News – Page 209 – Astronomy Now

Chandra celebrates the International Year of Light

26 January 2015 Astronomy Now

The United Nations has declared 2015 the International Year of Light, and to recognise the start of the event, the Chandra X-ray Center is releasing a set of images that combine data from telescopes tuned to different wavelengths of light.

Orbiting Aragoscope could image Earth and sky at higher resolution than Hubble

25 January 2015 Astronomy Now

University of Colorado researchers are poised to update NASA on their revolutionary Aragoscope concept — a telescope in geostationary orbit capable of imaging objects in space or on Earth at hundreds of times the resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Black hole on a diet creates a ‘changing look’ quasar

24 January 2015 Astronomy Now

Yale University-led researchers have been able to study both the bright and dim phases of a quasar in a single source, an object that had dimmed by a factor of six or seven, compared with observations from a few years earlier.

Rosetta data from ‘C-G’ give closest-ever look at a comet

22 January 2015 Astronomy Now

A special issue of journal Science published 23rd January reveals details about the shape, evolution and lifespan of comet 67P-Churyumov/Gerasimenko.

Milky Way wormholes could be a ‘galactic transport system’

21 January 2015 Astronomy Now

The sci-fi film “Interstellar” raised the idea of space-time tunnels between worlds to recent public consciousness, but a new study prompts scientists to consider Milky Way wormholes as science fact and re-think dark matter more accurately.

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.