The new Australian-based COSMOS magazine aims, according to its enthusiastic editor, Wilson da Silva, to be "a Vanity Fair or a New Yorker of science – excellent writing and gorgeous illustrations and photography. The kind of thing you'd want to keep."

Da Silva points out that there is a solid audience for pay TV channels such as Discovery and National Geographic and good popular-science books like Bill Bryson's A Brief History of Nearly Everything or Simon Singh's Big Bang. "It's just that people aren't used to looking for that kind of content on the magazine racks."

He admits it's a struggle pitching such a new idea to advertisers, but believes that the audience for COSMOS is based in the "creative class" defined by the American economist Richard Florida.

Some might find COSMOS a little soft – it doesn't veer into the sometimes bitter politics of the scientific world – but the first two issues look lovely and, more to the point, contain very good writing from names such as Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Bruce Sterling and New Zealand-based Kim Griggs.

The first story in issue one was a personal account by Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin (who also sits on the magazine's editorial board) of what it's like to walk on the Moon. After several years in which new publications have been launched to do little more than nail a demographic, it's encouraging to see a venture that sets its sights a bit higher.