April 2015 – Astronomy Now

Lava lake of Io’s volcano Loki viewed with Large Binocular Telescope

30 April 2015 Astronomy Now

With the first detailed observations through imaging interferometry of a lava lake on Io, Jupiter’s innermost Galilean moon, the Large Binocular Telescope Observatory places itself as the forerunner of the next generation of extremely large telescopes.

New crater names as MESSENGER prepares to crash on Mercury

30 April 2015 Astronomy Now

As five impact craters on Mercury receive names, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft is about to create another, since it has run out of propellant and is predicted to impact on the surface of the planet at 8:26 pm BST today.

New Horizons detects features and possible polar cap on Pluto

30 April 2015 Astronomy Now

For the first time, images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft are revealing bright and dark regions on the surface of faraway Pluto — the primary target of the New Horizons close flyby in mid-July.

Was water abundant in the first billion years of the universe?

29 April 2015 Astronomy Now

Bok globules are dark knots of gas and dust in larger molecular clouds that we see today. New theoretical work shows that similar islands of gas enriched in heavy elements in the early universe could have held as much water vapour as we find in our galaxy today.

A perfect ring

29 April 2015 Keith Cooper

This incredible halo-shaped object is an Einstein Ring, which is an extreme manifestation of Albert Einstein’s General Relativity in action.

Astrophysicists create 3-D master map of the universe

29 April 2015 Astronomy Now

Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada have created a spherical 3-D map of the universe spanning nearly two billion light-years that is the most complete picture of our cosmic neighbourhood to date.

Orion SkyQuest XX12g Dobsonian

28 April 2015 Steve Ringwood

If you fancy drinking up views of the universe from a light-bucket, Orion’s SkyQuest XX12g GOTO Dobsonian will leave you drunk on celestial wonders, writes Steve Ringwood.

New Stars for Old: Stories from the History of Astronomy

28 April 2015 Astronomy Now

Mark Read intersperses historical fact with dramatic fiction in a series of 20 reinterpreted stories about key figures in the history of astronomy, from Aristotle to Newton.

IAU contest enables public to name 47 exoplanets and stars

28 April 2015 Astronomy Now

The NameExoWorlds contest, organised by the International Astronomical Union and Zooniverse, is now entering its next stage. Fifteen stars and 32 planets have been made available for naming proposals from registered clubs and non-profit organisations.

U. S. Naval Observatory releases 228 million-star catalogue

27 April 2015 Astronomy Now

The United States Naval Observatory’s Robotic Astrometric Telescope (URAT) near Flagstaff, Arizona began to systematically image the sky every clear night for a period of just over two years, culminating in the URAT1 catalogue of precise positional data on about 228 million stars.