News – Page 120 – Astronomy Now

A billion stars: Gaia’s first map of the Milky Way

15 September 2016 Keith Cooper

Gaia, the space probe that has been mapping a billion stars in the Galaxy following its launch by the European Space Agency (ESA) in December 2013, has revealed its first revolutionary data.

Pluto ‘paints’ its largest moon red

15 September 2016 Astronomy Now

In June 2015, when the cameras on NASA’s approaching New Horizons spacecraft first spotted the large reddish polar region on Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, mission scientists knew two things: they’d never seen anything like it elsewhere in our Solar System, and they couldn’t wait to get the story behind it.

What happened after the lights came on in the universe?

15 September 2016 Astronomy Now

The National Science Foundation has approved funding to expand the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionisation Array (HERA) in South Africa. Upgrading the number of antennas from 19 to 240 by the year 2018 will enable HERA to study more clearly the impact of cosmic dawn, the moment a few hundred million years after the Big Bang when the first stars and galaxies blazed awake.

Astronomers shed light on different galaxy types

14 September 2016 Astronomy Now

Australian scientists have taken a critical step towards understanding why different types of galaxies exist throughout the universe. The research means that astronomers can now classify galaxies according to their physical properties rather than human interpretation of a galaxy’s appearance.

Astronomers observe star reborn in a flash within the Stingray Nebula

13 September 2016 Astronomy Now

An international team of astronomers has been able to study stellar evolution in real time. Over a period of 30 years, dramatic increases in the temperature of the star SAO 244567 have been observed. Now the star is cooling again, having been reborn into an earlier phase of stellar evolution.

Discovery nearly doubles known quasars from the ancient universe

12 September 2016 Astronomy Now

Quasars are supermassive black holes that sit at the centre of enormous galaxies, accreting matter. They shine so brightly that they are among the most distant objects in the universe that we can currently study. New work from a team led by Carnegie’s Eduardo Bañados has discovered 63 new quasars from when the universe was just 7 percent of its present age.

OSIRIS-REx probe launched to asteroid in compelling search for the origins of life

9 September 2016 Justin Ray

Like reaching back in time to examine the conditions that existed in the ancient solar system, NASA has launched a robotic probe to visit Asteroid Bennu and return an unspoiled sample of the primitive body that may hold the seeds of life.

Young magnetar likely slowest pulsar ever detected

9 September 2016 Astronomy Now

Using X-ray observatories, astronomers have found evidence for what is likely one of the most extreme pulsars, or rotating neutron stars, ever detected. The source exhibits properties of a highly magnetised neutron star, or magnetar, yet its deduced spin period of 6⅔ hours is thousands of times longer than any pulsar ever observed.

Live coverage: The launch of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid mission

8 September 2016 Justin Ray

Beginning a 4.4-billion-mile trek to retrieve a sample from Asteroid Bennu for return to Earth, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft blasted off atop an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral at 12:05 a.m. BST (2305 GMT).

New research reveals hundreds of undiscovered black holes

8 September 2016 Astronomy Now

It is only as recently as 2013 that astrophysicists found individual black holes in globular clusters via rare phenomena in which a companion star donates material to the black hole. New research by the University of Surrey on a globular cluster known as NGC 6101 shows that it could host several hundred black holes — a phenomenon that until recently was thought impossible.