July 2017 – Page 2 – Astronomy Now

Team to use airborne telescopes to study Sun and Mercury during total solar eclipse

25 July 2017 Astronomy Now

A team led by the Southwest Research Institute will use airborne telescopes aboard NASA research aircraft to study the solar corona and Mercury’s surface during this summer’s total solar eclipse.

NASA might privatise one of its great observatories

22 July 2017 Stephen Clark

Management of NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope could be turned over to an academic institution or private operator in 2019 once the space agency’s funding for the observatory runs out, a senior NASA manager said this week.

Superluminous supernova marks the death of a star at cosmic high noon

22 July 2017 Astronomy Now

The death of a massive star in a distant galaxy 10 billion years ago created a rare superluminous supernova that astronomers say is one of the most distant ever discovered.

Study teams comb through NASA’s wish list for new telescope

21 July 2017 Stephen Clark

Scientists outlining four concepts for a powerful new space telescope that could launch in the 2030s this week said improvements in optics, detectors and access to huge new rockets like NASA’s Space Launch System could revolutionize the way astronomers observe potentially habitable planets, black holes, and the earliest galaxies in the Universe.

Scientists get best measure of star-forming material in early galaxy clusters

21 July 2017 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have combined observations from several of the world’s most powerful telescopes to carry out one of the largest studies yet of molecular gas — the raw material which fuels star formation throughout the universe — in three of the most distant clusters of galaxies ever found, detected as they appeared when the Universe was only four billion years old.

Panorama above ‘Perseverance Valley’ on Mars

21 July 2017 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity recorded a panoramic view before entering the upper end of a fluid-carved valley that descends the inner slope of a large crater’s rim.

Exoplanet hunter sees first light at La Silla Observatory

19 July 2017 Astronomy Now

The MASCARA station at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile has achieved first light. This new facility will seek out transiting exoplanets as they pass in front of their bright parent stars and create a catalogue of targets for future exoplanet characterisation observations.

Pioneering probe for gravitational wave observatory ends mission

19 July 2017 Stephen Clark

The European Space Agency’s LISA Pathfinder spacecraft, now sailing around the sun on a trajectory away from Earth, was deactivated Tuesday after a nearly 18-month mission testing previously-untried lasers, vacuum enclosures, exotic gold-platinum cubes and micro-thrusters needed for a trio of gravitational wave observatories set for launch in the 2030s.

Planets like Earth may have had muddy origins

18 July 2017 Astronomy Now

Scientists have long held the belief that planets — including Earth — were built from rocky asteroids, but new research challenges that view.

Distant galaxies ‘lift the veil’ on the end of the cosmic dark ages

14 July 2017 Astronomy Now

Astronomers studying the distant universe have found that small star-forming galaxies were abundant when the universe was only 800 million years old, a few percent of its present age. The results suggest that the earliest galaxies, which illuminated and ionized the universe, formed at even earlier times.