October 4, 1957. A small object had people around the globe looking excitedly - or anxiously - up at the sky. Satellites are now such a fact of life, it's hard to imagine the effect of the first one. In sending up Sputnik, the USSR had thrown down the gauntlet for the Cold War space race.

The Sun as you've never before seen it. A twilight aurora, lunar landscapes, and galaxies far far away. There was all that and more in the Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2016 exhibition at the Royal Observatory Greenwich.

Messier's catalog of nebulous objects begins with M1 the Crab Nebula. In 18th-century telescopes it was just a fuzzy patch, yet imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope, it's fascinating and intricate. But what is it? Why is it called the Crab Nebula? And what amazing secret does it hide?

Easter Island and a distant dwarf planet – what do they have in common? The answer is Makemake – the creator god in the Rapa Nui mythology of Easter Island. How did his name come to be given to a small frozen body seven billion kilometers (four billion miles) from the Sun?

We walked on the Moon. Rovers explore Mars. The International Space Station has been continuously inhabited since 2000. We're in contact with the world and the cosmos via satellite. We take it for granted, but there had to be a first time for everything. How many of these space firsts do you know?

The Crab Nebula is M1 and the Andromeda Galaxy is M31. Over a hundred deep-sky objects with "M" numbers are listed in the Messier Catalogue. Charles Messier, 18th-century comet hunter, is known today less for his comets and more for his catalog of things that aren't comets.

The Moon has been the object of awe and fascination since our humanoid ancestors first looked up into the sky. Test your knowledge about Moon and maybe find out some interesting new facts about it.

Imagine yourself under a dark autumn or winter northern hemisphere sky. You're looking towards the “W” of Cassiopeia, and notice a hazy patch between Cassiopeia and the constellation Andromeda. That is the Andromeda Galaxy (M31). Here are some fascinating facts about this stunning object.

Astronomy is an ancient science, and today a popular profession and pastime. But what attracts people to astronomy? What's special about it? Here are some answers to this question in the words of astronomers through the ages.

Since prehistoric times people have known the Sun, the Moon and five planets. The rest of the Solar System had to await discovery by people with telescopes. How many of the discoverers can you identify?