More heat accumulated in the ocean in 2025 than in any year since modern measurements began, an internationally recognised climate scientist from New Zealand, Dr Kevin Trenberth, says.

The western horizon from my Middlemarch place has improved markedly of late.

People have always looked up at the night sky and wondered. And we should keep on doing it, Jennifer Boland tells Rebecca Fox.

Over the past week, the media have been reporting on a new discovery — that 450,000 years ago, Neanderthals were generating fire, far earlier than previously known.

As this is the final Skywatch column for the year, it feels like the right moment to look back rather than up — though, of course, I’ve done plenty of both.

The monument is not the city’s only reminder of William Cargill, Sean Brosnahan writes.

Out in Middlemarch last week, under what might generously be called a luminous sky — the full moon hanging over the Strath Taieri like an over-keen floodlight — I turned my telescope toward Orion.