News – Page 57 – Astronomy Now

Baby star throws a fit, erupts with titanic flare

28 December 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have observed a titanic flare on a young star that was 10,000 times more powerful than any outburst ever recorded from Earth’s Sun, possibly influencing the eventual development of planets.

Saturn might lose its rings much sooner than expected

26 December 2018 Astronomy Now

The icy material making up Saturn’s rings is raining down into the planet’s atmosphere at rates implying the rings will disappear over the next 100 million to 300 million years.

Researchers find a “fossil” cloud made up of the original star stuff

25 December 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have found only the third example of a fossil cloud made up of material generated in the Big Bang that’s not “polluted” by heavier elements cooked up in supernova blasts.

Ultima Thule poses an initial surprise for New Horizons team

23 December 2018 Astronomy Now

NASA’s New Horizons probe, racing toward a 1 January flyby of the Kuiper Belt body known as Ultima Thule, has given scientists their first major surprise: the oblong, or binary body shows no signs of a discernible light curve suggesting rotation.

Radar images reveal near-Earth asteroid on path by Earth

22 December 2018 Astronomy Now

Radar images reveal a 1.6-kilometre-long (1-mile-long) splinter-like asteroid tumbling as it races along a trajectory carrying it within 3 million kilometres (1.8 million miles) of Earth.

Faint glow generated by galaxy clusters helps map dark matter

22 December 2018 Astronomy Now

By studying the faint glow produced by freely floating stars in mammoth galaxy clusters, astronomers may be able to map the distribution of dark matter in a more efficient manner.

Astronomers find most distant Solar System body to date

19 December 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have found the most distant body yet discovered in Earth’s solar system, a dwarf planet 120 times farther from the Sun than Earth.

New Horizons’ path to Ultima Thule clear of hazards

19 December 2018 Astronomy Now

After a careful analysis of the path ahead, no rings or moons have been found that could threaten the New Horizons probe on its approach to Ultima Thule.

Binary star ‘odd couple’ spotted by ALMA

16 December 2018 Astronomy Now

The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array has spotted a young binary star system in which two very different size suns are in the process of forming in a swirling cloud of gas and dust.

Filling in the blanks in Hubble’s ‘deep field’ view of cosmos

14 December 2018 Astronomy Now

A newly released “deep field” image from the Hubble Space Telescope captures galaxies during the epoch of massive star formation three billion years after the Big Bang.