Archive – Page 110 – Astronomy Now

Ultima Thule comes into focus with latest New Horizons image

3 January 2019 William Harwood

New images of Ultima Thule, the small chunk of primordial debris NASA’s New Horizons probe zoomed past on New Year’s Day, came into much sharper focus on Wednesday, revealing a snowman-shaped object.

Don’t miss the Quadrantid meteor shower peak on 4 January 2019

2 January 2019 Ade Ashford

Hot on the heels of terrestrial fireworks ushering in the New Year, it’s time for some celestial pyrotechnics from the Quadrantid meteor shower – the year’s first major display of shooting stars – on 4 January. With an old waning crescent Moon not rising until nautical dawn in the UK, dark skies could see up to 80 meteors per hour around 2am GMT.

OSIRIS-REx slips into record-close orbit around asteroid

2 January 2019 Astronomy Now

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft slipped into a record-close orbit of the asteroid Bennu on New Year’s Eve, setting the stage for exceedingly close-range observations.

New Horizons scientists elated as Ultima Thule’s shape comes into view

1 January 2019 Stephen Clark

A fresh image from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft released Tuesday showed the mission’s distant flyby target a billion miles beyond Pluto — nicknamed Ultima Thule — has an elongated shape like that of a peanut shell or a bowling pin, and the prospect of higher-resolution pictures arriving on Earth later in the day had scientists salivating for more.

Video: Queen guitarist Brian May discusses his song celebrating Ultima Thule flyby

1 January 2019 Astronomy Now

Queen guitarist and contributing New Horizons scientist Brian May wrote a song celebrating the spacecraft’s New Year’s flyby with Ultima Thule, a supposed block of ice and rock in the Kuiper Belt beyond the orbit of Pluto.

Video: New Horizons phone home will confirm health of spacecraft

1 January 2019 Astronomy Now

New Horizons Mission Operations Manager (MOM) Alice Bowman describes how New Horizons will turn to Earth and ‘phone home’ to confirm if the flyby of Ultima Thule was a success.

Supernovae not needed for at least some heavy isotopes

31 December 2018 Astronomy Now

New research suggesgs low-mass stars can cook up heavy elements, helping explain the observed abundance of some heavy isotopes.

Live coverage: New Horizons returns first close-up image

30 December 2018 Stephen Clark

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft made a historic New Year’s encounter with an object nicknamed Ultima Thule in the Kuiper Belt a billion miles beyond Pluto. The probe passed around 3,500 kilometres from the mysterious object at 0533 GMT on New Year’s Day, making it the most distant Solar System body ever explored up close.

New Horizons closing in for historic flyby of Ultima Thule

29 December 2018 Astronomy Now

Covering 1.2 million kilometres per day, NASA’s New Horizons probe is on course for a high-speed New Year’s Day flyby of the Kuiper Belt body known as Ultima Thule.

The Helix Nebula’s amazing (and perplexing) structure

29 December 2018 Astronomy Now

The Helix Nebula is a familiar target to amateur astronomers, a dim, eyepiece-filling doughnut that belies the complexity revealed by spectacular images from the Hubble Space Telescope and other sensitive instruments.