November 2017 – Page 3 – Astronomy Now

Martian ridge brings out rover’s colour talents

5 November 2017 Astronomy Now

Colour-discerning capabilities that NASA’s Curiosity rover has been using on Mars since 2012 are proving particularly helpful on a mountainside ridge the rover is now climbing.

ALMA discovers cold dust around nearest star

3 November 2017 Astronomy Now

The ALMA Observatory in Chile has detected dust around the closest star to the Solar System, Proxima Centauri. These new observations reveal the glow coming from cold dust in a region between one to four times as far from Proxima Centauri as the Earth is from the Sun. The data also hint at the presence of an even cooler outer dust belt and may indicate the presence of an elaborate planetary system.

Hubble sees nearby asteroids photobombing distant galaxies

3 November 2017 Astronomy Now

Like rude relatives who jump in front your vacation snapshots of landscapes, some of our solar system’s asteroids have photobombed deep images of the universe taken by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

WFIRST astronomy mission faces cuts to contain rising costs

3 November 2017 Stephen Clark

NASA has directed the team developing the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, a flagship astronomy mission set for launch in the mid-2020s to study dark energy and exoplanets, to reduce the observatory’s scientific capabilities and keep it under a $3.2 billion cost cap.

See a lunar occultation bonanza on the night of 5—6 November

2 November 2017 Ade Ashford

Many will be looking skyward to see terrestrial pyrotechnics this Bonfire Night, but if you own a small telescope and can escape the light pollution, you can see the waning gibbous Moon hide three naked-eye stars in Taurus on the night of 5—6 November, culminating in first-magnitude star Aldebaran in the small hours of Monday morning.