could fit inside it.

But until now, scientists had not seen a similar regular-sided pattern around Saturn's south pole. That is what makes the new observation so interesting.

Amy Simon, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, has pointed out that the most intriguing part is that the feature appears to have formed relatively recently. Scientists naturally wonder why something this large and organised could suddenly appear when they had not seen it before.

One possibility is that Saturn's atmosphere has changed. The planet experiences enormous seasonal changes because it takes about 29 Earth years to travel once around the Sun. Each season therefore lasts for many years. As sunlight and temperatures change, Saturn's atmosphere can also change.

Another possibility involves the planet's powerful jet streams. High in Saturn's atmosphere, winds can move at hundreds of kilometres per hour. Where these winds meet, they can create complicated waves and patterns. Under the right conditions, those waves might organise themselves into a geometric shape.

The important thing is that scientists are not yet certain exactly how the ten-sided pattern formed. That is what makes the discovery so exciting. Rather than simply finding another storm, they may be watching Saturn's atmosphere behaving in a way that has never been recorded before.

The discovery also reminds us that Saturn is far from being a quiet ball of gas. Beneath its spectacular rings is an enormous, constantly changing atmosphere filled with storms, winds and gigantic waves. And there is something wonderfully strange about seeing geometry appear naturally in the clouds of another world.

A six-sided pattern has remained around Saturn's north pole for decades. Now a ten-sided pattern has appeared in the south. The big question is no longer simply what is it? It is why did Saturn suddenly decide to draw a ten-sided shape in its clouds? That is the mystery scientists are now trying to solve.

There are nights when the Moon seems to put on a show just for us. It can glow through a veil of clouds, wear a mysterious ring, appear impossibly huge above the horizon or shrink to a delicate silver crescent. Yet none of these tricks are quite what they seem. Our nearest neighbour in space is playing with light, gravity, movement—and even our minds. Take the strange ring that sometimes surrounds the Moon. On a clear night, you may look up and see a vast, ghostly circle stretching across the sky. It can look almost too perfect to be real. But the Moon isn't creating the ring. Earth's atmosphere is.

High above us, thin cirrus clouds can contain countless tiny ice crystals. When moonlight passes through them, the crystals bend and redirect the light, producing a luminous circle known as a lunar halo. For centuries, people have treated these rings as signs that rain is coming. There is actually some truth in the old weather wisdom. The high clouds that create halos can form ahead of approaching weather systems, sometimes providing an early warning that conditions are about to change.

But the Moon has an even bigger secret. Why do we always see the same side?

It isn't because the Moon doesn't rotate. It does. The remarkable thing is that it spins exactly once on its axis during the same time it takes to complete one orbit around Earth. This is called tidal locking. Earth's gravity has been tugging on the Moon for billions of years, gradually slowing its rotation until the two movements became synchronised. The result is a spectacular cosmic dance: as the Moon travels around Earth, it turns at exactly the right rate to keep the same hemisphere facing us.

And here's another surprise: there is no permanent "dark side" of the Moon. The far side gets sunlight too. It is simply the side we don't normally see from Earth. Then there are the Moon's famous phases. One night it is a thin crescent, another it is half illuminated, and eventually it becomes a brilliant full Moon. But the Moon itself isn't changing shape. We are simply seeing different amounts of its sunlit half.

As the Moon orbits Earth, our viewing angle changes. Sometimes most of the illuminated side is facing away from us, producing a new Moon. At other times we see almost all of it, creating a full Moon. Between these extremes come the crescents, quarters and gibbous phases. The complete cycle takes about 29.5 days. That's slightly longer than the Moon's actual orbit around Earth because Earth itself is moving around the Sun, constantly changing the geometry of the three bodies.

And then comes perhaps the greatest lunar illusion of all. Watch the Moon rise and it can look enormous. Sometimes it appears so huge and golden that you might think it has somehow moved dramatically closer to Earth. It hasn't. Measure it, and its apparent size is essentially the same as when it is high overhead. Your brain is responsible.

The Moon illusion happens because, near the horizon, our brains compare the Moon with familiar objects such as trees, buildings and hills. Against an otherwise empty sky, the same Moon can appear much smaller.

So the next time you see a giant Moon rising, a halo glowing around it or a crescent hanging above the rooftops, take another look. You're witnessing an extraordinary mixture of sunlight, ice crystals, gravity, orbital motion and human perception. Our Moon may be only a quarter of a million miles away, but it still has the power to fool our eyes, stir our imagination and remind us that the night sky is far stranger—and far more fascinating—than it first appears.

Space has always been fertile ground for myths, perhaps because the night sky is so enormous, mysterious and difficult to visit that humans have filled the gaps in our knowledge with stories, guesses and the occasional piece of complete nonsense. Some are harmless fun, while others are so persistent that they deserve a gentle blast of scientific reality.

Take the wonderfully ridiculous idea that the Moon is made of cheese. Sorry, Wallace and Gromit, but the evidence is firmly against you because the Moon is a rocky world covered in dust, mountains, valleys and countless impact craters. Its surface has been battered by asteroids and meteoroids for billions of years, while ancient volcanic activity produced the enormous dark plains we call maria.

The Moon isn't particularly shiny either, reflecting only about 12 per cent of the sunlight that falls upon it, making it about as reflective as worn asphalt. That beautiful glowing Moon therefore isn't a gigantic piece of Camembert beaming back at us; its minerals are simply reflecting sunlight.

Then there are shooting stars, another case of misleading terminology because there is no star falling out of the heavens, desperately trying to find somewhere to land. A shooting star is usually a tiny piece of space debris, often no larger than a grain of sand, entering Earth's atmosphere at enormous speed, where friction and compression heat the surrounding gas and create the spectacular streak of light we see.

The object itself is called a meteoroid while it is in space and a meteor when it produces that brilliant streak, while any surviving piece that reaches the ground becomes a meteorite. So, when you see a shooting star, make a wish, but don't ask it to slow down because some meteors can enter the atmosphere at more than 70 kilometres per second, making that one very fast wish-delivery service.

Now for one of the most famous myths of all: the Great Wall of China can be seen from space. It sounds plausible and has been repeated for decades, but it isn't true in the way people imagine. Astronauts in low Earth orbit can sometimes photograph portions of the wall under favourable conditions, but it is extremely difficult to distinguish with the naked eye because the wall is simply too narrow and blends into the surrounding landscape.

From the Moon, forget it because the wall is far too narrow, and its winding shape doesn't magically turn it into a giant planetary sign saying "Welcome to China." I remember astronaut Buzz Aldrin telling me that they couldn't see it from the Moon, and at roughly 384,400 kilometres away, even an enormous telescope would have trouble picking out such a relatively thin structure against the Earth's complicated landscape.

And finally, we arrive at the flat-Earth myth, at which point perhaps it really is time for a Panadol. Earth is demonstrably spherical, and we have mountains of evidence — literally and scientifically — including ships disappearing hull-first over the horizon,

There is also the small matter of time zones because when it is lunchtime in Australia, people elsewhere can be asleep in darkness, and on a flat Earth illuminated by the Sun in the ordinary way, explaining that would require some remarkably creative geometry.

The universe is full of genuine mysteries, but we don't need invented ones because the real story is far more fascinating: a rocky Moon, fiery meteors, a magnificent but difficult-to-see wall, and a spherical Earth hurtling through space.

Imagine standing on the Moon in July 1969. There is no wind, no sound, no atmosphere and no familiar landscape—just an endless, eerie wilderness of grey dust and ancient rocks. Neil Armstrong looks across the Sea of Tranquillity, takes those famous first steps and leaves footprints that, incredibly, are still there today.

More than half a century later, Tranquility Base remains almost exactly where the Apollo 11 astronauts left it. There is no memorial, no flagpole, no protective fence and certainly no visitor centre. Instead, the first human landing site on another world sits alone in the stark lunar landscape, about 384,000 kilometres from Earth. And remarkably, we can still see it.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, circling the Moon since 2009, has photographed the site from above. Its cameras have picked out the remains of the lunar module Eagle, including the descent stage that Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left behind when they blasted off from the surface. Around it, scientists can detect the paths made by the astronauts as they moved between the spacecraft and their scientific equipment.

It gets even more astonishing. Their footprints are still visible. On Earth, a footprint is temporary. Wind blows dust into it, rain fills it, animals cross it and eventually nature erases the evidence. The Moon has none of that. With virtually no atmosphere, no wind and no rain, there is nothing to wash or blow Armstrong and Aldrin's tracks away. Their boot prints could remain for millions of years, although tiny meteorites will gradually disturb them over enormous periods of time.

Think about that for a moment. The footprints of the first humans to walk on another world may outlast almost every human structure ever built on Earth.

The scene itself is strangely modest. There is no gigantic crater announcing the historic event and no spectacular monument visible from space. Instead, Eagle's descent stage looks like a small piece of forgotten machinery sitting in an otherwise ordinary patch of lunar terrain. Nearby, however, are the traces of one of humanity's greatest adventures: astronaut tracks, equipment and the disturbed lunar soil where humans worked, jumped and shuffled across the surface.

The famous American flag is another fascinating story. Armstrong and Aldrin planted it near Eagle, but when the lunar module's ascent engine fired, the blast probably knocked it over. If anything remains of the flag today, it has spent more than five decades being bombarded by intense ultraviolet radiation and exposed to enormous temperature swings. It certainly isn't waving. There is no breeze to make it wave anyway.

And then there is the plaque attached to Eagle. It carries the names of Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins and records the extraordinary achievement with the words: "Here Men From Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon The Moon."

Perhaps the most haunting thing about Tranquility Base is how ordinary it can look. Under a high lunar Sun, shadows become short and details can almost disappear. When the Sun is low, however, enormous shadows stretch across the landscape, revealing the spacecraft, equipment and subtle tracks in the dusty surface.

For all its historical importance, Tranquility Base is not a preserved museum exhibit. It is simply sitting there, exposed to the brutal environment of space, waiting patiently as the Moon continues its slow journey around Earth. One day, humans may return. When they do, they won't merely be visiting an old landing site. They will be walking into a kind of archaeological time capsule—a place frozen in 1969, containing the machines, tracks and physical traces of the moment humanity first stepped beyond its home planet.

And perhaps that is the most astonishing thing of all. Armstrong's footprints are still waiting there. Silent. Undisturbed. And staring back at us from the surface of another world.

JUICE COMES SURPRISINGLY CLOSE TO EARTH
In September, ESA's JUICE spacecraft will make its first Earth gravity-assist flyby, passing only about 9,000 km from Earth. It will use our planet as a cosmic slingshot on its journey to Jupiter's icy moons.

THE MYSTERY OF INTERSTELLAR COMET 3I/ATLAS CONTINUES
The third known object from outside our Solar System is now heading back into interstellar space, but astronomers are still analysing its unusual chemistry and behaviour, including particularly interesting gas-to-dust signatures.

AN "ASTEROID" THAT TURNED OUT TO BE A COMET
NASA recently revealed that 1998 SH2, previously classified as a near-Earth asteroid, is actually a comet. It looks asteroid-like but has a comet-like orbit and behaviour — another reminder of how untidy the Solar System can be.

EARTH IS ABOUT TO GET A FLOOD OF NEW ASTEROIDS
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is ramping up its enormous sky survey. It is expected to uncover huge numbers of previously unknown asteroids, comets, supernovae and other transient objects. Some discoveries could appear almost overnight.

CHINA'S TIANWEN-2 HAS A VERY STRANGE TARGET
Tianwen-2 is heading for Kamoʻoalewa, a tiny asteroid-like object sometimes described as a quasi-moon of Earth. The spacecraft is attempting to collect samples, potentially giving scientists material from one of Earth's strangest companions.

COULD 2026 FINALLY PRODUCE A "WEIRD STAR" SURPRISE?
Astronomers are watching objects such as Betelgeuse and T Coronae Borealis, both of which have generated speculation about spectacular future outbursts. A nova from T CrB would be particularly dramatic, although there is no confirmed date for an eruption.

BLACK HOLE STAR BAFFLES ASTRONOMERS

A bizarre object spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope appears to be something between a star and a black hole. Dubbed a "black hole star," it is roughly Solar-System-sized and produces extraordinary amounts of energy. Astronomers believe it may help explain the mysterious "little red dots" seen in the early universe.

COMET ERUPTS 20,000 TIMES BRIGHTER

Comet 220P/McNaught has dramatically brightened following two unexpected outbursts. Normally requiring a telescope, it became bright enough to see with binoculars. Scientists aren't sure what triggered the eruptions—possible explanations include trapped gas escaping or mysterious "comet quakes."

HUBBLE FINDS A COSMIC GHOST
A previously overlooked ribbon of stars, nicknamed Oyashio, has been discovered in an old Hubble image. The faint stellar stream could provide a new way of probing the mysterious dark matter surrounding another galaxy. 

Apollo11 – In Retrospect. A Personal Journey

In 2008 I was News editor for Australia's Sky & Space Magazine visiting all the historic people and places in Space history in the USA. I had a personal invitation for this visit to meet up with history - and it still gives me a 'buzz'...pardon the pun. THIS is a revision of that day and a retrospective version of how things were, and could have been.

The door opened without ceremony. No spotlight. No drumroll. Just a firm handshake from a man who had walked on the Moon — and inside, a living room that quietly held the weight of history.

Visiting Buzz Aldrin at his home was not what you'd expect from someone who helped change the course of the 20th century. There were no grand trophies dominating the space. Instead, framed mission patches, a carefully displayed model of the Lunar Module Eagle, and photographs that have since become icons of human achievement. The setting was modest. The story was not.

Buzz, Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 11, was the second human being to set foot on the Moon on July 20, 1969 after the reclusive neil Armstrong. But what fascinated me most weren't the famous headlines. It was the fine detail — the seconds, decisions and sensations that rarely make it into documentaries.

He described those final moments of descent. The Lunar Module was low on fuel — roughly 30 seconds remaining — when Neil Armstrong took manual control to avoid a boulder-strewn crater. The onboard computer flashed 1201 and 1202 alarms, signalling executive overload. In Houston, guidance officer Steve Bales made the split-second decision to continue. Abort would have meant a very different chapter in history.

Then came the dust. As Eagle descended, the engine plume kicked up lunar regolith, creating a blinding haze. There were no trees, no buildings, no atmosphere to soften perspective. Just harsh light and shadow. Armstrong relied on instinct honed from years as a test pilot. When the contact light illuminated and the engine shut down, Aldrin calmly confirmed, "Okay. Engine stop." That composure under pressure defined the mission.

But there's another presence in this story — quieter, reflective, almost reluctant to be mythologised. Neil Armstrong, by nature reserved and semi-reclusive in later life, reinforces something that rarely makes it into public speeches: sheer amazement. He speaks softly about the lunar surface. Not theatrically. Not dramatically. Simply, honestly.

The horizon felt closer than expected, he said, because the Moon is smaller. The sky was completely black — even with the Sun glaring down. The surface wasn't smooth and poetic as imagined in paintings; it was textured, sharp, ancient. The regolith behaved almost like powdery snow mixed with ash. And yet, despite the training, the simulations, the rehearsals — nothing quite prepared him for the reality of stepping onto another world.

When pressed He admits something profound: being chosen as the first was an honour that weighed heavily. The decision had been NASA's, based on crew roles and procedures, but the historical symbolism was undeniable. Armstrong understood that the first step would echo beyond engineering or politics. It would belong to humanity. There's no bravado in his recollection. Only a kind of quiet wonder.

Buzz detailed the physical strain. The suits were pressurised to about 3.7 psi, making every movement deliberate. Heart rates exceeded 150 beats per minute during the moonwalk. This was not a stroll in low gravity; it was demanding work. Before exploration began, Armstrong collected the contingency sample — a small bag of lunar soil gathered immediately in case they had to abort. Insurance for history.

They deployed experiments that still function today. The Laser Ranging Retroreflector remains in place, allowing scientists to measure the Moon's recession from Earth — about 3.8 centimetres per year. The Passive Seismic Experiment detected moonquakes, proving the Moon was not entirely geologically dead.

Inside the cabin, once helmets were removed, the dust carried a faint smell — like spent gunpowder. It clung stubbornly to suits and equipment. We spoke of Michael Collins, orbiting alone in Columbia. As I sat there Buzz took a quick call from him. Without his flawless command module operations, there was no return. Collins described himself as "not lonely," but responsible. It was a trio, not a duo, that completed the mission.

After splashdown on July 24, 1969, the crew entered 21 days of quarantine in a Mobile Quarantine Facility — a converted Airstream trailer. NASA could not rule out lunar microbes. Caution ruled over celebration.

The Saturn V that launched them stood 110 metres tall and generated 7.5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. Controlled violence. Precision engineering. More than 400,000 people worked across the United States to make it happen. President Kennedy's 1961 challenge — to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth before the decade was out — had been met.

But sitting there listening, what stayed with me most was not rivalry, nor Cold War urgency, nor even technological triumph. It was awe! Buzz's measured confidence shows, Neil's quiet astonishment is legendary. Two different temperaments united by a moment when human beings crossed a threshold no species had crossed before. The footprints remain there still, undisturbed in silent dust. And in that quiet living room, the Moon did not feel distant at all.

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'ASTRO DAVE' RENEKE - A Personal Perspective

His extensive background includes teaching astronomy at the college level, being a featured speaker at astronomy conventions across Australia, and contributing as a science correspondent for both ABC and commercial radio stations. David's weekly radio interviews, reaching around 3 million listeners, cover the latest developments in astronomy and space exploration.

As a media personality, David's presence extends to regional, national, and international TV, with appearances on prominent platforms such as Good Morning America, American MSNBC news, the BBC, and Sky News in Australia. His own radio program has earned him major Australasian awards for outstanding service.

David is recognized for his engaging and unique style of presenting astronomy and space discovery, having entertained and educated large audiences throughout Australia. In addition to his presentations, he produces educational materials for beginners and runs a popular radio program in Hastings, NSW, with a substantial following and multiple awards for his radio presentations.

In 2004, David initiated the 'Astronomy Outreach' program, touring primary and secondary schools in NSW to provide an interactive astronomy and space education experience. Sponsored by Tasco Australia, Austar, and Discovery Science channel, the program donated telescopes and grants to schools during a special tour in 2009, contributing to the promotion of astronomy education in Australia. David Reneke, a highly regarded Australian amateur astronomer and lecturer with over 50 years of experience, has established himself as a prominent figure in the field of astronomy. With affiliations to leading global astronomical institutions,

David serves as the Editor for Australia's Astro-Space News Magazine and has previously held key editorial roles with Sky & Space Magazine and Australasian Science magazine. 

Heard on over 50 stations weekly