Archive – Page 349 – Astronomy Now

Two families of comets found around nearby star

24 October 2014 Astronomy Now

ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile has been used to make the most complete census of comets around another star ever created.

Ring of Stellar Fire

24 October 2014 Astronomy Now

An image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, taken in infrared light, shows where the action is taking place in the galaxy NGC 1291.

Chinese probe launched on round-trip flight to the Moon

24 October 2014 Stephen Clark

China launched a demonstrator probe Thursday on a round-trip flight around the Moon to test out a heat shield and landing capsule planned for use on a lunar sample return mission in 2017.

Latest images show spectacular streams of dust from Rosetta’s comet

24 October 2014 Astronomy Now

A new image from the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission show a clearly visible increase in activity from comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

Live coverage of the partial solar eclipse

23 October 2014 Astronomy Now

Live coverage of the partial solar eclipse from NASA Television.

Hubble creates view of Comet Siding Spring alongside the red planet

23 October 2014 Astronomy Now

This composite Hubble Space Telescope image captures the positions of comet Siding Spring and Mars in a never-before-seen close passage of a comet.

North America gets ready for a partial solar eclipse

23 October 2014 Astronomy Now

A partial eclipse of the Sun is set to wow North Americans this afternoon (23 October) as the Moon’s silhouette will be seen to cover as much as 50 percent of the Sun from the USA, and up to 80 percent of the Sun in northern Canada.

Mosaic-making: Asimoplan software

23 October 2014 Steve Ringwood

Visual observers now have the benefit of wide-field eyepieces but astro-imagers are somewhat limited to the size of their CCD chip and when it comes to imaging large objects, they must take several images and build a mosaic.

Mars spacecraft safe after fortuitous comet encounter

20 October 2014 Stephen Clark

A fleet of robotic spacecraft orbiting Mars got a front row seat to space history Sunday and lived to tell about it, giving scientists their first close-up look at a comet fresh from a cloud of primordial mini-worlds at the outer reaches of the solar system.

Last-ditch search finds fresh targets for New Horizons

19 October 2014 Stephen Clark

Scientists using the powerful Hubble Space Telescopes have identified three tiny objects at the frontier of the solar system that NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft could visit after making an historic flyby of Pluto next summer.