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UK team announces plan to crowd-source moon mission

20 November 2014 Stephen Clark

Scientists hope private backers will kick-start a mission to land a robotic probe on the South Pole of the moon within the next 10 years, drill deep into lunar bedrock and analyze primordial core samples to study the origins of the solar system.

Gravity saved the universe after the Big Bang?

19 November 2014 Astronomy Now

Recent theories suggest that the production of Higgs particles in the inflationary phase of the early universe should have led to instability and collapse. Now a European team offers an explanation why this didn’t happen, answering fundamental questions about how we are all here.

Illustris Collaboration depiction of large-scale structure in the universe.

Quasar axes align with large-scale cosmic structures

19 November 2014 Astronomy Now

A European research team has used data from ESO’s Very large Telescope in Chile to discover that the rotational axes of quasars align with large-scale structures in the universe.

MAVEN begins science mission at Mars

18 November 2014 Stephen Clark

NASA’s newest Mars orbiter has formally started a one-year research campaign to study an ancient case of climate change that starved the red planet of water, breathable air and potential life, scientists said Monday.

Rosetta’s OSIRIS camera captures Philae’s bounce across comet

17 November 2014 Astronomy Now

A stunning sequence of images from Rosetta’s narrow-angle OSIRIS camera shows the dramatic journey of the Philae lander as it approaches and bounces on Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko on 12th November 2014.

Spiral galaxy NGC 986 in the constellation of Fornax

Hubble captures spiral galaxy in the Furnace

17 November 2014 Ade Ashford

This new Hubble image is a snapshot of NGC 986 — a barred spiral galaxy in the southern constellation of Fornax (The Furnace), discovered by James Dunlop in 1828.

Rosetta imagery shows Philae at first landing site

16 November 2014 Astronomy Now

Images recorded by Rosetta’s navigation camera appear to show the lander, its shadow and the dust cloud kicked up by its first touchdown.

NASA map shows 20-year global distribution of asteroid impacts

15 November 2014 Astronomy Now

A new map released by NASA shows the distribution and intensity of more than 500 separate day and nighttime bolide (fireball) events recorded by U.S. government sensors in the period 1994-2013.

Philae returns all stored science data before falling silent

15 November 2014 William Harwood

Europe’s Philae lander transmitted all its stored science data from the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko before falling silent as battery power failed.

Chandra X-ray Observatory image of Sagittarius A*

Milky Way’s supermassive black hole a neutrino factory?

14 November 2014 Astronomy Now

A research team from the University of Wisconsin has correlated data from three NASA satellites and a ground-based neutrino detector to show that Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, is most likely a powerful neutrino generator.