News – Page 70 – Astronomy Now

Adaptive optics ‘tomography’ provides Hubble-class images

19 July 2018 Astronomy Now

A new adaptive optics system being tested on ESO’s Very Large Telescope provides a level of image sharpness that rivals or exceeds the Hubble Space Telescope in narrow fields of view.

A dozen new moons found orbiting Jupiter, pushing total to 79

17 July 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers searching for a hypothesised large planet in the outer solar system far beyond Pluto stumbled across 12 previously undetected moons orbiting Jupiter, pushing the giant planet’s total to a record 79.

Black hole-neutron star mergers could resolve Hubble constant conflict

16 July 2018 Astronomy Now

MIT researchers say gravitational waves from black hole-neutron star mergers may allow astronomers to more accurately measure how fast the Universe is expanding, resolving currently conflicting measurements of the Hubble constant.

MeerKAT radio telescope images Milky Way’s blazing heart

15 July 2018 Astronomy Now

South Africa’s newly inaugurated 64-dish MeerKAT radio telescope, a precursor to the Square Kilometre Array, has imaged the heart of the Milky Way in unprecedented detail, revealing long, magnetised filaments and the blazing core where a supermassive black hole lurks unseen at optical wavelengths.

A new volcano on Io? Juno data indicate ‘hot spot’ on active moon

14 July 2018 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Juno spacecraft now orbiting Juno has spotted what could be a new volcano on Io, the innermost Galilean moon, a tortured world featuring hundreds of volcanoes and lava flows powered by Jupiter’s crushing gravity

Cosmic mystery deepens with conflicting measurements of Hubble constant

13 July 2018 Astronomy Now

The Hubble constant indicates how fast the Universe is expanding in the wake of the Big Bang. New observations using two independent techniques have come up with different values, signs of possible problems with current theory.

Astronomers trace cosmic ray neutrino back to remote blazar

13 July 2018 Astronomy Now

For the first time, a ghostly neutrino detected at the IceCube observatory in Antarctica has been traced back to its source, a super-massive black hole in a “blazar” galaxy four billion light years away.

Cassini ‘hears” plasma waves connecting Saturn to Enceladus

10 July 2018 Astronomy Now

Data recorded by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shortly before it was directed to crash into Saturn at the end of its historic mission reveal powerful plasma waves moving from Saturn to its icy moon Enceladus.

Quasar provides clues about conditions in the early Universe

10 July 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers have found a brilliant quasar harbouring a super-massive black hole some 13 billion light years away, one of the most distant ever discovered, providing a tool of sorts to study conditions in the very early Universe.

Kepler spacecraft, nearly out of fuel, suspends exoplanet search

9 July 2018 Astronomy Now

The Kepler spacecraft, nearly out of fuel, has suspended its search for exoplanets pending the downlink of stored data. Flight controllers hope to resume observations in August for as long as the dwindling propellant holds out.