PlanetsExplainer
The eclipses India will see through 2035, city by city
India’s next total lunar eclipse falls on New Year’s Eve 2028. Its next total solar eclipse arrives in 2034, close to sunset, and only the far north gets it.
All stories
29 stories on space and science, newest first. Browse by section or search the archive.
November 2026
ExplorationAnalysis
Why India is building a spaceport 640 kilometers south of its first
Sriharikota is well placed for reaching geostationary orbit. For polar orbits, a neighbor is in the way. The arithmetic shows why a small rocket needs a different pad.
PlanetsExplainer
The Leonids peak just before dawn on 18 November, and India has a dark sky for it
The half Moon sets around midnight, the radiant climbs high, and the predicted peak lands in the last dark hour before dawn. Here is when to look from your city, and an honest estimate of what you will see.
PlanetsExplainer
Which planets you can see from India this winter, and when to look
This evening only Saturn is up. The real gathering is before sunrise, when Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Mercury share the sky. By February, Jupiter and Mars move into the evening at their brightest of the season.
PlanetsExplainer
The full moon of 24 November is big. The one on Christmas Eve is bigger
November’s full moon rises around sunset across India on Kartik Purnima. By one common definition it is a supermoon and by another it just misses. We measured both, and the December full moon that beats it.
PlanetsExplainer
The solar eclipse of 2 August 2027 from India: a late-afternoon partial eclipse, city by city
One of the century’s longest total eclipses crosses Egypt that afternoon. India sees only a partial eclipse, deepest at the southern tip and missing entirely in the far north-east. We calculated what each city gets.
CosmosExplainer
One light year is about 9.46 lakh crore kilometres. Here is how far that really is
A light year is a distance, not a time. We worked out how long it would take to travel one by train, by plane and by spacecraft, and how far India’s own missions are in light-time.
ExplorationExplainer
Gaganyaan in November 2026: what has flown, what has not, and when India’s astronauts might launch
No launch date has been announced yet. Here is where India’s human spaceflight programme stands, who the astronauts are, what the first flights will do, and why the date keeps moving.
CosmosExplainer
How old is the universe? 13.8 billion years, and three ways we know
The number comes from running the expansion of space backwards. We did that calculation ourselves, then checked it against the oldest stars, a clock that no expansion measurement can touch.
