News – Page 208 – Astronomy Now

25-million-year-old galactic dust provides insight into supernovae

21 January 2015 Astronomy Now

Australian researchers analysing galactic dust from the last 25 million years within Pacific Ocean floor sediments found far less plutonium-244 from supernovae than expected, findings that are at odds with current theories.

Dawn delivers new image of dwarf planet Ceres

19 January 2015 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is now less than two months away from capture into orbit around Ceres for a 16-month study of the dwarf planet — and its cameras are already revealing tantalising surface details.

Astronomers prepare to map the universe with largest radio telescope ever built

19 January 2015 Astronomy Now

An international team of astronomers prepare to put together the biggest map of the universe ever made using the largest radio telescope ever built — the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).

Parkes Observatory detects first ‘live’ fast radio burst

19 January 2015 Astronomy Now

Having developed a technique to search for real-time ‘fast radio bursts,’ a team of astronomers in Australia has succeeded in observing the first ‘live’ burst with the Parkes telescope from a source up to 5.5 billion light-years from Earth.

Asteroid to fly close by Earth safely on 26th January

17 January 2015 Astronomy Now

On 26th January, asteroid 2004 BL86 will pass Earth just three lunar distances away. It will be the closest approach by any known space rock this large until asteroid 1999 AN10 flies past our planet in 2027.

Lost Beagle 2 spacecraft found on Mars

16 January 2015 Keith Cooper

The UK’s Beagle 2 mission to Mars, which was lost in 2003 as it entered the red planet’s atmosphere, has been rediscovered by NASA’s eagle eye in the Martian sky, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Trans-Neptunian study suggests Solar System contains more planets

16 January 2015 Astronomy Now

Research conducted in Spain and the UK suggests that at least two unknown planets exist beyond Pluto, whose gravitational influence determines the orbits and strange distribution of objects observed beyond Neptune.

Funding approved for 3200-megapixel Large Synoptic Survey Telescope

15 January 2015 Astronomy Now

When the LSST telescope begins operations atop Cerro Pachón in Chile, it will use the largest digital camera ever built and produce the widest, deepest and fastest views of the night sky ever observed.

First light for new exoplanet-hunting telescopes

15 January 2015 Astronomy Now

Astronomers extend the search for Neptune-sized and smaller exoplanets to the southern sky with the Next-Generation Transit Survey — a new array of twelve robotic telescopes built by a UK, Swiss and German consortium.

10 years since we landed on Titan

14 January 2015 Keith Cooper

Ten years ago today, on 14 January 2005, a compact, flattened cylinder called Huygens, chock-full of sensors, cameras and scientific experiments, went hurtling through the orange skies of the mysterious moon Titan.