You've come to the right place to download the Sky & Telescope index.

The editors of Sky & Telescope have a great collective memory, but individually we're often a little fuzzy on the details. One of us will say, “I know we published a great article on that recently,” and then after some research we’ll discover that the article in question was written 15 years ago. Such are the hazards of working for decades at one of the world’s best astronomy magazines!

We know we’re not the only ones who need a little guidance tracking down coverage of a history-making celestial event or finding the latest article about astronomy basics such as observing with computers. To help us (and you) in such cases, we have compiled a unified table of contents to all the articles we published from the first issue in November 1941 — after The Sky merged with The Telescope — through April 2024. We're making it available in two forms:

To find articles in our archives, browse our online store for individual back issues.

Comments


Image of Frank Reed

Frank Reed

February 4, 2014 at 12:01 pm

Thank you. This is extremely useful! ..... There is a small issue with the text version. It appears that the file was saved with the standard text-encoding which loses some characters (if the line at 2013 6 79 shows missing characters in the author's name, Pérez, José Joaquín, then there is a problem; if not, it's been fixed). Select "Save As..." and "Unicode Text" in Excel to fix this.

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Terry Trees

February 4, 2014 at 3:40 pm

You have corrected the only complaint I had about this excellent product. Thank you.

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3672Stevedberg

June 23, 2019 at 11:53 am

As I was placing blank rows between each year in the series, I discovered that January, 2007 is missing from the downloaded text file and, not surprisingly, from my subsequent transfer into Excel 2016.

Also, I had to use the text file and make the transfer because Excel could not open the linked Excel file.

This was clearly a large amount of work and I'm going to use it immediately for a search that hasn't been successful with other S&T indices.

Thanks for sharing this index.

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Monica Young

June 25, 2019 at 5:01 pm

Thank you for this note, Steve. There was a formatting issue with the text file, which we fixed. We've also now made three file formats available, including a newer XLSX file which you should be able to work with more easily.

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Terry Trees

February 4, 2014 at 3:40 pm

You have corrected the only complaint I had about this excellent product. Thank you.

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Frank Reed

February 4, 2014 at 9:09 pm

In case anyone's puzzled, the text-encoding problem I mentioned earlier today has been fixed.

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Image of Faye Kane, girl brain

Faye Kane, girl brain

February 5, 2014 at 9:51 am

==-
It freaked me out when I looked at "25 years ago in S&T" and saw the cover of an issue I had in high school. I dropped the magazine on the floor. That was spooky.

Now, in four years, I'll recognize issues in "S&T 50 years ago". That's scary. So is seeing pictures of my S&T editor-friends (the only friends I had in high school), and they turned into OLD MEN. Seeing Dennis made me particularly sad, as I had a crush on him soooo long ago.

I started to read the TOC from '69, but I couldn't do it. Sure, it was pleasant to remember when Jupiter had 12 moons, Saturn had six rings, and there were 9 planets. I felt secure, safe. God was in his heaven, and all's right with the world.

But in the TOC, seeing the state of astronomy then, the small-aperture "giant" telescopes on mountains, the common things we didn't know, like pulsars and grav lenses... Too much time has passed, and that scares me too.

But what scares me to death is that in my whole life, from when I was a baby girl to when I'm an old lady in my last hospital bed, the galaxy I'm in, which has wound itself into a tight spiral, will have rotated only 300 milliarcseconds.

Where will I be in a quarter-billion years, when it rotates around to here again?

What are you, black Monolith? What are WE? Why did you make us? Where is this place, this 14 billion light-year wide bubble? What's outside it... besides YOU?

But it only stands, as it always has, unmoving and mute — its origin and purpose, still, a TOTAL mystery.

faye kane ♀ girl brain

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Mike W. Herberich

February 7, 2014 at 11:11 am

Dear Faye, thank you for that account of yours of -basically- what time (and space, and space-time) is and why it sort of scares us all, in a way. Let me grab this occasion to stress, likewise, how absolutely marvelous and wonderful it is, at the same time. Complete and utter awe towards actually everything in the universe may be perceived as intimidating, but at the same time as absolutely elevating and breathtakingly ravishing ... at least to me (and, may I say, I am not religious)! It might be that, the less we understand of it, the more we're intimidated by it, but not necessarily so, or not in all cases. I could enumerate knowledge of mine that did not take away from the awe and admiration, but rather add to it. All in all, if you are more sad than happy, Faye, I would like to take this chance and try to encourage you to see the bright side (of almost anything) by means of this little paragraph. Lastly, it is our own judgement whether we deem something bad, sad or negative, or the opposite ... or, as is probably closest to the truth (if that exists at all), to find our way through the middle of it somewhere, somehow and somewhen.

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Richard L. Davis

February 8, 2014 at 4:13 pm

We just saw the play "Silent Sky" and my wife is interested in more information about Henrietta Leavitt. I saw and article about her, but I can't remember when. How do I find it?

Thanks. rld. [email protected].

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Benny

August 14, 2023 at 1:06 pm

Hi,

There is a recently published article about her in Dec 2021 issue if this is not too late for you.

Best,

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Richard-Garcia

April 3, 2017 at 10:03 pm

Trying to track down the S&T article regarding the Old Woman Meteorite?

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Steven J-Cooper

August 12, 2019 at 9:09 am

Hi S&T,
Just registered for digital edition, where do I find the download page or is it emailed to me.

Steve .UK

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Monica Young

August 12, 2019 at 10:41 am

Hi Steven, please email [email protected] if you need help accessing the digital edition of Sky & Telescope.

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xthestreams

December 9, 2020 at 12:52 am

Thanks Monica - as a recent new subscriber I was wondering how I get access to the older digital back issues?

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Monica Young

December 10, 2020 at 11:55 am

Thanks for the question! I'll look into this and get back to you.

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BobW

September 9, 2019 at 11:20 pm

A little while ago I bought your CD of the complete output of "The Telescope". (I started reading S&T a lot closer to the time when The Telescope was folded into S&T than to the present... And my wife and I have had our current subscription since I gave it to her as a gift when we got married in 1962.)

I just now finally got a chance to try the CD. The "The Telescope" CD keeps telling me that it needs Adobe Flash. I installed the latest version of Flash and that made no change. What should I do?

(Possibly relevant: My usual PDF reader is Foxit: I gave up years ago on Acrobat because of its bugs and its bloat. But thinking that might have something to do with it, I changed the default PDF reader to Acrobat, thinking their product Flash might be happier. No change. I can't think of anything else that is unusually set up on this machine. Browser is Firefox, mail program Thunderbird.)
Thanks, Bob Wilson

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John-Waters

September 28, 2019 at 7:23 am

Your web site no longer seems to have access to current and previous digital issues via Zinio. Are you planning to restore that? Please reply to my email. [email protected]

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Monica Young

October 1, 2019 at 9:46 am

That's right, we have changed our digital issue provider: We are back to using Nxtbook Media rather than Zinio. Your subscription is still valid, and you can go to http://www.nxtbook.com/fx/mags/lastissue.php?mp=/nxtbooks/newtrack/skytelescope to access the latest issue. You'll need your email address to log back in. If you experience any problems accessing the digital issue, please email [email protected].

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Michael-Tomb

October 10, 2019 at 12:08 pm

Very cool. My own subscriptions (there were gaps early on when I couldn't afford S&T) go back 50 years and I just encountered a very young fan who emphatically tells me that she intends to become an astrophysicist. I'll use this to help choose a few back issues from my stacks to share with her on the creation of the universe, black holes, dark energy, stellar formation and a lot of other good stuff.

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Rich

February 1, 2021 at 2:46 pm

The index is a great resource, but there are some interesting typos.

1). There are some rows without the year. I'm providing one row of context before and after the rows with missing years and a star "*" where the year is missing
2012;5;76;Gallery;M45, the Pleiades;Salman, Dean;;;;;;;
*;5;77;Gallery;Mars with North Polar Cap and blue cloud;;;;;;;;
2012;5;77;Gallery;Auroral Arc over Sweden;Hwang, Allen;;;;;;;
----------------
2014;3;60;S&T Test Report;iOptron's New ZEQ25GT Mount;di Cicco, Dennis;;;;;;;
*;3;64;New Product Showcase;Sky & Telescope's Mars Globe;;;;;;;;
*;3;64;New Product Showcase;JMI's MOTOFOCUS for William Optics DDG Focusers;;;;;;;;
*;3;64;New Product Showcase;The Proper Care of Optics, by SPIE Publishing;;;;;;;;
2014;3;66;Telescope Workshop;The Jones Medial Refractor;Seronik, Gary;;;;;;;
----------------
2014;4;18;Feature;ISON's Day in the Sun;Battams, Karl;;;;;;;
*;4;24;Photo Contest;First Place: Comet ISON's Motion Frozen;Lodriguss, Jerry;;;;;;;
*;4;25;Photo Contest;Second Place: Comet ISON near NGC 3429;Ferguson, Scott;;;;;;;
*;4;25;Photo Contest;Third Place: Comet ISON Tracked, Stars Trailed;Sandbank, Bob;;;;;;;
2014;4;26;Feature;Mystery in the Milky Way;Carlisle, Camille M.;;;;;;;
----------------
2014;4;52;Celestial Calendar;Action at Jupiter;MacRobert, Alan M.;;;;;;;
*;4;52;Celestial Calendar;Lyrid Meteors;MacRobert, Alan M.;;;;;;;
2014;4;54;Exploring the Moon;History of the Moon;Wood, Charles A.;;;;;;;

2). There is one row with an ancient year (206) with a star to highlight it.
2016;4;50;Celestial Calendar;Asteroid Occultations;MacRobert, Alan;;;;;;;
*206;4;51;Celestial Calendar;Daily Events at Jupiter;MacRobert, Alan;;;;;;;
2016;4;51;Celestial Calendar;Phenomena of Jupiter's Moons, April 2016;MacRobert, Alan;;;;;;;

3). There is a row with a missing page number (again I used a star for the missing page).
2020;5;43;Binocular Highlight;A Spindle in the Sextant;Wedel, Mathew;;;;;;;
2020;5;*;Planetary Almanac;Planetary Almanac May 2020;;;;;;;;
2020;5;45;Under the Stars;Fabled Females and a First Transit;Schaaf, Fred;;;;;;;

4). There are 2 rows with extremely large page numbers (for years where the each issue started with page 1). I used a star to highlight the large page numbers.
A).
1993;1;120;Gallery;Gallery;;;;;;;;
1993;1;*676;Stars & Planets;Sparkling Sights of Frosty Nights;;;;;;;;
1993;2;4;Focal Point;We Stargazers;Piechowski, Otto Rushe;;;;;;;
[It's possible that this might be on page 67 (not 676)]. That would put it with the other "Stars & Planets" pages.
B).
1995;8;111;Gallery;Galaxy M 104 in Virgo;Ware, Jason;;;;;;;
1995;8;*876;Telescope Making;The Double-Pass Knife-edge Test;Holleran, Robert T.;;;;;;;
1995;9;6;Focal Point;Discovery: Leading the Revolution;Huntress, Wesley T. Jr.;;;;;;;
[It's possible that this might be on page 87 (not 876)]. That would fit in with the usual place for "Telescope Making" (after "Celestial Calendar").

5). There are 3 rows with a space in front of the author name (or in 1 case a space as Author 2). This throws off the sort. Again, I used a star to show where the space is.
2019;2;16;Feature;What Came Before the Big Bang?;*Flam, Faye;;;;;;;
----------------
2010;9;26;Feature;The Mysterious Lady on the Moon;*Launay, Françoise;Sheehan, William;;;;;;
----------------
2019;9;84;Focal Point;No More Worlds to Conquer?;Covington, Michael A.;*;;;;;;

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Benny

August 14, 2023 at 1:10 pm

Hi Rich,
It seemed that you have taken great effort to comb the index. Hopefully the editors can take a look and correct the typos.

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Alberto-Romero

September 25, 2021 at 3:28 am

Hi there.
What about the June 2006 articles ...?
None appear in both files.

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Benny

August 14, 2023 at 1:34 pm

Dear S&T editors,

Thank you very much for the great effort to make this useful list! I have been the reader and subscriber of S&T since 2003 during the great perihelic apparition of Mars. In addition to astronomy itself, reading this magazine is also a great way to learn English idioms for non-native speakers like me.

Do you mind if I make a comment? Sometimes the title of the article cannot reflect its content clearly. For example, in Jan 2023 issue, the article titled “The Neverending Survey” is a great article about Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). However, by searching the title itself, which is the only content-related entry in the index, those readers interested in this topic will definitely miss it. For the academic journal index, we can also search the abstract or key words. If the effort is not extremely daunting, is it possible for you to include some key words for those feature articles, at least for the recent 10-20 years’ issues?

Thank you.

Best,
Benny

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Monica Young

August 14, 2023 at 3:30 pm

Hi Benny, thanks for your comment! We, the editors of S&T, agree that keywords would enhance the index. Unfortunately, we simply don't have the bandwidth to take on such a task. To cover just 10 years would involve scanning some 500 feature articles for keywords, and doing so for the entire index would be a truly monumental task!

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Benny

August 15, 2023 at 12:18 pm

Hi Monica,

Thank you for your prompt reply! I completely understand.

Best

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