Cosmic Learning

Discover fun and easy ways to learn about stars, planets, and the universe with our astronomy resources.

🚀 Learn Astronomy

Learn what stars, planets, galaxies, and constellations are — the building blocks of the universe.

Boost your stargazing with modern apps and tools that guide you through the night sky.

Recommended resources for self-learning astronomy at your own pace.

Aperture, mounts and why binoculars might be your best first buy.

From phone-on-a-tripod to stacked deep-sky images.

How machine learning finds exoplanets — the project we run in workshops.

Which planet is known as the Red Planet?

What galaxy is Earth located in?

Which celestial body has the strongest gravity?

How long does sunlight take to reach Earth?

What is the closest star to Earth after the Sun?

Which of these is a method used to detect exoplanets?

The Perseid meteor shower peaks in which month?

✨ Neutron stars can spin 600 times per second!

Words you’ll hear on observing nights.

Aperture: Diameter of a telescope’s main lens or mirror; determines how much light it gathers.
Astronomical unit (AU): Average Earth–Sun distance, about 150 million km.
Deep-sky object: Anything beyond the solar system that isn’t a single star: nebulae, clusters, galaxies.
Exoplanet: A planet orbiting a star other than the Sun. Over 5,000 confirmed.
Light-year: Distance light travels in one year: about 9.46 trillion km.
Magnitude: Brightness scale where smaller is brighter. The Sun is −27, Sirius −1.5, the faintest naked-eye stars about +6.
Messier object: One of 110 bright deep-sky objects catalogued by Charles Messier (M1–M110).
Nebula: A cloud of gas and dust; stellar nurseries or the remains of dead stars.
Redshift: Stretching of light to longer wavelengths as the universe expands; a proxy for distance.
Transit: When a planet passes in front of its star as seen from Earth, dimming it slightly.
Zenith: The point directly overhead.
ZHR: Zenithal Hourly Rate: meteors per hour a shower would produce under ideal skies.

Guess the answer to this astronomy riddle:

Which constellation looks like a hunter with a belt of 3 stars?