Archive – Page 312 – Astronomy Now

NASA spacecraft detects impact glass on surface of Mars

9 June 2015 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) has detected deposits of glass within impact craters on Mars. Though formed in the searing heat of a violent impact, such deposits might provide a delicate window into the possibility of past life on the Red Planet.

ALMA’s detailed view of star formation in the distant universe

8 June 2015 Astronomy Now

The Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array has produced a spectacularly detailed image of a distant galaxy known as SDP.81 that is being gravitationally lensed. The image shows a magnified view of the galaxy’s star-forming regions, the likes of which have never been seen before at this level of detail in a galaxy so remote.

Sky-Watcher Stargate-450P Dobsonian

7 June 2015 Steve Ringwood

Steve Ringwood appraises a veritable light bucket in the form of Sky-Watcher’s Stargate-450P — an 18-inch f/4.1, all metal truss tube Dobsonian designed to be easily transported and assembled ready for use in less than 20 minutes.

Celebrating Hubble: The cosmic sombrero

7 June 2015 Astronomy Now

Regarded as one of the most majestic of all of the galaxies in the Universe is the Sombrero, 28 million light years away in the constellation Virgo. This spiral galaxy’s notable features are its thick, torus-like disc with a dark, duty rim and the intense, bulbous, white glow that emanates from its core.

Charting the Milky Way from the inside out

7 June 2015 Astronomy Now

The Sun’s location within the Milky Way’s dust-obscured disc is a complicating factor when trying to determine the Galaxy’s four-arm spiral structure, but researchers are obtaining a clearer picture by mapping embedded star clusters using data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).

Watch planets Venus and Jupiter converge in the June evening sky

6 June 2015 Ade Ashford

Planet Venus — the brilliant lantern hanging over the west-northwest horizon at dusk — reaches its greatest elongation from the Sun on June 6th. It’s still a month away from reaching peak brightness, but before then it has a spectacular close conjunction with largest planet Jupiter at the end of June.

Exiled stars explode far from home

5 June 2015 Astronomy Now

Hubble Space Telescope images confirm that three supernovae discovered several years ago exploded in the dark emptiness of intergalactic space — their nearest neighbours probably 300 light-years away — having been flung from their home galaxies millions or billions of years earlier.

Last look at Hyperion

4 June 2015 Astronomy Now

Saturn’s irregularly shaped moon Hyperion, received its last close inspection from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, before the probe heads on to its icy neighbour Dione.

Hubble observes chaotic dance of Pluto’s moons

4 June 2015 Astronomy Now

A comprehensive analysis of all available Hubble Space Telescope data shows that two of Pluto’s moons, Nix and Hydra, are wobbling unpredictably. Scientists believe the other two small moons, Kerberos and Styx, are likely in a similar situation, pending further study.

Construction to begin on world’s largest optical telescope

3 June 2015 Astronomy Now

Collaborators secure more than $500 million for the historic $1 billion project to build the Giant Magellan Telescope — a seven-mirror colossus gathering more than six times the amount of light of the current largest optical telescopes into images up to 10 times sharper than those of the Hubble Space Telescope.