News – Page 60 – Astronomy Now

Video: JPL’s Rob Manning explains InSight’s entry, descent and landing

25 November 2018 Stephen Clark

JPL chief engineer Rob Manning, a veteran of Mars mission teams dating back to Mars Pathfinder more than two decades ago, describes how the InSight spacecraft will enter the Martian atmosphere and touch down on the red planet.

Rehearsing for more detailed spectroscopic exoplanet analyses

23 November 2018 Astronomy Now

Using adaptive optics and a high-resolution spectrograph, astronomers have confirmed the presence of water in the atmosphere of a planet 130 light years away.

ESA’s CHEOPS exoplanet hunter will launch in October-November 2019

23 November 2018 Astronomy Now

The European Space Agency says the CHEOPS satellite will launch in October 2019 to learn more about how planets in the Earth-to-Neptune size range form and evolve.

TRAPPIST-1 planets likely inhospitable, but one may have water

21 November 2018 Astronomy Now

New research indicates most, if not all, of the worlds orbiting the M dwarf TRAPPIST-1 lost whatever water they might have had early in the star’s history due to intense ultraviolet radiation.

NASA selects Jezero Crater for Mars 2020 landing site

19 November 2018 Astronomy Now

NASA says the Mars 2020 rover will land in Jezero Crater on or near a broad river delta and a now-vanished lake were signs of past microbial life my be awaiting discovery.

Colliding stellar winds hint at possible gamma ray burst to come

19 November 2018 Astronomy Now

Two massive, rapidly-rotating Wolf-Rayet stars are generating a titanic pinwheel of stellar wind-driven dust that hints at a cataclysmic gamma ray burst in the (astronomically) near future.

Most luminous known galaxy gobbles up its neighbours

18 November 2018 Astronomy Now

Data from the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array, or ALMA, shows the most luminous known galaxy is powered in part by dust being sucked in from three nearby galaxies.

Scientists bid Kepler probe final goodnight and farewell

18 November 2018 Astronomy Now

Flight controllers sent a final set of commands to the exoplanet-hunting Kepler spacecraft, shutting the spacecraft down after it finally ran out of propellant, ending a spectacular mission.

Super-Earth found orbiting Barnard’s Star just six light years away

14 November 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers analysing 20 years of data precisely charting the position of Barnard’s Star some six light years away have discovered the second closest exoplanet to Earth.

Gravity waves marked birth of merged hypermassive neutron star

14 November 2018 Astronomy Now

Detailed analysis of gravitational wave data collected last year indicating the merger of two neutron stars shows the result was a single massive neutron star, not a black hole.