July 2018 – Page 2 – Astronomy Now

Now you see it, now you don’t; before and after a global dust storm

20 July 2018 William Harwood

Images from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter provide dramatic before-and-after shots of Mars showing the impact of a global dust storm that has obscured the surface.

See the Moon join a midnight planetary parade from 21–28 July

19 July 2018 Ade Ashford

If clear skies persist, observers in the UK can view four naked-eye planets between now and the end of the month. Brightest planet Venus is visible low in the west some 45 minutes after sunset, while the waxing Moon is your celestial pointer to Jupiter, Saturn and Mars between 21 and 28 July at midnight.

Adaptive optics ‘tomography’ provides Hubble-class images

19 July 2018 Astronomy Now

A new adaptive optics system being tested on ESO’s Very Large Telescope provides a level of image sharpness that rivals or exceeds the Hubble Space Telescope in narrow fields of view.

Glittering suns in a ‘starburst ring’ stretching around the core of Messier 94

18 July 2018 Astronomy Now

Messier 94, a relatively nearby galaxy, features two distinct rings of star formation, the result of pressure waves sweeping outward from the core. This 2015 image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the galaxy’s inner region and starburst ring.

A dozen new moons found orbiting Jupiter, pushing total to 79

17 July 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers searching for a hypothesised large planet in the outer solar system far beyond Pluto stumbled across 12 previously undetected moons orbiting Jupiter, pushing the giant planet’s total to a record 79.

Black hole-neutron star mergers could resolve Hubble constant conflict

16 July 2018 Astronomy Now

MIT researchers say gravitational waves from black hole-neutron star mergers may allow astronomers to more accurately measure how fast the Universe is expanding, resolving currently conflicting measurements of the Hubble constant.

An identity crisis for a galaxy in the vast Virgo cluster

16 July 2018 Astronomy Now

Located in the rich Virgo cluster, a collection of more than 1,300 galaxies, NGC 4388 is classified as a spiral, but gravitational interactions with other members of the cluster are giving it a “confused” identity with features similar to those found in elliptical galaxies.

MeerKAT radio telescope images Milky Way’s blazing heart

15 July 2018 Astronomy Now

South Africa’s newly inaugurated 64-dish MeerKAT radio telescope, a precursor to the Square Kilometre Array, has imaged the heart of the Milky Way in unprecedented detail, revealing long, magnetised filaments and the blazing core where a supermassive black hole lurks unseen at optical wavelengths.

A new volcano on Io? Juno data indicate ‘hot spot’ on active moon

14 July 2018 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Juno spacecraft now orbiting Juno has spotted what could be a new volcano on Io, the innermost Galilean moon, a tortured world featuring hundreds of volcanoes and lava flows powered by Jupiter’s crushing gravity

Cosmic mystery deepens with conflicting measurements of Hubble constant

13 July 2018 Astronomy Now

The Hubble constant indicates how fast the Universe is expanding in the wake of the Big Bang. New observations using two independent techniques have come up with different values, signs of possible problems with current theory.