April 2015 – Page 6 – Astronomy Now

Vixen Optics VSD 100/f3.8 ultra-fast astrograph

4 April 2015 Steve Ringwood

Astrophotographers seeking an ultra-fast refractor designed for exquisite digital Imaging may wish to consider this 100mm aperture, 5-element f/3.8 system from Vixen, appraised by Steve Ringwood.

Hubble finds phantom objects near dead quasars

4 April 2015 Astronomy Now

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a set of enigmatic quasar ghosts — ethereal, looped structures glowing green that orbit their host galaxies marking the graves of quasars that flickered to life and then faded. They offer new insights into the turbulent pasts of these galaxies.

The brief Australasian total lunar eclipse of April 4th-5th

3 April 2015 Ade Ashford

Fifteen days after its crucial rôle in the total solar eclipse of March 20th, its the Moon’s turn to shine — or, rather, fade — as it passes into the shadow of the Earth on Saturday, 4th March, producing a total lunar eclipse best seen from Australasia.

BBC Stargazing Live helped amateur astronomers find supernovae

3 April 2015 Astronomy Now

More than 40,000 amateur astronomers working on a supernova hunt run by the Zooniverse team based at the University of Oxford, in collaboration with BBC Stargazing Live, found five supernovae and catalogued two million unidentified heavenly bodies found by the SkyMapper telescope in Australia.

Boldly go explore an asteroid with NASA’s Vesta Trek

2 April 2015 Astronomy Now

Data gathered from multiple instruments aboard NASA’s Dawn spacecraft have been compiled into Vesta Trek — a free, web-based application that provides detailed visualisations of one of the largest asteroids in our Solar System.

Curiosity rover eyes prominent mineral veins on Mars

2 April 2015 Astronomy Now

Two-tone mineral veins at a site NASA’s Curiosity rover has reached by climbing a layered Martian mountain offer clues about multiple episodes of fluid movement. These episodes occurred later than the wet environmental conditions that formed lake-bed deposits the rover examined at the mountain’s base.

Space observatories find missing clue to galaxy cluster formation

2 April 2015 Astronomy Now

Astronomers using the Herschel Space Observatory and Plank satellite, plus University of Arizona observatories, discover likely precursors of the galaxy clusters we see today and reveal glimpses into how galaxies like our Milky Way came to be.

Follow Comet Lovejoy into the high north during April

1 April 2015 Ade Ashford

Comet Lovejoy continues its northerly trek through Cassiopeia, en route to a close encounter with Polaris on May 27th. A circumpolar object of the high north, the comet never sets as seen from the British Isles this month — what’s more, it’s brighter than predicted.

Make the most of observing Jupiter and its moons during April

1 April 2015 Ade Ashford

Jupiter may be two months past opposition, but it’s still big, bright and high to the south before 9 pm from the centre of the British Isles. The Galilean moons, their shadows and the Great Red Spot are all on show — plus mutual phenomena of the moons.