Here’s what you’ll find in the October 2019 issue of Australian Sky & Telescope magazine — on sale now at your local newsagent, or you can subscribe to the print or digital edition.

FEATURES:

• The face of a black hole — A worldwide team of scientists has detected the shadow created by a black hole’s event horizon. We show how they did it.
• Kepler’s conquests — We’ve tallied up all the exoplanet discoveries from the Kepler and follow-on K2 missions. There are a lot of them.
• Pioneers of the invisible universe — Scientists and engineers have worked over the decades to access the X-ray sky, revealing a hot and lively cosmos.
• Opportunity’s end — The Martian rover’s long and spectacular but heartbreaking saga helped rewrite our understanding of the Red Planet.
• Happy birthday, Margaret Burbidge — The astronomer who taught us we are all made of stardust celebrates her 100th birthday this year.
• Astrophotography — All the winning images from the 2019 David Malin Awards.

OBSERVING & EXPLORING:

• Binocular highlight — Seeing stars and clusters, near and far.
• Under the stars — Musings on time with the Milky Way.
• Planets — It’s Mercury’s time in the limelight.
• Meteors — The Orionids are coming!
• Variable stars — Spot VY Sculptoris, a cataclysmic binary.
• Comets — Remembering the mighty Ikeya-Seki.
• Deep sky — Visually track down microquasars.
• Outer limits — Spot the moons of Uranus and Neptune.
• Solar System — Signs of active volcanoes on Venus?

REGULAR FEATURES:

• Imaging — The latest smartphones make nightscape astrophotography a snap.
• Test report — We try out Nikon’s mirrorless Z6 camera.
• Astronomer’s workbench — A massive homebuilt Go To mount.
• Night life — events and activities for astronomy enthusiasts

…and much more.

Click here to subscribe to the print edition, or here to subscribe the digital edition.