Thousands of years ago a comet broke up. A remnant still visits Earth, adding to the debris stream fuelling the annual Taurid meteor shower. The shower peaks near Halloween and may produce brilliant meteors – its nickname is 'Halloween Fireballs'. But is there something deadly in the Beta Taurids?

Crux is the smallest of the 88 constellations, but it punches above its weight. As Polaris does in the northern hemisphere, in the southern hemisphere the Southern Cross serves as a navigation aid. It's part of the flags of five nations, and its stars also feature widely in traditional lore.

Would you like to visit another planet? How about Mars or Venus? Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin wants to see astronauts on Mars, but could Venus be a better choice?

Saturn: magnificent rings, a planet-sized moon, and dozens of smaller moons. Three spacecraft had flown by before Cassini-Huygens was launched in 1997. But this mission wouldn't just fly by and snap some photos. It was going to get up close and personal.

The Cassini Mission to Saturn is one of NASA's best known undertakings. For over fourteen years it sent images and data back from the ringed planet and its moons. But who was the Cassini that gave his name to the spacecraft?

Try your hand at this quiz about the summer sky, space exploration, anniversaries and astronomical events. What are some of the highlights of the time between the June solstice and the harvest festival of Lammas on August 1st?

Christopher Wren designed the Greenwich Royal Observatory in 1675. Two centuries later the Prime Meridian of the world, 0 degrees of longitude, was established there. Besides its historical interest, it's a leader in bringing astronomy to the public, in part via the Peter Harrison Planetarium.

Total solar eclipse: the Sun a black circle framed by an ethereal corona. Dark enough to see stars, and for birds to go to sleep – yet an eerie darkness unlike night. The Sun can also be eclipsed on other Solar System planets as long as they have moons. But what would we see from our own Moon?

The Summer Triangle is a stellar treat for northern mid-latitudes summer sky watchers. It graces the sky all night long in summer, and its three bright stars are visible even in urban areas. Under dark skies you can also see the Milky Way within the asterism.

Three days orbiting Earth strapped into a space capsule so primitive that no one could land in it. So how did the cosmonaut get home? That's part of the story of the first woman in space, on a solo flight twenty years before NASA sent Sally Ride into orbit on a Space Shuttle.