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News: April 2008
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Black hole thrown out of parent galaxy
By an enormous burst of gravitational waves that accompanies the merger of two black holes, a newly formed black hole has been booted out of its parent galaxy at thousands of kilometres per second, confirming theories that extreme ejection events like this can occur and aren’t only plausible in supercomputer simulations.
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Saturn’s furious five month storm
Saturn’s longest ever observed electrical storm remains persistent after five months, with lightning bolts 10,000 times more powerful than lightning on Earth penetrating right through the planet’s troposphere.
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Ultra compact galaxies weigh heavy on early Universe
Astronomers looking at the Universe’s distant past have discovered nine young, ultra compact galaxies, each weighing in at 200 billion times the mass of the Sun but measuring only 5,000 light years across and containing the same number of stars as today’s adult galaxies.
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Old globular clusters surprisingly young
New results from NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory suggest that globular clusters, the dense bunches of stars found in all galaxies, may be less evolved than previously thought.
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Solar flare from a blank Sun
Despite the currently blank face of the Sun, it still has enough energy to surprise us with a solar flare, an event that is normally associated with the presence of a sun spot.
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Shedding new light on the aurora
An international team of scientists has detected the unexpected signatures of polarisation in the Earth’s aurora, providing fresh insight into the composition of the Earth’s upper atmosphere, the configuration of its magnetic field and the energies of solar particles.
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The wild dances of the interacting galaxies
From dramatic collisions that trigger frenetic bursts of star formation, switch on quasars or cause explosive stellar deaths, to stealthy mergers that result in completely new galaxies, the fifty nine spectacular new images of merging galaxies released today to mark the 18th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope shows that no two interactions are alike.
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Unlocking the secrets of a massive black hole
The mechanism by which black holes expel powerful jets of particles at nearly the speed of light has long been speculated, but thanks to new observations of a blazar in action, these theories can now be substantiated.
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Stars born in the galactic wilderness
A new image from NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows baby stars being spawned in a desolate region of space more than 100,000 light years from the Southern Pinwheel galaxy’s central nursery, providing a unique opportunity to study the formation of early generation stars.
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Awakening the Milky Way’s black hole
Our galaxy’s central black hole let loose a powerful flare three centuries ago, say Japanese astronomers using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, Japan’s Suzaku and ASCA satellites and Europe’s XMM-Newton X-ray Observatory.
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The drifting star
By examining the ‘ringing’ of a planet-harboring star, a team of astronomers has shown that it has drifted away from its original birthplace, providing important information about the dynamics of our Milky Way and theories of star and planet formation.
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New Nova in Cygnus
Another nova has been discovered in the constellation of Cygnus following hot on the heels of last month’s magnitude +8 outburst.
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The coolest brown dwarf
An international team of astronomers has discovered the coldest brown dwarf ever observed, bringing scientists one step closer to bridging the gap between stars and planets.
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Recording breaking GRB still shining beacon
Almost one month ago the Swift space telescope captured the explosion of a powerful Gamma Ray Burst (GRB), the brightest naked-eye object ever seen from Earth. Recent Hubble observations show that the light from this GRB is still drowning out the galaxy’s light today.
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Phobos up close
The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has produced amazing new colour and stereo views of Phobos, the larger and innermost Martian satellite.
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Cosmic engine takes XMM-Newton by surprise
ESA’s X-ray satellite, XMM-Newton, is taken by surprise by a rare type of galaxy, from which it has detected a higher number of X-rays than previously thought possible.
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Video interview with STFC's Keith Mason
The head of the Science and Technology Facility Council speaks with Astronomy Now Editor Keith Cooper about the astronomy funding crisis at the National Astronomy Meeting in Belfast.
WATCH VIDEO
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RAS's Robert Massey talks about the meeting
Royal Astronomical Society spokesman Robert Massey speaks with Astronomy Now's Managing Editor Steven Young about the success of the National Astronomy Meeting in Belfast.
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Monica Grady on the chances of finding life
Monica Grady of the Open University talks with Astronomy Now Web Editor Emily Baldwin about the prospects of finding life beyond our own planet on Mars and beyond.
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Laplace & Tandem vie for Cosmic Visions top-spot
Two missions to the outer Solar System, Laplace (Europa and Jupiter Mission) and Tandem (Titan and Enceladus Mission), are competing against each other for selection later this year; Emily Baldwin summarises the key goals of each ambitious mission.
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Video interview with ESA's David Southwood
The head of the European Space Agency's science programmes speaks with Astronomy Now Editor Keith Cooper at the National Astronomy Meeting in Belfast.
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Meteor showers observed in the Martian atmosphere
A storm of shooting stars has, for the first time, been detected in the Martian atmosphere by a team of scientists based at the Armagh Observatory using data from the Mars Global Surveyor probe.
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Spinning stars make astronomers dizzy
Fast spinning, massive stars have shown that the way in which gases are mixed inside them isn't as simple as had been assumed, according to a new study involving the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, and presented at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting.
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Embryonic planet imaged around young star
The youngest planet ever to be seen has been captured in its earliest stage of formation in a disc of gas and rocky debris around a star 520 light years away.
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Stars burst into life in the early Universe
The strongest burst of star formation in the history of the Universe occurred about two billion years after the Big Bang, say astronomers presenting their research at the National Astronomy Meeting this week.
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Old galaxies stick together in the young Universe
Galaxies which look old early in the history of the Universe reside in enormous clouds of invisible dark matter, and will eventually evolve into the most massive galaxies that exist in the present day, say astronomers from the University of Nottingham presenting their research at the National Astronomy Meeting.
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Supernova factories found in Milky Way's bar
Two star clusters of gigantic red supergiant stars are ticking timebombs in our Galaxy, it was revealed yesterday at the National Astronomy Meeting. "The next supernova could go off in one of these clusters at an time," says Dr Ben Davies.
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SuperWASP scoops ten exoplanets in six months
Ten new exoplanets have been unveiled by the UK's SuperWASP cameras in the last six months, Dr Don Pollacco of Queen's University Belfast announced at this week's National Astronomy Meeting.
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For star formation more is less in large galaxies
Large galaxies that should be in their prime have confounded expectations by experiencing less star formation relative to their mass than smaller galaxies that, according to hierarchical models of galaxy formation, should merely be the building blocks of those larger galaxies.
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Michio Kaku is professor of theoretical physics at City College New York. He is a best-selling author and TV presenter. Two of his most recent programs were shown on BBC Four and his latest book Physics of the Impossible (Allan Lane) is on sale now. Astronomy Now's Kulvinder Singh Chadha talks to the man who dreams about the impossible.
This 132-page special edition features the ultimate observing guide for 2008, a review of all the biggest news stories, in depth articles covering all aspects of astronomy including astrophotography, the future of the Sun and space missions for 2008, and much, much more.
A 100-page special edition from the creators of Astronomy Now magazine, The Grand Tour of the Universe takes readers from one end of the Universe to the other and, in doing so, asks the question "just how big is the Universe?"
This special publication features the photography of British astro-imager Nik Szymanek and covers a range of photographic methods from basic to advanced. Beautiful pictures of the night sky can be obtained with a simple camera and tripod before tackling more difficult projects, such as guided astrophotography through the telescope and CCD imaging.
Astronomy Now presents
this 100-page, full-colour guide to the 68 constellations visible from the British
Isles by Neil Bone, the respected amateur astronomer and writer.
Astronomy Now is pleased to announce the publication of Exploring Mars. The very best images of Mars taken by orbiting spacecraft and NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers fill up the 98 glossy pages of this special edition!