Archive

Planet-hunting ESO telescopes reveal Lagoon Nebula in all its glory

4 March 2019 Astronomy Now

The European Southern Observatory’s new SPECULOOS telescopes, built to search for exoplanets orbiting nearby stars, shows off its sensitive near-infrared optics and cameras with a spectacular view of the Lagoon Nebula in Sagittarius.

See the old Moon between Venus and Saturn at dawn on 2 March

28 February 2019 Ade Ashford

On Saturday, 2 March 2019, observers in Western Europe should seek a location offering a level and unobstructed southeastern view at civil dawn (some 36 minutes before sunrise in the heart of the UK) to have a chance of seeing the 25-day-old waning crescent Moon between Venus in Capricornus and Saturn in Sagittarius with the unaided eye.

Intermediate mass black hole found near galactic centre

28 February 2019 Astronomy Now

Astronomers studying a swirling cloud of gas near the centre of the Milky Way have found what appears to be an intermediate mass black hole.

Cataclysmic neutron star merger generates powerful jet

27 February 2019 Astronomy Now

Astronomers studying the aftermath of the merger of two neutron stars have found what appears to be a powerful jet blasting through a shell of debris.

Dramatic Jupiter

26 February 2019 Astronomy Now

Dramatic atmospheric features in Jupiter’s northern hemisphere are captured in this view from NASA’s Juno spacecraft.

SpaceX Falcon 9 launches Israeli moon lander

24 February 2019 Astronomy Now

A small privately-funded Israeli spacecraft is on its way to the moon, the first non-superpower attempt to land on the surface of another world.

Japanese probe lands on asteroid to capture sample

24 February 2019 Stephen Clark

Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft briefly landed on an asteroid Thursday more than 200 million miles from Earth and fired a bullet to scoop up a rocky sample, successfully accomplishing one of the mission’s most challenging manoeuvres before returning the asteroid specimen to scientists on the ground in December 2020.