Archive – Page 258 – Astronomy Now

NASA’s next flagship space telescope to get formal start

16 January 2016 Stephen Clark

NASA officials expect to officially kick off development in February of a multibillion-dollar observatory recycling a grounded top secret spy satellite telescope capable of studying dark energy and directly resolving planets around other stars.

New cosmological theory of secondary inflation avoids excess of dark matter

16 January 2016 Astronomy Now

The Big Bang Theory with its early period of exponential growth known as inflation is the prevailing scientific model for our universe, in which the entirety of space and time ballooned out from a very hot, very dense point into a homogeneous and ever-expanding vastness. This theory accounts for many of the physical phenomena we observe, but what if that’s not all there was to it?

Pluto’s haze in bands of blue

16 January 2016 Astronomy Now

This processed image is the highest-resolution colour look yet at the haze layers in Pluto’s atmosphere. Shown in approximate true colour, the picture was constructed from a mosaic of four panchromatic images from the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) splashed with Ralph/Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC) four-colour filter data, all acquired by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on 14 July 2015.

Tim Peake’s Principia spacewalk

16 January 2016 Astronomy Now

European Space Agency astronaut Tim Peake pictured during his 4 hour 43 minute spacewalk to replace a failed power regulator and install cabling on the International Space Station. Tim commented on this image: “Today’s exhilarating spacewalk will be etched in my memory forever — quite an incredible feeling!”

Follow a live Proxima Centauri exoplanet hunt with the Pale Red Dot campaign

15 January 2016 Astronomy Now

Pale Red Dot is an international search for an Earth-like exoplanet around the closest star to us, Proxima Centauri. It will be one of the few outreach campaigns allowing the general public to witness the scientific process of data acquisition in modern observatories via blog posts and social media updates. The Pale Red Dot campaign will run from January to April 2016.

ALMA reveals secrets of the most luminous known galaxy

15 January 2016 Astronomy Now

The most luminous galaxy known in the universe — the quasar W2246-0526, seen when the universe was less than 10 percent of its current age — is so turbulent that it is in the process of ejecting its entire supply of star-forming gas, according to new observations with the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA).

Video preview of Tim Peake’s spacewalk

15 January 2016 Astronomy Now

Watch lead spacewalk officer at NASA’s mission Paul Dum provided a step-by-step preview of Tim Peake and Tim Kopra’s spacewalk to make repairs to the International Space Station.

Watch Tim Peake’s spacewalk live

15 January 2016 Astronomy Now

Watch live as ESA astronaut Tim Peake becomes the first British citizen to walk in space. He will step outside the International Space Station with fellow astronaut Tim Kopra to perform crucial repairs on the orbiting outpost’s electrical system.

Green Pea galaxy provides insights into early universe’s evolution

15 January 2016 Astronomy Now

Newly formed dwarf galaxies were likely the reason that the universe heated up about 13 billion years ago, according to new work by an international team of scientists. The finding opens an avenue for better understanding the early period of the universe’s 14-billion-year history.

Possible ice volcano on Pluto has the ‘Wright stuff’

15 January 2016 Astronomy Now

Scientists with NASA’s New Horizons mission have assembled this highest-resolution colour view of Wright Mons, one of two potential cryovolcanoes spotted on the surface of Pluto by the New Horizons spacecraft in July 2015. The feature is 90 miles across and 2.5 miles high, which would make the largest volcano in the outer solar system.