March 2015 – Page 6 – Astronomy Now

New dwarf galaxies discovered in orbit around the Milky Way

11 March 2015 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have discovered a ‘treasure trove’ of rare dwarf satellite galaxies orbiting our own Milky Way. The closest is about 95,000 light-years away, while the most distant is more than a million light-years away.

Planets Mars and Uranus meet in the evening sky

11 March 2015 Ade Ashford

Exactly a week after its close encounter with dazzling Venus, outer planet Uranus lies close to Mars on the evening of Wednesday, March 11th — but you’ll need to time your observation carefully in the dusk twilight twilight to ensure success.

Mysterious phenomena in a gigantic galaxy-cluster collision

10 March 2015 Astronomy Now

Researchers using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have produced the most detailed image yet of an ongoing collision of galaxy clusters in a region called Abell 2256, revealing that unexpected processes are at work in such encounters.

Venus revealed in high-resolution radar images from Earth

10 March 2015 Astronomy Now

By combining the powerful radar transmitter of the Arecibo Observatory and the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) — the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope — astronomers were able to penetrate the visually opaque atmospheric veil of Venus to make remarkably detailed images of the surface of the planet without leaving Earth.

Reanalysis of data suggests ‘habitable’ planet GJ 581d really could exist

9 March 2015 Astronomy Now

A report published in Science has dismissed claims made last year that the first super-Earth planet discovered in the habitable zone of a distant star was actually just noise in the data caused by starspots masquerading as planets.

Enormous planet found to be in a quadruple star system

7 March 2015 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have discovered the second known case of a four-star planetary system. The planet was known before and has a mass ten times that of Jupiter, but was thought to have only three parent stars, not four. The findings help researchers understand how multiple star systems can influence the development and fate of planets.

Thermonuclear supernova ejects Galaxy’s fastest star

7 March 2015 Astronomy Now

Astronomers using the 10-metre Keck II and Pan-STARRS1 telescopes on Hawaii have discovered a Milky Way star travelling at a record 2.7 million miles per hour. Propelled by the thermonuclear detonation of a massive white dwarf companion, this hypervelocity star will escape the gravity of our Galaxy.

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft becomes the first to orbit a dwarf planet

6 March 2015 Astronomy Now

Since its discovery in 1801, Ceres was known as a planet, then an asteroid and later a dwarf planet. Now, after a journey of 3.1 billion miles (4.9 billion kilometres) and 7.5 years, NASA/s Dawn spacecraft calls Ceres home.

The 2015 Arctic total solar eclipse

6 March 2015 Astronomy Now

On 20 March the shadow of the Moon will race across the North Atlantic Ocean at supersonic speed, narrowly skirting the south-eastern corner of Iceland and making landfall at only two places – the Faroe Islands and the Svalbard archipelago. A partial eclipse will be visible across the UK and Europe.

Mars lost an ocean’s worth of water

6 March 2015 Astronomy Now

NASA scientists have determined that a primitive ocean occupying almost half of Mars’ northern hemisphere once held more water than Earth’s Arctic Ocean and that the Red Planet has lost 87% of that water to space.