May 2018 – Page 4 – Astronomy Now

‘Exiled’ carbon-rich asteroid found in distant Kuiper Belt

12 May 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have discovered the first carbon-rich asteroid in the distant Kuiper Belt. The asteroid likely originated in the inner Solar System and was ejected by gravitational encounters with the Sun’s gas giants.

NASA approves helicopter to launch with 2020 Mars rover

11 May 2018 Astronomy Now

NASA is adding a small helicopter to the agency’s Mars 2020 rover that will become the first heavier-than-air vehicle to fly on another planet. The technology demonstrator features twin counter-rotating blades.

Stellar mass black holes swarm in Milky Way’s core

11 May 2018 Astronomy Now

The Chandra X-ray Observatory has detected a dozen X-ray binaries containing stellar-mass black holes near the core of the Milky Way. Theoretical analysis indicates thousand more likely are lurking unseen.

Breakthrough Listen begins expanded search for ET

10 May 2018 Astronomy Now

The Breakthrough Listen initiative, dedicated to searching for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth, is using powerful new equipment at the Parkes radio telescope in Australia to scan millions of stars across the disk of the Milky Way.

ESA selects three Cosmic Vision mission proposals for evaluation

9 May 2018 Astronomy Now

The European Space Agency is evaluating three proposals for medium-class missions focused on the entire range of scales in the cosmos, from planetary geology to solar system evolution to gamma ray bursts in the early universe.

A planet, its rings and three moons – a postcard from Cassini

8 May 2018 William Harwood

A postcard from Cassini – a stunning edge-on view of Saturn, its rings, their shadow and three moons, captured by the orbiter in 2006 as it passed within about 2.7 million kilometres (1.7 million miles) of the sixth planet.

Funding approved for sensitive dark matter detector

8 May 2018 Astronomy Now

The U.S. Department of Energy has approved funding for construction of the most sensitive detector ever built, located in a Canadian mine a mile down, to search for evidence of weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, a leading dark matter candidate.

UK astronomers find exoplanets with sodium, helium in atmospheres

7 May 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers at the University of Exeter have found helium in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-class exoplanet – a first – and sodium in the atmosphere of another, an indicator of a cloud-free sky.

NASA hails now-departed Rossi X-ray observer

7 May 2018 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, decommissioned in 2012, fell back into the atmosphere and burned up 30 April, finally bringing a remarkably successful mission to study black holes and neutron stars to a fiery end.

After foggy departure, it’s clear sailing to Mars for InSight lander

7 May 2018 Stephen Clark

Making a fiery climb into a foggy sky Saturday over California’s Central Coast, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket dispatched NASA’s InSight lander on a 301-million-mile voyage to Mars with a package of European-built instruments to probe the inside of the Red Planet.