News: November 2011
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Scientists explain supernovae by candle light
Flickering laboratory flames have ignited a team of researchers’ understanding into what might spark the colossal explosions of Type Ia supernovae, which may not only help us to grasp a better understanding of these violent variables, but shine a light on the questions posed by the evolution of the Universe.
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Atlas 5 rocket launches with NASA's new Mars rover
An Atlas 5 rocket has lifted off with the most advanced roving vehicle to be dispatched to the surface of another world – the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft. Liftoff occurred on time at 10:02 a.m. EST (1502 GMT).
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MISSION PREVIEW
SPACEFLIGHT NOW MISSION STATUS CENTER
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It's alive! Russia's Phobos-Grunt probe phones home
The European Space Agency announced Wednesday a ground station in Australia heard signals from Russia's marooned Phobos-Grunt Mars mission, but prospects are fading for the probe to reach the Red Planet as scheduled next year.
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Cassini has an eye for a Saturn storm
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft got a front row seat to a monstrous storm raging on the surface of Saturn as it snapped high resolution images and rolled film to chronicle what has been recorded as the gas giant’s most chaotic 200 days in the past 21 years.
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Astronomers determine full description of a black hole
They say that nothing can escape a black hole, but a complete description of the basic structure of these dense masses has escaped a black hole’s clutches, enabling a team of astronomers to characterise one of them, Cygnus X-1, for the first time.
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Scientists say lakes could raise odds for life on Europa
The discovery of a reservoir of liquid water embedded in the icy crust of Jupiter's moon Europa could increase the chances for life in oceans deep beneath sheets of ice blanketing its surface.
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Two supernovae provide two flavours of neutron star
Researchers from the universities of Southampton and Oxford have taken a step back to the most fundamental processes of stellar evolution by uncovering evidence that two flavours of neutron star are the end product of two different supernova mechanisms.
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Heavy stars injected by supernovae jets
Unusually enriched ancient stars in the early Universe could have gained their heavy elements from nearby supernovae explosions supplementing the gas clouds from which they were born.
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First stars ten times smaller
New computer simulations have changed the view that the Universe's first stars were giants. Although still huge, they were several tens of solar masses rather than the hundreds that standard theory predicted, say NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists.
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December deadline for stranded Russian Mars probe
Russia has until early December to establish contact with the stranded Phobos-Grunt Mars probe and send it toward the Red Planet, the head of the Russian space agency said Monday. READ MORE
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Jumping Jupiter ejected
fifth giant planet
Computer simulations conducted by David Nesvorny of the Southwest Research Institute show that the outer Solar System may have possessed five giant gas planets, one of which was booted out as Jupiter jumped around in its orbit. READ MORE
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Asteroid Lutetia a rare survivor of Earth's birth
Using ESA's Rosetta spacecraft, ESO's New Technology Telescope, and NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility and Spitzer Space Telescope to scrutinize the composition of asteroid Lutetia, astronomers have found that the 100 kilometre wide rock may represent one of the rarest types of asteroid that went into building the Solar System's innermost planets. READ MORE
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Astronomers find pristine gas from the big bang
Two clumps of gas that formed in the opening moments of the Universe's existence have been found by astronomers using telescopes at the W. M. Keck Observatory, the first time that gases never involved in star formation have been detected. READ MORE
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Stirring up the Moon's internal dynamo
Two separate papers in this week's issue of the journal Nature provide complementary theories on how an internal dynamo in the lunar interior was stirred up – either by giant impacts or by tidal interactions between the Earth and Moon – to produce the Moon's surface magnetic anomalies. READ MORE
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Russia's Phobos-Grunt Mars probe stuck in low Earth orbit
Russia's Phobos-Grunt mission, an audacious effort to retrieve samples from a Martian moon, is stranded in low Earth orbit following a successful liftoff Tuesday from Kazakhstan, according to Russian reports. READ MORE
UPDATED STORY
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Asteroid swings by Earth
NASA has released preliminary radar imagery of a 1,300-foot-wide asteroid that cruised by Earth on Tuesday in the planet's closest call with a near-Earth object in a quarter-century. READ MORE AND WATCH VIDEO!
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Astronomers trace galactic crash, bang, wallop!
The rate at which galaxies merge to mammoth sizes has been figured out by a team of astronomers led by Jennifer Lotz of the Space Telescope Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, revealing that any given Milky Way-sized galaxy has merged with another of comparable size over the past eight billion years as well as two to three dwarf galaxies over the same time period. READ MORE
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Detecting ET’s city lights
A pair of researchers from the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Princeton University have developed a new means by which, in the future and with the requisite telescopic power, it may be possible to detect artificial lights from cities on other planets inhabited by extraterrestrial intelligence. READ MORE
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Distant GRB lights up chemically rich galaxies
A gamma-ray burst (GRB) blasting from an expired star in the distant Universe has lit up a pair of galaxies seen when the Universe was just 1.8 billion years old, revealing surprising details about their chemical makeup.
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Observe asteroid 2005 YU55's close approach
There is a good opportunity to observe what is currently the largest asteroid that makes a close approach to the Earth on the evening of 8 November.
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Hubble sees disc
around black hole
Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope have used the magnifying capabilities of a faraway galaxy to take a picture of an even more distant dusty disc surrounding an active black hole.
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Record breaking pulsar spins a web of mysteries
The youngest and most distant gamma ray millisecond pulsar, which was observed by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, isn't behaving quite as it should.
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ESA wrestles with software errors on Mars Express
European officials have temporarily halted scientific observations aboard the Mars Express spacecraft after a spate of software hiccups, but managers are hopeful the mission can resume research after eight years at Mars.
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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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