June 2021 – Page 2 – Astronomy Now

Jupiter’s moon Ganymede seen up close for first time in 21 years

9 June 2021 Graham Carr

NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew by Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, Monday on the first close-up visit to the icy world since 2000. The first images from the flyby show Ganymede’s cratered, icy surface in “remarkable detail,” NASA said.

Engineers ‘sandblast’ InSight lander to clear dust from solar arrays

7 June 2021 Astronomy Now

Engineers come up with a novel way to clear light-obscuring dust from the InSight Mars lander’s solar panels: sandblasting.

Don’t miss the partial eclipse of the Sun

7 June 2021 Mark Armstrong

On the morning of Thursday 10 June, there’s a partial eclipse of the Sun visible across the length and breadth of the UK. This special and spectacular event happens when the Moon appears to take a significant bite out of the Sun as it moves between us and the Sun, partially blocking the Sun’s disc from our view.

After a 30-year hiatus, NASA is returning to Venus with two new probes

4 June 2021 Astronomy Now

NASA is funding two new missions to Venus, one an orbiting radar mapper and another that will drop a small probe into the cloud-shrouded planet’s churning atmosphere.

Hubble Space Telescope captures intriguing view of lopsided galaxy

4 June 2021 Astronomy Now

The Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies features more than 300 galaxies exhibiting an unusual appearance, including NGC 2276, seen here in a spectacular photo from the Hubble Space Telescope.e