The invention of the telescope led to the discovery of worlds beyond our own. This is a journey from the first telescope that looked at Jupiter and its moons, used by Galileo, to some of our current telescopes. What have we discovered since then? When a massive star dies but doesn’t collapse into a black hole, it becomes something almost as strange a neutron star. Dives into the world of these ultra-dense cosmic remnants, where a teaspoon of matter weighs billions of tons, gravity warps space, and magnetic fields can tear atoms apart.

Rising Star takes you on an astronomical journey from our beginnings through the development of astronomy research in South Africa and looks at what the future of astronomy holds for the country. In addition to introducing multi-wavelength and multi-messenger astronomy, it highlights the many remarkable facilities hosted in South Africa, along with some of their latest results.

Black Holes are some of the biggest single-body objects. Take a look at the sizes of the ones we have detected.

The Sun appears as a bright yellow star in our morning sky, but there is more to it. Using special observatories, we can look at the Sun in detail and learn about its violent properties and how it affects space weather. The most powerful objects in the universe blazing beacons powered by supermassive black holes devouring matter at the centres of galaxies. This video explores how quasars form, why they shine brighter than entire galaxies, and how their incredible energy can shape or even destroy the galaxies that created them.