Keep up to date with all things astronomy related with Astronomy Now magazine, which includes the UK's biggest and best night sky guide, an extensive news section, readers' astronomical images, book and equipment reviews, feature articles, a beginners' section and much more. For a sneak preview of this month's issue go to our magazine page.

Controllers bid farewell to long-lived Ulysses probe

The sun will set Tuesday on Ulysses, a robotic sentry that spent more than 18 years exploring unseen reaches of the sun for NASA and the European Space Agency.

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Royal Society Exhibition has strong astro presence

The Summer Science Exhibition at the Royal Society in London kicks off today with a healthy dose of astronomy amongst the 26 exhibits that the public will be able to view.

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Shuttle launch and noctilucent clouds point to Tunguska comet

The exhaust plume of a shuttle launch that created noctilucent clouds similar to those seen after the Tunguska event supports the theory that a comet, and not a meteoroid, exploded over Siberia one hundred years ago.

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Stuck rover exposes fresh clues on Martian environment

NASA's plucky Mars Exploration Rover Spirit, which is still stuck in a patch of soil, has been taking advantage of the situation to learn more about the planet's environmental history.

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Cosmic rays efficiently accelerated by
exploded stars

Using ESO's Very Large Telescope and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, astronomers have shown that cosmic rays from the Milky Way are very efficiently accelerated in the remnants of exploded stars.

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Galaxies come of age in cosmic blobs

Growing supermassive black holes and bursts of star formation have been discovered in cosmic blobs - immense reservoirs of hydrogen gas located in the early Universe - representing the coming of age of galaxies.

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Possible salty ocean hidden in depths of Saturn moon

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided strong evidence that Saturn's moon Enceladus harbours a salty ocean below its icy shell, a discovery that offers exciting possibilities in the search for extraterrestrial life.

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Odyssey's new view of the Red Planet

NASA’s long lived Mars Odyssey spacecraft has finally reached a new orbit that will offer a more sensitive view of minerals on the planet’s surface.

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NASA's lunar mapper goes into orbit around the Moon

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter reached the Moon and successfully performed its orbit insertion maneuver today. Full coverage can be found at Spaceflight Now

First direct evidence of lightning on Mars

University of Michigan researchers say they have found direct evidence for lightning on Mars caused by a large dust storm.

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New images kick off Cassini celebrations at Greenwich

The Cassini imaging team have released a set of never-before-seen images and movies of the Saturn system to coincide with the opening of a week-long celebration of the mission at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.

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Herschel opens its eyes

ESA's Herschel Space Observatory opened its eyes for the first time last week, soaking in the sights of M51, the Whirlpool galaxy.

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New map shines light on Moon's shadowed craters

A new high resolution map of the Moon's rugged south pole region provides new and unprecedented detail of permanently shadowed craters that could be hiding water ice deposits.

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Sunspot detail revealed by supercomputers

A comprehensive computer model of sunspots unveiled by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany will advance research into the inner workings of our Sun and its impact on the Earth.

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IBEX basks in fast hydrogen atoms from the Moon

Very fast hydrogen atoms emanating from the Moon have been detected for the first time by NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) spacecraft following decades of speculation regarding their existence.

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The mystery of the missing sunspots explained

An unusually slow-moving solar jet stream buried deep inside the Sun is causing the lack of sunspots and low solar activity, say scientists from the National Solar Observatory (NSO).

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Lights in the sky - observers' reports needed

Coastguard stations received hundreds of reports of 'lights in the sky' over
the English Channel on Monday evening. Was this an unexpected meteor shower? The BAA needs your reports.

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Giant eruption reveals

dead star

X-rays from an enormous stellar eruption which arrived at the Earth in August last year originated from a rare group of dead star known as a magnetar.

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Meteorite holds clues to Earth's cosmic roots

The interstellar stuff that became incorporated into the planets and life on Earth has younger cosmic roots than theories predict, according to new analysis of a meteorite that fell in 1969.

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Noctilucent clouds are back

As previewed in our Weekly Guide to the Night Sky, noctilucent cloud (NLC) season is here again following a splendid display on Tuesday evening.

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Unique sky survey brings new objects into focus

The Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) has begun returning images that will be used to detect unprecedented numbers of supernovae in distant galaxies, variable stars in our own Galaxy and possible new near-Earth asteroids.

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Planetary pile-up possible in next five billion years

According to new simulations, the evolution of the Solar System's inner planets' orbits could lead to a planetary pile-up within the lifetime of our Sun.

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Saturn's approach to equinox reveals new

detail in rings

Towering vertical structures in Saturn's rings have been discerned for the first time by Cassini as the giant planet approaches equinox.

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NASA's return to the Moon

Paving the way for the future of lunar exploration, NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) missions will launch later this week.

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Wising up in the infrared

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is undergoing final preparations ahead of a planned 1 November launch.

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Planetary atmospheres

key in search for extraterrestrial life

Astronomers using the William Herschel Telescope and Nordic Optical Telescope have confirmed an effective way to search the atmospheres of planets for signs of life.

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Lasers help astronomers probe distant galaxies

A discrepancy between the types of galaxies in today's Universe and those that existed shortly after the big bang is becoming clearer following new observations of galaxies that existed 2.7 billion years after the big bang.

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Galaxy Zoo puts new spin on galaxy rotation

During the International Year of Astronomy's 100 Hours of Astronomy event in April, Galaxy Zoo volunteers provided more than 2.5 million classifications, smashing the one million target the team had set.

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A smashing end for Japan's lunar orbiter mission

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)'s Moon explorer Kaguya concluded its twenty month mission with a controlled crash into the lunar surface last night.

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Planet-forming disc found orbiting twin suns

Images collected with the Smithsonian's Submillimeter Array (SMA) radio telescope system reveal the presence of a molecular disc orbiting a young binary star system.

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Stars born in

galactic centre

Stars have been seen being born in the inner sanctum of our Milky Way Galaxy, answering the question of whether stars can form there or instead have to migrate there.

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The black cloud set to blossom into a giant star

A freezing cold, dark cloud of molecular hydrogen is beginning to stir up the materials for building a giant star, or even several massive stars, in a forbidding region of the Milky Way known as the Aquila Rift.

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Supernova remnant is an unusual suspect

An unusually shaped supernova remnant observed in the Small Magellanic Cloud is likely the remains of an exploded white dwarf.

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Red giant star Betelgeuse

is shrinking

Orion's red supergiant Betelgeuse has been steadily shrinking over the last 15 years, say UC Berkeley astronomers.

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Astronomical whirling dervishes hide their

age well

Estimates of the age of some millisecond pulsars are out by a factor of ten, according to new research presented at the 214th American Astronomical Society meeting in Pasadena, California, this week.

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Galaxy "skid marks" reveal collision history

The discovery of new tidal debris stripped away from merging galaxies contains the full collision history, equivalent to being able to trace the skid marks on the road after a car crash, say astronomers.

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Supermassive black holes put on weight

New computer modelling has found that the black hole at the heart of M87 is as much as three times more massive than previously thought, which could up the masses of other supermassive black holes, too.

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A new way to measure cosmic distances

A rare and often overlooked type of star - cepheid variables - could allow astronomers to measure cosmic distances three times further than previously possible, to 300 million light years and beyond.

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Dark GRBs illuminate early star formation

Mysterious gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) that leave no optical afterglow are exploding in very dusty patches hiding plentiful star formation in galaxies whose light has taken 12.9 billion years to reach us.

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Galactic milestone to measure expansion

of the Universe

A new milestone in the effort to measure accurate distances to galaxies will be of huge assistance in the battle to understand the nature of dark energy.

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Central Milky Way cluster surprisingly normal

Despite the extreme forces in operation near the Galaxy's central black hole, the resident Arches Cluster displays curiously normal conditions.

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Titan's lingering clouds

A three-and-a-half year study of over 200 clouds in Titan's dense atmosphere reveals their formation and movement to be somewhat out of synch with the moon's seasons.

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Mysterious supernova may have had carbon origins

A weird explosion in space that confounded astronomers in 2006 may have been the destruction of a rare star with an unusual amount of carbon dust surrounding it, according to research carried out by scientists at the University of Warwick.

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