X-Highlight – Page 17 – Astronomy Now

Moon ring shines bright over the VLT

15 June 2022 Keith Cooper

A stunning Moon halo shines in the sky above the Very Large Telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

The Double Double: Detach Lyra’s multiple-star gem

13 June 2022 Mark Armstrong

Epsilon (ε) Lyrae is a showpiece multiple star for double star enthusiasts, famously coined the ‘Double Double’.

Micrometeoroid dings James Webb mirror segment

9 June 2022 Astronomy Now

A micrometeoroid hit one of the James Webb Space Telescope’s primary mirror segments last month, causing “marginally detectable” degradation.

Clouds of stars

8 June 2022 Keith Cooper

The greatest survey yet of the Milky Way Galaxy’s two main satellites, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds has resolved an astonishing 360 million objects – stars, clusters and nebulae.

Zero-in on Messier 13, the great Hercules globular

7 June 2022 Mark Armstrong

Messier 13 (NGC 6205) in Hercules is another of those truly celebrated deep-sky objects like the Orion Nebula, the Pleiades and the Andromeda galaxy.

Baader Planetarium flip mirror II Star Diagonal

3 June 2022 Steve Ringwood

This latest flip-mirror star diagonal from Baader Planetarium offers high-quality views for imagers who want to use a guiding eyepiece, as well as a revolutionary third port for off-axis autoguiding, writes Steve Ringwood.

Galactic light rays shine through the dust

1 June 2022 Keith Cooper

At the heart of IC 5063 is an active supermassive black hole that is busy guzzling gas.

Messier 5’s big appeal in early summer’s globular feast

30 May 2022 Mark Armstrong

Messier 5 in Serpens Caput is a dynamic and beautiful globular cluster that can easily be spotted through a pair of binoculars and fruitfully observed through even a moderate-sized telescope.

Rainbow Astro RST-135 mount

27 May 2022 Astronomy Now

Richard Deighton reviews a compact, high-performance, multi-purpose mount that comes in all the colours of the rainbow.

Mountaintop majesty

27 May 2022 Keith Cooper

The sweeping river of stars that is the Milky Way ribbons over Cerro Paranal in Chile, home to the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (on the peak to the left) and the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy, VISTA (on the peak to the far right).