Astronomy Now – Page 67

Curiosity captures stunning panorama on slopes of Mount Sharp

10 February 2019 Astronomy Now

Before departing Vera Rubin Ridge on the slopes of Mount Sharp, NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover sent back a spectacular 360-degree panorama.

A stellar nursery bubbles up in the Large Magellanic Cloud

8 February 2019 Astronomy Now

Vast bubbles of ionised hydrogen gas are illuminated by hot young stars in gargantuan stellar nurseries like this one in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud. This complex assembly of bubbles is host to a wide variety of objects, including one massive stellar object emitting a 33-lightyear-long jet.

Surprisingly salty young star found in Orion complex

8 February 2019 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have identified sodium chloride – table salt – in a vast ring of debris around a massive young star, the first such discovery to date.

InSight Mars lander deploys seismometer shield

5 February 2019 Astronomy Now

A robot arm aboard NASA’s InSight Mars lander has completed deployment of a sensitive French-built seismometer and its critical wind and thermal shield.

New analysis shows Milky Way a decidedly ‘warped” spiral

5 February 2019 Astronomy Now

Precisely mapping more than 1,300 Cepheid variable stars with known distances, astronomers have shown the disc of the Milky Way galaxy is warped.

A meteoroid crashes on eclipse-darkened moon

3 February 2019 Astronomy Now

Amateur and professional astronomers alike captured the flash generated by a small meteoroid crashing into the moon during the January lunar eclipse.

Wreckage of a doomed star in the Large Magellanic Cloud

1 February 2019 Astronomy Now

A supernova remnant in the Large Magellanic cloud, imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2006, shows the spectacular aftermath of a supernova blast, generating a cloud of debris expanding at 18 million kilometres per hour (11 million mph).

Gravity measurements surprise Mars researchers

1 February 2019 Astronomy Now

Analysing gravity data from the Curiosity Mars rover, researchers have found Gale Crater might not have been completely filled in the distant past.

Hubble stumbles on previously unseen dwarf galaxy

31 January 2019 Astronomy Now

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope to determine the age of a globular cluster stumbled on a previously unknown, relatively nearby dwarf galaxy.

X-ray observations suggest dark energy may be growing stronger

30 January 2019 Astronomy Now

Using quasars as “standard candles,” astronomers say they’ve been able to measure the effects of dark energy back to within a billion years of the Big Bang.