News – Page 203 – Astronomy Now

Life ‘not as we know it’ possible on Saturn’s moon Titan

1 March 2015 Astronomy Now

Liquid water is a requirement for life on Earth, but on much colder worlds life might exist beyond the bounds of water-based chemistry. Researchers at Cornell University offer a template for life that could thrive in the cryogenic seas of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.

Curiosity rover drills rock sample at Mount Sharp

28 February 2015 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover has used its drill to collect sample powder from inside a rock target called “Telegraph Peak.” Examining rock samples like these will help scientists understand how the ancient wet environment of Mars dried up.

Astronomers find newborn stars at the edge of the Galaxy

28 February 2015 Astronomy Now

Using survey images from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, astronomers have discovered two clusters of stars forming thousands of light-years below the galactic disc — a stellar nursery in what seems to be the middle of nowhere.

Calm regions protect organic molecules around a supermassive black hole

27 February 2015 Astronomy Now

Researchers using the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) have discovered zones where certain organic molecules somehow endure the intense X-rays and ultraviolet radiation near the supermassive black hole at the centre of galaxy Messier 77.

Are volcanoes responsible for twin bright spots on Ceres?

26 February 2015 Astronomy Now

As NASA’s Dawn spacecraft heads for its historic rendezvous with dwarf planet Ceres next week, further mysteries unfold on the small world. Now seen in higher resolution, a volcano-like bright spot has a nearby companion.

Ancient quasar with massive black hole found at cosmic dawn

25 February 2015 Astronomy Now

An international team of astronomers has found a huge and ancient black hole which was powering the brightest object in the early universe. The black hole’s mass is 12 billion times that of the Sun, and was at the centre of a quasar that pumped out a million billion times the energy of our star.

Hubble sees pulverised planet in Beta Pictoris debris disc?

23 February 2015 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to take the most detailed picture to date of a large, edge-on, gas-and-dust disc encircling the 20-million-year-old star Beta Pictoris, revealing what may be the pulverisation of a Mars-size body in a giant collision.

MAVEN spacecraft’s first deep dip into Martian atmosphere

21 February 2015 Astronomy Now

NASA’s MAVEN mission has just completed the first of five deep-dip manoeuvres, lowering its closest approach to Mars to just 125 kilometres (78 miles), which will yield valuable data about the upper atmosphere of the Red Planet.

Space telescopes measure speed and shape of ultra-fast quasar winds

20 February 2015 Astronomy Now

Astronomers using NASA and ESA X-ray space telescopes discover that PDS 456, an extremely bright black hole known as a quasar more than 2 billion light-years away, sustains winds that carry more energy every second than is emitted by more than a trillion suns.

New Horizons spots Pluto’s small moons

19 February 2015 Astronomy Now

Exactly 85 years after Clyde Tombaugh’s historic discovery of Pluto, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft set to encounter the icy dwarf planet this summer is providing its first views of the small moons orbiting Pluto.