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Stage 1 of 4

Looking up

What the Moon is doing, what a nebula and a constellation are, and whether the pictures are real.

Jump to a section · 3 sections
A waxing gibbous Moon and a field of stars over a dark moorland horizon.

Most people arrive here holding a question, not a shopping list: what phase is that, or is that photograph real. These pages answer those one at a time, in plain English, with the sources named. It's free to read. Some guides also link to relevant prints or tools for readers who want to keep exploring a subject or mark a particular night.

Visit the Moon as a 40x50 cm canvas on a sage-grey bedroom wall above an upholstered headboard

Find your question

PageWhat it answers
The eight phases of the MoonAll eight phases in sequence over roughly 29.5 days
Every full moon name and dateEach full moon of 2026 and 2027 with its name and London time
Meteor showers and the MoonEight main showers, their peaks, and how near each falls to a full moon
The next solar eclipse in the UKThe partial eclipse of 2 August 2027, and every UK eclipse to 2030
The planets in orderMercury to Neptune, with NASA sizes and distances
Star names and constellationsWho approves a star name, and the bright named stars from the UK
What a constellation isThe 88 official constellations and their boundaries
Zodiac signs and constellationsWhy the Sun crosses thirteen zodiac constellations, and how the dates drifted
What a nebula isEmission, reflection, dark and planetary nebulae
The life cycle of a starHow the mass a star starts with shapes its ending
What causes the auroraHow the solar wind and the magnetic field light the polar sky
Are photos of nebulae real?Where the colours in telescope pictures come from

The finder guides move from one shape to the next. Orion's Belt, three bright stars in a short row, leads to the rest of Orion in winter. The Plough, seven stars inside Ursa Major, is above Britain every night of the year, and the Polaris and Summer Triangle guides take it from there.

Below the general reading sit two sets of shorter pages: thirteen full-moon pages, one for each named moon, and twelve month pages giving that month's star sign dates and the constellation the Sun is really in.

A bright Perseid meteor crossing a starry sky above a line of dark fir trees.
A Perseid meteor, 11 August 2021. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls.

More looking up guides, in reading order

Next: your own sky

The stage that follows this one is your own sky: One particular night, or one particular photograph. What a star map shows, and what happens to a photo you upload.

Galactic Core as a 40x50 cm canvas on a sage-grey bedroom wall above an upholstered headboard

Written by Craig Fearn, Aphelion Prints. Last updated .