May 2021 – Astronomy Now

Mars helicopter ‘muscles through’ navigation glitch on sixth flight

31 May 2021 Stephen Clark

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter safely landed after wobbling, suffering power spikes, and enduring velocity fluctuations on its sixth flight at Mars.

Galactic light rays

29 May 2021 Astronomy Now

Bands of light and dark shine out from the shrouded core of the active galaxy IC 5063, which is a lenticular (disc) galaxy located 156 million light years away in the Southern Hemisphere constellation of Indus.

The deep abyss

27 May 2021 Astronomy Now

A generous sprinkling of galaxies on an inky black sky is captured by the Victor M. Blanco four-metre telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

Rocky layer cakes on the red planet

25 May 2021 Astronomy Now

These layered hills, seen in this false-colour image of a portion of Arabia Terra on Mars, may possibly have a watery origin. Arabia Terra is a highland region in Mars’ northern hemisphere, dating back to the red planet’s Noachian geological era, around four billion years ago.

Galaxy cluster warps space, magnifying more distant galaxies

19 May 2021 Astronomy Now

The combined gravity of a remote galaxy cluster warps the space around it and brings the distorted shapes of background galaxies into view.

China’s Zhurong Mars rover sends back first pictures

19 May 2021 Astronomy Now

The first images from China’s Zhurong Mars rover show the spacecraft is in good shape after landing on the red planet.

Catch Mercury after sunset at its best for the year

12 May 2021 Mark Armstrong

Mercury is visible now in the early evening sky, offering sky-watchers in the UK and at other mid-northern latitudes their best chance of the year to spot the innermost planet.

A favourite of amateurs and professionals alike, M13 sits for Hubble portrait

11 May 2021 Astronomy Now

The globular cluster M13 in Hercules, a splendid sight in even modest telescopes, serves up a vast metropolis of stars when imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Voyager 1 sheds new light on interstellar medium

11 May 2021 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Voyager 1 probe, now 43 years outbound from Earth, is still at work, shedding new light on the interstellar medium.

Nova Cassiopeia 2021 suddenly brightens into naked-eye visibility

10 May 2021 Mark Armstrong

Nova Cas 2021, a ‘new star’ – a classical nova – discovered on 18 March 2021 in the northern constellation of Cassiopeia, has suddenly brightened in the past few days by around two magnitudes.