Archive – Page 46 – Astronomy Now

Why do eclipses happen?

9 June 2021 Keith Cooper

Solar eclipses are relatively rare; they happen when the Moon moves directly and precisely in front of the Sun. Why are they so infrequent, and why do solar eclipses always come in pairs with lunar eclipses?

Jupiter’s moon Ganymede seen up close for first time in 21 years

9 June 2021 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Juno spacecraft flew by Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, Monday on the first close-up visit to the icy world since 2000. The first images from the flyby show Ganymede’s cratered, icy surface in “remarkable detail,” NASA said.

Engineers ‘sandblast’ InSight lander to clear dust from solar arrays

7 June 2021 Astronomy Now

Engineers come up with a novel way to clear light-obscuring dust from the InSight Mars lander’s solar panels: sandblasting.

Don’t miss the partial eclipse of the Sun

7 June 2021 Mark Armstrong

On the morning of Thursday 10 June, there’s a partial eclipse of the Sun visible across the length and breadth of the UK. This special and spectacular event happens when the Moon appears to take a significant bite out of the Sun as it moves between us and the Sun, partially blocking the Sun’s disc from our view.

After a 30-year hiatus, NASA is returning to Venus with two new probes

4 June 2021 Astronomy Now

NASA is funding two new missions to Venus, one an orbiting radar mapper and another that will drop a small probe into the cloud-shrouded planet’s churning atmosphere.

Hubble Space Telescope captures intriguing view of lopsided galaxy

4 June 2021 Astronomy Now

The Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies features more than 300 galaxies exhibiting an unusual appearance, including NGC 2276, seen here in a spectacular photo from the Hubble Space Telescope.e

Mars helicopter ‘muscles through’ navigation glitch on sixth flight

31 May 2021 Stephen Clark

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter safely landed after wobbling, suffering power spikes, and enduring velocity fluctuations on its sixth flight at Mars.

Galactic light rays

29 May 2021 Astronomy Now

Bands of light and dark shine out from the shrouded core of the active galaxy IC 5063, which is a lenticular (disc) galaxy located 156 million light years away in the Southern Hemisphere constellation of Indus.

The deep abyss

27 May 2021 Astronomy Now

A generous sprinkling of galaxies on an inky black sky is captured by the Victor M. Blanco four-metre telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile.

Rocky layer cakes on the red planet

25 May 2021 Astronomy Now

These layered hills, seen in this false-colour image of a portion of Arabia Terra on Mars, may possibly have a watery origin. Arabia Terra is a highland region in Mars’ northern hemisphere, dating back to the red planet’s Noachian geological era, around four billion years ago.