News – Page 141 – Astronomy Now

U.S. military rules out collision as cause of Hitomi satellite’s woes

30 March 2016 Stephen Clark

As Japanese ground controllers struggle to restore communications with a tumbling space telescope in orbit, the U.S. military’s space surveillance experts have eliminated one cause for the satellite’s troubles.

Amateur astronomers video impact on Jupiter

30 March 2016 Ade Ashford

Unbeknown to two European amateur astronomers 1000 miles apart capturing video of Jupiter through their telescopes in the early hours of Thursday, 17 March, their digital footage would subsequently show confirmation of a totally unexpected phenomenon — the likely impact of a small comet or asteroid on the edge of the solar system’s largest planet.

Computer model explains sustained eruptions on Saturn’s moon Enceladus

29 March 2016 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has observed geysers erupting on Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus since 2005, but the process that drives and sustains these eruptions has remained a mystery. Now, scientists have pinpointed a mechanism by which cyclical tidal stresses exerted by Saturn can drive Enceladus’s long-lived eruptions.

A highly eccentric “hot Jupiter” exoplanet

29 March 2016 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have observed the extreme temperature variations of HD 80606 b, a Jupiter-sized exoplanet with a highly eccentric, comet-like orbit that brings it scorchingly close to its parent star every 111 days. The researchers also calculated the planet’s rotation rate — the first exoplanet rotation rate ever obtained.

Possible signature of dark matter annihilation detected

29 March 2016 Astronomy Now

Atoms or their constituents account for a mere 4.9 percent of the universe. The rest is dark matter, so understanding this ubiquitous yet mysterious substance is a prime goal of modern astrophysics. By studying the spatial distribution of gamma-ray emission in the Milky Way, astronomers believe they have now identified a signature of dark matter annihilation.

Japan’s newest space telescope goes silent

28 March 2016 Stephen Clark

Japan has lost contact with the newly-launched Hitomi space telescope, and ground observations indicate the satellite has shed debris and may be tumbling in orbit more than 350 miles above Earth.

Tracing star formation rates in distant galaxies

27 March 2016 Astronomy Now

To understand the physics of the evolution and formation of galaxies it is crucial to know at what rate galaxies form stars, referred to as the star-formation rate. A group of researchers used Earth- and space-based telescopes to create a complete multi-wavelength picture of distant galaxies.

A new view of the X-ray sky

26 March 2016 Astronomy Now

In the 1990s, the ROSAT X-ray satellite performed the first deep all-sky survey. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) have revisited the all-sky survey, publishing an extended “2RXS catalogue” — the deepest and cleanest X-ray all-sky survey to date.

Magnetar could have boosted explosion of extremely bright supernova

25 March 2016 Astronomy Now

Super-luminous supernovae (SLSNe) are a relatively new and rare class of stellar explosions, 10 to 100 times brighter than normal supernovae. According to a new model, researchers have found that highly magnetised, rapidly spinning neutron stars called magnetars could explain the energy source behind SLSNe.

Dark comet’s flyby of Earth observed with radar and infrared

25 March 2016 Astronomy Now

Astronomers were watching when comet P/2016 BA14 flew close by Earth on 22 March at a distance of slightly more than nine times the distance of the Moon. Radar images from the flyby indicate that the body is about a kilometre in diameter, while infrared spectra indicate that the comet’s nucleus is as dark as fresh asphalt.