Astronomy Now – Page 219

Merging galaxies break radio silence

29 May 2015 Astronomy Now

A large Hubble survey confirms an unambiguous link between the presence of supermassive black holes that power high-speed, radio-signal-emitting jets and the merger history of their host galaxies. The results lend significant weight to the case for jets being the result of merging black holes.

Why Mars: NASA and the Politics of Space Exploration

28 May 2015 Astronomy Now

W Henry Lambright presents a chronological account of how Mars exploration waxed and waned in tune with the political and economic priorities of the U.S. Government in a book that will expand your views about Mars’ place on the priority list of planetary destinations, says reviewer Malcolm Smith.

NASA’s New Horizons sees more detail as it draws closer to Pluto

28 May 2015 Astronomy Now

What a difference 20 million miles makes! Images of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons are growing in scale as the spacecraft approaches its mysterious target. The new images, taken May 8th-12th using a powerful telescopic camera and downlinked last week, reveal more detail about Pluto’s complex and high contrast surface.

Faint galaxies found hiding in the Virgo Cluster

27 May 2015 Astronomy Now

A recent survey using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope has discovered hundreds of new galaxies in the Virgo Cluster, the nearest large cluster of galaxies. Most are extremely faint dwarf galaxies, objects hundreds of thousands of times less massive than our Milky Way, and amongst the faintest galaxies known in the universe.

NASA's reworked image of Europa based on late 1990s data from the Galileo spacecraft.

Science instruments selected for NASA’s Europa mission

27 May 2015 Astronomy Now

NASA has selected nine science instruments for a future mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa in which a spacecraft would make multiple close flybys of the icy world — thought to contain a global subsurface ocean — to investigate whether the mysterious moon could harbour conditions suitable for life.

Dragonfly’s compound ‘eye’ reveals very faint galaxy structure

26 May 2015 Astronomy Now

At CASCA 2015, Roberto Abraham from the University of Toronto describes the first results from the Dragonfly Telephoto Array — an innovative, multi-lens system designed to produce digital images of ultra-low surface brightness objects at visible wavelengths — that is at least ten times more efficient than its nearest rival.

Hubble revisits tangled galaxy NGC 6240

25 May 2015 Astronomy Now

Not all galaxies are neatly shaped, as this new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image of NGC 6240 clearly demonstrates. Hubble previously released an image of this galaxy in 2008, but the knotted region was only revealed in these new observations from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Hubble observes one-of-a-kind star nicknamed ‘Nasty 1’

24 May 2015 Astronomy Now

Astronomers were surprised to find a disc-like structure around a hefty, rapidly aging star nicknamed “Nasty 1,” which has never been seen before around a Wolf-Rayet star in our galaxy. The star may represent a brief transitory stage in the evolution of massive stars.

Galaxy’s cannibalistic snacking habits revealed

23 May 2015 Astronomy Now

A team of Australian and Spanish astronomers have caught a greedy galaxy gobbling on its neighbours and leaving crumbs of evidence about its dietary past. Their successful and novel approach to investigating how galaxies grow is being used in a new program to further refine the best models of galaxy evolution.

WISE discovery of the most luminous galaxy in the universe

22 May 2015 Astronomy Now

A remote galaxy shining with the light of more than 300 trillion suns has been discovered using data from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). It is the most luminous galaxy found to date and belongs to a new class of objects — extremely luminous infrared galaxies, or ELIRGs.