News – Page 76 – Astronomy Now

‘Monster’ black hole consuming the Sun’s mass every two days

15 May 2018 Astronomy Now

Australian astronomers have found one of the fastest-growing super-massive black holes in the known universe, a monster 20-billion-solar-mass quasi-stellar object consuming the equivalent of the Sun’s mass every two days.

Space station instrument fills in blanks about binary pulsar

14 May 2018 Astronomy Now

An instrument aboard the International Space Station has detected a binary star system made up of a fast-spinning pulsar and a compact white dwarf that orbit each other every 38 minutes, a record for an accreting millisecond X-ray pulsar.

Astronomers chance upon mysterious binary companion

13 May 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers studying a binary star system in a thick disk of dust chanced upon a large exoplanet – or a small brown dwarf – orbiting at an enormous distance from the parent suns, apparently embedded in its own dust disk.

‘Exiled’ carbon-rich asteroid found in distant Kuiper Belt

12 May 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope have discovered the first carbon-rich asteroid in the distant Kuiper Belt. The asteroid likely originated in the inner Solar System and was ejected by gravitational encounters with the Sun’s gas giants.

NASA approves helicopter to launch with 2020 Mars rover

11 May 2018 Astronomy Now

NASA is adding a small helicopter to the agency’s Mars 2020 rover that will become the first heavier-than-air vehicle to fly on another planet. The technology demonstrator features twin counter-rotating blades.

Stellar mass black holes swarm in Milky Way’s core

11 May 2018 Astronomy Now

The Chandra X-ray Observatory has detected a dozen X-ray binaries containing stellar-mass black holes near the core of the Milky Way. Theoretical analysis indicates thousand more likely are lurking unseen.

Breakthrough Listen begins expanded search for ET

10 May 2018 Astronomy Now

The Breakthrough Listen initiative, dedicated to searching for signs of intelligent life beyond Earth, is using powerful new equipment at the Parkes radio telescope in Australia to scan millions of stars across the disk of the Milky Way.

ESA selects three Cosmic Vision mission proposals for evaluation

9 May 2018 Astronomy Now

The European Space Agency is evaluating three proposals for medium-class missions focused on the entire range of scales in the cosmos, from planetary geology to solar system evolution to gamma ray bursts in the early universe.

Funding approved for sensitive dark matter detector

8 May 2018 Astronomy Now

The U.S. Department of Energy has approved funding for construction of the most sensitive detector ever built, located in a Canadian mine a mile down, to search for evidence of weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, a leading dark matter candidate.

UK astronomers find exoplanets with sodium, helium in atmospheres

7 May 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers at the University of Exeter have found helium in the atmosphere of a Jupiter-class exoplanet – a first – and sodium in the atmosphere of another, an indicator of a cloud-free sky.