News

How an old law might bring new life to the search for habitable exoplanets

18 March 2015 Astronomy Now

Researchers at the Australian National University and the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen have calculated that billions of stars in the Milky Way will have between one and three planets in the habitable zone conducive to liquid water, by using a law proposed in 1766 that helped to discover Uranus.

Moon impact! NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter finds new craters

17 March 2015 Astronomy Now

On 17th March 2013, an object hit the Moon’s surface in Mare Imbrium and exploded in a flash of light nearly 10 times as bright as anything ever recorded before. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has found the new 19-metre-wide crater plus more than two-dozen others.

Chiron may be second minor planet to possess Saturn-like rings

17 March 2015 Astronomy Now

Five bodies in our Solar System are known to bear rings — Saturn, and to a lesser extent, rings of gas and dust also encircle Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune; then Chariklo was added this haloed group last year, one of a class of minor planets called centaurs — now the progenitor of the centaurs, Chiron, most likely has rings too.

Download NASA’s Asteroid Data Hunter software and help save the planet

16 March 2015 Astronomy Now

New free software for home computers based on an algorithm created through NASA’s Asteroid Grand Challenge has the potential to increase the number of new asteroid discoveries by enabling amateur astronomers to analyse their own images.

OSIRIS detects water ice in the neck of comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko

16 March 2015 Astronomy Now

The Hapi region of 67P is located between the comet’s two lobes and has proven to be particularly active, displaying a bluish reflectivity spectrum in colour images captured with Rosetta’s OSIRIS camera. This strongly suggests that frozen water is mixed with the dust at the surface.

Rosetta begins listening for signs of life from comet lander

14 March 2015 Stephen Clark

Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft is trying to contact the Philae landing probe for the first time since the robot fell silent after a bouncy landing on a comet in November.

Hubble views of Ganymede’s aurorae suggest a vast salty subsurface ocean

13 March 2015 Astronomy Now

Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is the largest moon in our Solar System and the only moon with its own magnetic field. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has the best evidence yet for a 60-mile deep underground saline ocean on Ganymede, believed to contain more water than all the water on Earth’s surface.