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A “heart” from Pluto as New Horizons’ flyby begins

9 July 2015 Astronomy Now

Now just five days away from its close encounter with dwarf planet Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft beams back the first image to be received since the 4 July anomaly that sent the spacecraft into safe mode, indicating that all systems appear to be functioning normally. The flyby sequence of science observations is officially underway.

Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting 2015 – report 3

8 July 2015 Astronomy Now

In his third report from the Royal Astronomical Society’s NAM2015, Kulvinder Singh Chadha examines the Sun in X-ray and ultraviolet wavelengths from three different spacecraft, dons a virtual reality planetarium headset, and investigates if the proposed James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) could discern Earth-sized worlds that are habitable.

Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting 2015 – report 2

7 July 2015 Astronomy Now

In his second report from the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting 2015, Kulvinder Singh Chadha ponders the nature of dark matter and whether cosmic jets — jets of material from active galaxies travelling close to the speed of light — may correlate with dense regions of dark matter in the Universe.

Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting 2015 – report 1

6 July 2015 Astronomy Now

The Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting 2015 in Llandudno, Wales, 5—9 July
is the largest regular professional astronomy event in the UK and will see leading researchers from around the world presenting the latest work in a variety of fields. Kulvinder Singh Chadha reports from the conference.

Stellar fireworks predicted during rare pulsar encounter in 2018

6 July 2015 Astronomy Now

Astronomers are expecting high-energy explosions when pulsar J2032 swings close by its massive companion star in early 2018. The pulsar will plunge through a disc of gas and dust surrounding the star, triggering cosmic fireworks from radio wavelengths to the highest-energy gamma rays detectable.

How to find Pluto around the time of its historic encounter with New Horizons

5 July 2015 Ade Ashford

Dwarf planet Pluto will receive its first robotic emissary from Earth in the form of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on 14 July. Since this enigmatic world is also at opposition on 6 July, here’s our guide to finding Pluto with large backyard telescopes.

SOFIA in the right place at the right time for Pluto observations

4 July 2015 Astronomy Now

Currently operating out of Christchurch, New Zealand, the NASA/DLR SOFIA airborne 2.5-metre infrared telescope had to make last-minute flight path corrections to successfully secure observations of Pluto’s atmosphere as it occulted a distant star.

Dark matter map begins to reveal the universe’s early history

3 July 2015 Astronomy Now

Astronomers using the 870 million-pixel Hyper Suprime-Cam camera on the 8.2-metre Subaru telescope in Hawaii have begun a wide-area survey of the distribution of dark matter in the universe.

Two faces of Pluto revealed in colour imagery

2 July 2015 Stephen Clark

The first well-resolved colour photos of Pluto from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, speeding toward a close-up encounter July 14, show a world blotched with dark features spanning two very different sides of the dwarf planet.

Picture This

Buried in the heart of a giant

2 July 2015 Astronomy Now

This is a young open cluster of stars known as NGC 2367, an infant stellar grouping that lies at the centre of an immense and ancient structure on the margins of the Milky Way, captured by the Wide Field Imager (WFI) camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile.