Month: December 2014

Equipment

Something nice for the wall

31 December 2014 Steve Ringwood

Do you feel that your current decor is a little drab? If so, give you room an out-of-this-world makeover with an astronomically-themed wallpaper mural!

News

Get ready for Comet Lovejoy!

29 December 2014 Ade Ashford

C/2014 Q2, better known as Comet Lovejoy, is brightening fast and rapidly heading into the Northern Hemisphere sky. Here’s our quick guide to viewing what will hopefully be the first naked-eye comet of 2015.

News

NASA spacecraft to get bonus time studying Mercury

29 December 2014 Stephen Clark

Running low on fuel after completing the first global survey of Mercury, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft could get an extra month of time at the solar system’s innermost planet thanks to a crafty new way of using helium gas to temporarily forestall the mission’s end next year.

News

Scientific riches await Philae comet lander, if it wakes up

25 December 2014 Stephen Clark

Optimistic Europe’s hibernating Philae comet lander can be revived, mission controllers plan to try and contact the spacecraft as soon as January as the search narrows for the probe’s final resting place — a site within arm’s reach of pristine ice and organic matter ripe for analysis if the mission gets a new lease on life.

Picture This

Hubble sees the beautiful side of galaxy IC 335

25 December 2014 Astronomy Now

Located in the Fornax Galaxy Cluster some 60 million light-years from Earth, IC 335 is an edge-on lenticular system — an intermediate state in galaxy morphological classification schemes between true spiral and elliptical galaxies.

News

Sun sizzles in high-energy X-rays

23 December 2014 Astronomy Now

Designed to study black holes, supernova remnants and other extreme objects beyond our Solar System, NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) has captured the most sensitive portrait of the Sun ever taken in high-energy X-rays.