News – Page 66 – Astronomy Now

Exoplanet found orbiting Mr. Spock’s home star

19 September 2018 Astronomy Now

An automated telescope has found a super-Earth orbiting the star 40 Eridani A, famous to Star Trek fans as Science Officer Spock’s home star. It is twice the size of Earth and completes an orbit every 42 days.

Large Magellanic Cloud may be result of past galactic merger

18 September 2018 Astronomy Now

Computer simulations indicated the Large Cloud of Magellan may have merged with another luminous galaxy three to five billion years ago, a scenario that explains unusual stellar motions and ages.

Exoplanet-hunter TESS captures razor-sharp ‘first light’ images

18 September 2018 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite’s four cameras have captured a razor-sharp “first light” image of the southern sky, demonstrating the photographic prowess needed to hunt down planets around nearby stars.

Tracking a star’s movement by measuring its age and chemistry

16 September 2018 Astronomy Now

By measuring a star’s age and chemical makeup, astronomers can determine where a sun originated in the galactic disk before migrating outward. The Sun, it turns out, likely formed about 2,000 light years closer to the Milky Way’s core.

Hubble’s BUFFALO project looks back at the big picture

13 September 2018 Astronomy Now

The Hubble Space Telescope is re-visiting six huge galaxy clusters, taking wide-angle views to help astronomers understand more about how galaxies were distributed across the early universe and what governed their evolution.

Artificial intelligence used to find undetected fast radio bursts

12 September 2018 Astronomy Now

Artificial intelligence algorithms found 72 previously undetected fast radio bursts in a source 3 billion light years from Earth, demonstrating a powerful new tool for radio astronomers faced sifting through enormous amounts of data.

Neutron star merger generated illusion of superluminal jet

10 September 2018 Astronomy Now

The merger of two neutron stars, observed in August, created two powerful jets streaming away into space at nearly the speed of light, in agreement with theoretical predictions and shedding new light on gamma ray bursts.

Dawn probe nears end of successful mission to Vesta, Ceres

8 September 2018 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, almost out of fuel for maintaining its orientation and aiming its antenna toward Earth, is nearing the end of its life after a trail-blazing 11-year mission orbiting the asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres.

Two galaxies collide leaving luminous ring of collapsed stars

7 September 2018 Astronomy Now

Observations of a ring galaxy, the result of a cosmic collision with another galaxy more than 300 million years ago, reveal a necklace-like ring of ultraluminous X-ray sources powered by black holes, neutron stars or both.

Fierce molecular winds slow runaway starbirth in early galaxy

6 September 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have detected a powerful molecular wind being blasted away from a starburst galaxy in the early universe, the earliest example yet of a mechanism thought to prevent galaxies from growing too large too fast.