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News: February 2009

Coloured quasars suggest 'smoky' Universe

Hold your breath: we may be living in a smoky Universe that dims light from distant objects such as quasars, or so say astronomers working on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS).
 FULL STORY

 

Migrating giants turned asteroids into missiles

The migration of Jupiter and Saturn could have turned asteroids in the early Solar System into missiles that pelted the inner planets. This is the interpretation of a team of scientists who discovered that asteroids in the Asteroid Belt are missing.
FULL STORY

 

Watching Venus glow

in the dark

An eerie glow has been observed in the night time atmosphere of Venus that shows Earth's neighbouring planet as a temperamental place of high winds and turbulence.
   FULL STORY

 

Turbulence triggers birth of massive stars

By probing the newborn stars in the constellation Serpens Cauda, scientists using the Submillimeter Array have captured the first moments of massive star formation.
   FULL STORY

Dust factory found

around Cas A

A team of astronomers have found that copious amounts of dust are being produced within the dead remains of the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant.
   FULL STORY

Hubble's Next Discovery - You Decide

Members of the public have one week left to determine where to point modern astronomy's most famous telescope.
   FULL STORY

'Earth-seeking' Kepler

ready for launch

The first space mission with the capability of finding Earth-like planets is ready for launch on 5 March at 15:48 GMT.
   FULL STORY

Comet Lulin visits inner Solar System

On 24 February Comet Lulin will make its first visit to the inner Solar System, streaking past the Earth at a distance of 38 million miles, or 160 times further than the Moon.
   FULL STORY

New recipe for

dwarf galaxies

NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer has uncovered a new recipe for making dwarf galaxies using pristine gas left over from the early Universe.
   FULL STORY

Fermi's record breaking gamma-ray burst

The latest gamma-ray burst to blast NASA's Fermi space telescope arrived from a distance of 12 billion light years, had the greatest total energy, the fastest motions and the highest energy initial emissions seen to date.
   FULL STORY

UK launches International Year of Astronomy

Members of the media and representatives of the UK's astronomy community gathered at London's Royal Observatory Greenwich last night to mark the occasion of the International Year of Astronomy 2009.
   FULL STORY

Jupiter mission given

poll position

NASA and ESA officials have decided to first go ahead with an ambitious mission to Jupiter and Europa, following up with another mission to visit Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus.
   FULL STORY

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxies

The doors to Galaxy Zoo 2 are officially opened today, calling on the public to delve deeper into 250,000 galaxies in the search for the weird and wonderful.
   FULL STORY

South Pole Telescope to probe first moments of Universe

Scientists using the South Pole Telescope are set to put the theory of cosmic inflation to its most stringent observational test so far, by seeking out gravity waves.
   FULL STORY

Best image ever of

Carina Nebula

Using the modest 2.2-metre telescope at La Silla in Chile, European Southern Observatory astronomers have taken the best image to date of the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372), which lies 7,500 light years away.
   FULL STORY

Radio finds unknown molecules in space

A sea change in the way radio astronomy is conducted has been responsible for finding a whole swathe of unidentified molecules in space.
   FULL STORY

Early stars formed

galactic 'jam'

Stars in the early Universe, particularly in ultra-compact dwarf galaxies (UCDs), could have been crammed a thousand times closer together than they are today, according to a team of scientists from the University of Bonn in Germany.
   FULL STORY

Scientists see

"Cosmic Dawn"

Using computer simulations, scientists have predicted what the Universe would have looked like 500 million years after the

big bang.
   FULL STORY

Swift and Fermi probe gamma ray fireworks

Astronomers using NASA's Swift satellite and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have observed high-energy flares emanating from a neutron star 30,000 light years away.
   FULL STORY

Powerful new technique to measure asteroids

A team of French and Italian astronomers have devised a new method for measuring the size and shape of asteroids that are too small or too far away for traditional techniques, increasing the number of asteroids that can be measured by a factor of several hundred.
   FULL STORY

Hubble's deep view of an anaemic galaxy

The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a rare spiral galaxy in the Coma Cluster that has been described by scientists as "anaemic". Hubble shows the fine structure of galaxy NGC 4921, set against a rich background of remote galaxies spawned in the Universe's early years.
   FULL STORY

Craters highlight Martian tilt and water

The erosion of craters on Mars is providing researchers at the Planetary Science Institute (PSI) in Tucson, Arizona, with fresh new evidence about the role that water-ice plays in the geology of the red planet.
   FULL STORY

AstroFest is here!

As AstroFest fever sweeps across the nation - faster than the recent snow flurries - and the final preparations for the UK’s biggest Astronomy extravaganza are put in place, we’ll be taking you to the centre of the action through our special AstroFest blog.
   FULL STORY

CoRoT discovers most Earth-like exoplanet yet

The CoRoT space telescope has detected an exoplanet less than twice the size of Earth orbiting a Sun-like star,  and with a surface you could walk on, astronomers speculate.
   FULL STORY

Supermassive black holes and galaxies evolved together

Using ground- and space-based telescopes, astronomers have uncovered new evidence to show that the most massive galaxies in the Universe and the supermassive black holes at their centres evolved together.
   FULL STORY

 
 
 
 

Back to latest news

2010 Yearbook
Our latest 132-page Astronomy Now special edition is an extravaganza of astronomy for the year ahead, with a complete 30-page guide to observing the planets, moon, meteor showers, two solar eclipses, and the deep sky in 2010.
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 U.S. & WORLDWIDE STORE
 

Take the tour!
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?"
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Infinity Rising
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.
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Guide to the Constellations
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.
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Exploring Mars
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!
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