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News Archive
2012: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Mars formed within two to four million years of the dawn of the Solar System, much faster than the Earth which took between 50 and 100 million years to reach its final size, which could explain why Mars is so small, say scientists reporting their discovery in the journal Nature.
New analysis of Apollo samples find that the Moon's interior may contain 100 times more water than earlier measurements suggested, comparable to the water content of magma in Earth's upper mantle, which has implications for the giant impact theory that is currently accepted to describe its formation.
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has found evidence for tiny green crystals of olivine raining down onto a forming star from the clouds of dust and gas swirling around it.
A unique system of two interacting white dwarf stars stripped down to their helium layers has been exposed thanks to a line-of-sight eclipse of the stars as seen from Earth.
NASA picks robotic asteroid voyager for liftoff in 2016
Touting its ability to lay the groundwork for future human voyages, NASA officials announced Wednesday a robotic probe named OSIRIS-REx will launch to an asteroid in 2016 and return up to four pounds of rock and dust to Earth seven years later.
After two years of analysing images and data from gamma-ray burst (GRB) 090429B, astronomers estimate that its light began travelling on its journey just 520 million years after the Universe began.
NASA closes book on Spirit rover's historic mission
NASA's immobilized, crippled Spirit rover likely succumbed to cold temperatures during the last Martian winter, and officials will cease attempts to regain contact with the intrepid robot this week, the agency announced Tuesday.
Supermassive black holes located in the hearts of galaxies are spinning faster than they ever have before, perhaps as a result of recent merging events, report Alejo Martinez-Sansigre of the University of Portsmouth and Steve Rawlings of the University of Oxford.
A network of forty-two 6.1-metre radio dishes run by the SETI Institute and the University of California, Berkeley was placed into ‘hibernation’ in April and staff laid off as funding to maintain its operation dried up. The media proclaimed the end of SETI, but a new survey of planets discovered by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft is showing that there is life beyond the Allen Telescope Array.
One-in-three Kepler planets reside in solar systems
More than 1,200 planet candidates were identified in Kepler's first four months of data collection, 408 of which reside in systems with two or more planetary siblings, but their configuration is much different to our own Solar System, say scientists working on the data.
Combining ground- and space-based observations of Comet Hartley-2 reveal that although the overall composition of the comet remains consistent, its core is made up from a patchwork of at least two different types of ices.
Drifting through space far from any star, a new class of free-floating Jupiter-sized planets have been discovered that could have been ejected from growing planetary systems.
The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer 2 (AMS) was installed on the International Space Station today. It will search for elusive dark matter and anti-matter particles, as well as monitor the cosmic ray environment. AN's Emily Baldwin reports.
AN's Emily Baldwin takes you behind the scenes at the Kennedy Space Center, from inside the Orbiter Processing Facility to see space shuttle orbiter Atlantis being prepared for her final flight, to the Vehicle Assembly Building where it will be mated with the external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters before heading to the launch pad.
AN's equipment consultant Nick Howes reports from NEAF (North East Astronomy Forum) in the town of Suffern, New York, in a six-page exclusive feature in our June issue, but here's a visual taste of some of the products which caught his eye.
Nearly a decade after NASA's Galileo mission concluded, scientists analysing its data have found the first direct evidence of its kind for Jupiter's volcanic moon Io possessing a global magma ocean underneath its crust.
New computer simulations show that gravitational interactions between two planets can explain why a handful of peculiar extrasolar planets are orbiting in the opposite direction to the spin of their host star.
The Crab Nebula has erupted in an enormous flare five times more powerful than its previous outbursts and 30 times more energetic than its normal gamma-ray output, shaking the idea that it is a constant source of high energy radiation.
The massive nitrogen atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan could be the result of a series of giant impact events four billion years ago, according to new research conducted by scientists based in Japan.
Einstein's relativity theory survives test in space
NASA released results Wednesday from a revolutionary satellite that probed Einstein's general theory of relativity, confirming the Earth's gravity and rotation warp space and time as predicted.
Scientists led by Anze Slosar, a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory working with the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS), have completed the largest three-dimensional map of the distant Universe after making observations of light emitted from 14,000 quasars passing through clouds of interstellar gas. The map is the first glimpse into what the Universe looked like 11 billion years ago.
Last year’s brightening and outbursting of 112 kilometre-wide asteroid Scheila was likely sparked by a collision with a much smaller asteroid, say astronomers studying data from NASA’s Swift and Hubble space telescopes.
2010 Yearbook Our latest 132-page Astronomy Now special edition is an extravaganza of astronomy for the year ahead, with a complete 30-page guide to observing the planets, moon, meteor showers, two solar eclipses, and the deep sky in 2010. U.K. STORE E.U. STORE U.S. & WORLDWIDE STORE
Take the tour! A 100-page special edition from the creators of Astronomy Now magazine, The Grand Tour of the Universe takes readers from one end of the Universe to the other and, in doing so, asks the question "just how big is the Universe?" U.K. STORE E.U. STORE U.S. & WORLDWIDE STORE Infinity Rising This special publication features the photography of British astro-imager Nik Szymanek and covers a range of photographic methods from basic to advanced. Beautiful pictures of the night sky can be obtained with a simple camera and tripod before tackling more difficult projects, such as guided astrophotography through the telescope and CCD imaging. U.K. STORE E.U. STORE U.S. & WORLDWIDE STORE Guide to the Constellations
Astronomy Now presents
this 100-page, full-colour guide to the 68 constellations visible from the British
Isles by Neil Bone, the respected amateur astronomer and writer. U.K. STORE E.U. STORE U.S. & WORLDWIDE STORE Exploring Mars Astronomy Now is pleased to announce the publication of Exploring Mars. The very best images of Mars taken by orbiting spacecraft and NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers fill up the 98 glossy pages of this special edition! U.K. STORE E.U. STORE U.S. & WORLDWIDE STORE
Our latest 132-page Astronomy Now special edition is an extravaganza of astronomy for the year ahead, with a complete 30-page guide to observing the planets, moon, meteor showers, two solar eclipses, and the deep sky in 2010.
A 100-page special edition from the creators of Astronomy Now magazine, The Grand Tour of the Universe takes readers from one end of the Universe to the other and, in doing so, asks the question "just how big is the Universe?"
This special publication features the photography of British astro-imager Nik Szymanek and covers a range of photographic methods from basic to advanced. Beautiful pictures of the night sky can be obtained with a simple camera and tripod before tackling more difficult projects, such as guided astrophotography through the telescope and CCD imaging.
Astronomy Now presents
this 100-page, full-colour guide to the 68 constellations visible from the British
Isles by Neil Bone, the respected amateur astronomer and writer.
Astronomy Now is pleased to announce the publication of Exploring Mars. The very best images of Mars taken by orbiting spacecraft and NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers fill up the 98 glossy pages of this special edition!