In 2009 the world will celebrate the International Year of Astronomy to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Galileo's use of a telescope to study the night sky. 2009 is also the anniversary of many other important dates in the history of science, such as the publishing of Kepler's Astronomia Nova, Huygens' Systema Saturnium, and the first moon landing.

For this celebration astronomers around the world will be inviting people like you, and your friends and family, to look up in wonder at the night sky, and to seek out answers to some of life's biggest questions.

This website will provide everything you need to know about what is happening in the International Year of Astronomy 2009 in the UK, making the Universe yours to discover!

The Seven Sisters of the Pleaides, also known as M45, photographed by Rick Pecce from Essex, who used a four-inch refractor at f/5, an SBIG XM2000 CCD camera with a colour filterwheel and a total exposure time of 185 minutes. The Pleiades (known as 'Subaru' in Japan) are a young open cluster of newly-formed stars, about 100 million years old. They are located 399 light years from Earth, and there is actually more than seven stars; the nine brightest are named after the Seven Sisters of Greek mythology, along with their parents Atlas and Pleione. In total there are over 1,000 stars within the Pleiades, and some observers have claimed to have seen as many as 14 stars with the naked eye. The blue nebulosity is a reflection nebula, produced by dust clouds through which the Pleiades are passing. High in the sky in Taurus during autumn and winter, the Pleiades are an unmissable sight.

Watch the new IYA2009 trailer!