News – Page 76 – Astronomy Now

Computer simulations suggest reason for strange moon shapes

22 May 2018 William Harwood

Computer simulations show how some of Saturn’s small inner moons might have acquired their unique pasta-like shapes thanks to low-velocity near head-on impacts of smaller bodies in the presence of extremely strong tidal forces.

Hubble catalogues star-forming regions in nearby galaxies

19 May 2018 Astronomy Now

To learn more about the processes behind star formation, the Hubble Space Telescope has examined 50 relatively nearby galaxies to compile the most comprehensive ultraviolet-light look at active star-birth regions.

TESS planet hunter snaps test photo showing 200,000 stars

18 May 2018 Astronomy Now

NASA’s planet-hunting TESS satellite has completed a gravity assist flyby of the moon and sent back an initial test image from one of its four cameras showing about 200,000 stars. Science operations are expected to begin in mid June.

Multiverse more hospitable than previously thought?

18 May 2018 Astronomy Now

A new computer analysis suggests much higher levels of dark energy would not, as many believe, prevent the formation of stars and planets, implying life might be more common across the Multiverse – assuming it exists – than previously believed.

Star formation underway 250 million years after Big Bang

17 May 2018 Astronomy Now

Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array have observed a galaxy 13.3 billion light years away that includes stars that must have been shining just 250 million years after the Big Bang.

More evidence for water vapour jetting from icy Europa

16 May 2018 Astronomy Now

Data collected by the Galileo spacecraft during a 1997 flyby of Jupiter’s moon Europa indicate the probe likely flew through a plume of water vapor, the latest evidence the icy moon likely harbours a vast sub-surface ocean beneath its frozen crust.

‘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.