News

ALMA starts observing the Sun

17 January 2017 Stephen Clark

New images taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile have revealed otherwise invisible details of our Sun, including a new view of the dark, contorted centre of a sunspot that is nearly twice the diameter of the Earth.

Skywatchers: Get your Iridium flare fix now

16 January 2017 Stephen Clark

The launch of the first batch of new-generation Iridium communications satellites Saturday marked the beginning of the end for the predictable, spectacular flares of reflected sunlight produced by the old-design craft, a favorite of amateur skywatchers for nearly two decades.

Farthest stars in Milky Way might be ripped from another galaxy

16 January 2017 Astronomy Now

New research by Harvard astronomers shows that half of the farthest known stars in our galaxy might have been ripped from another galaxy: the Sagittarius dwarf.

Two asteroid missions get nod from NASA

11 January 2017 Stephen Clark

NASA has selected two robotic missions to visit asteroids in the early 2020s from a field of proposed interplanetary probes, approving projects to explore a metallic relic from the early solar system and a half-dozen so-called Trojan objects left over from the formation of the outer planets.

Hubble captures ‘shadow play’ caused by possible planet

10 January 2017 Stephen Clark

Searching for planets around other stars is a tricky business. They’re so small and faint that it’s hard to spot them. But a possible planet in a nearby stellar system may be betraying its presence in a unique way: by a shadow that is sweeping across the face of a vast pancake-shaped gas-and-dust disk surrounding a young star.

Black holes hide in our cosmic backyard

10 January 2017 Stephen Clark

Monster black holes sometimes lurk behind gas and dust, hiding from the gaze of most telescopes. But they give themselves away when material they feed on emits high-energy X-rays that NASA’s NuSTAR mission can detect. That’s how NuSTAR recently identified two gas-enshrouded supermassive black holes, located at the centers of nearby galaxies.

ALMA starts observing the Sun

Skywatchers: Get your Iridium flare fix now

Farthest stars in Milky Way might be ripped from another galaxy

Two asteroid missions get nod from NASA

Hubble captures ‘shadow play’ caused by possible planet

Black holes hide in our cosmic backyard

NASA’s NEOWISE mission spies one comet, maybe two

Internal debris may be causing problem with Mars rover’s drill

Astronomers team up to give first look at birthplaces of most current stars

Piers Sellers, shuttle astronaut and renowned climate researcher, dies at 61