October 2014 – Page 4 – Astronomy Now

Ultra-bright pulsar is an X-ray mystery

13 October 2014 Keith Cooper

Blinding bursts of X-rays are coming from a supercharged pulsar lying in a galaxy 10 million light years away, more powerful than any pulsar ever seen before. The discovery, by NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, challenges what we thought we knew about these extreme objects.

NASA Science Briefing: Comet Siding Spring at Mars

13 October 2014 Astronomy Now

NASA holds a news conference to discuss the close encounter of Comet Siding Spring with Mars. On October 19, 2014, the comet will pass 139,500 kilometers (88,000 miles) from the red planet.

Intelligent alignment: Celestron’s StarSense AutoAlign

10 October 2014 Steve Ringwood

Enter the StarSense AutoAlign: a device that replaces your eye and the often inexact judgement of the glutinous mass behind it.

From Dust to Life

10 October 2014 Astronomy Now

As its subtitle suggests, this book sets out to describe ‘The Origin and Evolution of the Solar System’ as seen through the work of generations of scientists who have contributed to the picture we now have.

Deep sky challenge: Skull Nebula

9 October 2014 Owen Brazell

Discovered by William Herschel in 1785, NGC 246 is a large planetary nebula in a star-poor area of Cetus. It must have been quite challenging for him to find as he often used high powers and small fields when searching for nebulae.

Total eclipse of the Moon across two continents

7 October 2014 Astronomy Now

One of nature’s greatest offerings can be seen on the 8 October when the Moon fully enters the Earth’s dark shadow and experiences a total eclipse.

Telescope grooming kit: Orion six-piece optics cleaning pack

6 October 2014 Steve Ringwood

Cleaning optics should always be approached as a careful, precise, military-style operation; this corralled armoury includes cleaning fluid, dust removal brush, a VariAir 200 compressed air unit, lens tissues and cotton swabs.

The Voyager Mission Experience

4 October 2014 Astronomy Now

New Horizons science team members give personal accounts of their work during the Voyager Neptune encounter and their new assignments on the Pluto mission.

Vixen BT-ED70S-A 70mm binoculars

2 October 2014 Steve Ringwood

These new ED binoculars from Vixen, a particular affinity to their telescopic cousins is by virtue of the freedom of available magnification, since the choice of 31.7mm fitting eyepieces is left to the user.

Candidate landing sites selected for ESA Mars rover

2 October 2014 Stephen Clark

The European Space Agency has announced four candidate landing sites for the ExoMars rover, as a deadline looms to secure full funding for the mission in time for a scheduled launch to the red planet in 2018.