News – Page 211 – Astronomy Now

Carnegie hosts Mercury crater-naming contest

16 December 2014 Astronomy Now

To celebrate MESSENGER’s highly successful ten-year mission, you’re invited to immortalise five famous artists, composers or writers by naming craters on Mercury in their honour — but hurry, the contest closes 15th January 2015!

Swarms of Pluto-size objects kick up dust around adolescent Sun-like star

14 December 2014 Astronomy Now

ALMA observations of the dusty protoplanetary disc surrounding a star known as HD 107146 provides evidence for an entire family of orbiting Pluto-size objects, a solar system in transition from early life to maturity where planets have finished forming.

Researchers detect possible signal from dark matter

13 December 2014 Astronomy Now

EPFL scientists have picked up an atypical photon emission in X-rays coming from space, and say it could be evidence for the existence of a particle of dark matter. If confirmed, it could open up new perspectives in cosmology.

New Horizons awake for Pluto encounter

11 December 2014 Stephen Clark

Speeding through the outer solar system after a nine-year trek from Earth, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is awake and preparing for an encounter next summer with Pluto.

NASA’s Curiosity rover finds clues to how water helped shape Martian landscape

9 December 2014 Astronomy Now

Observations by NASA’s Curiosity Rover indicate Mars’ Mount Sharp was built by sediments deposited in a large lake bed over tens of millions of years, challenging the notion that warm and wet conditions were transient, local, or only underground on the Red Planet.

Dunes on Saturn’s moon Titan need firm winds to move

8 December 2014 Astronomy Now

Titan is the only planetary moon known to have fields of wind-blown dunes on its surface. Experiments with the high pressure wind tunnel at Arizona State University’s Planetary Aeolian Laboratory provide key data for understanding dunes on Saturn’s largest moon.

Dawn snaps its best-yet image of dwarf planet Ceres

7 December 2014 Astronomy Now

Launched in 2007, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is preparing for its encounter with dwarf planet Ceres, imaging the body from a distance of 740,000 miles as a final calibration of the probe’s science camera. Dawn will be captured into Ceres’ orbit in March 2015.

Finding infant Earths and potential life just got easier

7 December 2014 Astronomy Now

Two researchers at New York’s Cornell University have found that on infant worlds, the habitable zone is located further away from their young parent star than previously thought. Life could arise on planets in the early phase of the coolest stars.

Pulsar with black hole could hold the ‘holy grail’ of gravity

6 December 2014 Astronomy Now

The intermittent light emitted by a pulsar allows scientists to verify Einstein’s theory of relativity, especially when paired up with another neutron star that interferes with its gravity. According to researchers from Spain and India, this theory could be analysed much more effectively if a pulsar with a black hole were found.

Green light for construction of European Extremely Large Telescope

5 December 2014 Astronomy Now

The European Southern Observatory’s Council has authorised spending of around one billion euros for the construction of the 39-metre aperture European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) on Cerro Armazones in the Chilean Atacama Desert.