News – Page 80 – Astronomy Now

New Horizons spacecraft’s next distant destination gets a nickname

17 March 2018 Stephen Clark

The frozen faraway miniature world targeted for a high-speed flyby by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on 1 January 2019, now has a nickname: Ultima Thule.

Stephen Hawking 1942-2018

14 March 2018 Keith Cooper

Professor Stephen Hawking, who was probably the most renowned and recognisable scientist in the world, and famed for his work on black holes, has died aged 76.

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot extending upward as it shrinks

14 March 2018 Astronomy Now

A new study indicates Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is drifting westward faster than before and extending upward, but analysis of historical data confirms it is shrinking overall and now is just slightly larger than Earth.

New instrument built to search for Earth-like exo-planets

14 March 2018 William Harwood

New high precision spectrometers are expected to help ground-based telescopes detect the presence of Earth-size planets orbiting other stars by measuring subtle changes in starlight caused by the gravitational tugs of orbiting exoplanets.

Ancient ‘red and dead’ galaxy sheds light on big bang relics

12 March 2018 William Harwood

Astronomers have identified a relatively nearby “relic galaxy,” a massive collection of ancient stars that may shed light on galaxy formation in the ancient universe.

New Juno findings amaze scientists studying Jupiter

7 March 2018 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Juno spacecraft has found Jupiter’s cloud belts and zones extend down some 3,000 kilometres and contain about 1 percent of the planet’s mass. Below that, the world seems to rotate as a nearly rigid body.

Huge debris ring holds clues to planet formation around young star

6 March 2018 Astronomy Now

The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a vast 150-billion-mile-wide ring of debris around a young star that likely holds clues about how a variety of environmental factors affect planet formation.

Supermassive black holes growing faster than expected

4 March 2018 Astronomy Now

Supermassive black holes lurking in the hearts of countless galaxies are growing faster than astronomers suspected based on earlier studies.

A very, very bad day for Earth’s nearest exoplanet neighbour

27 February 2018 Astronomy Now

Proxima b, the nearest exoplanet to Earth, was blasted by a tremendous solar flare last March, an outburst that bathed the world in 4,000 times the amount of radiation Earth receives from a major flare.

Hubble data indicate universe growing faster than expected

23 February 2018 William Harwood

Time-consuming observations by the Hubble Space Telescope indicate the universe is expanding faster today than predicted by standard models of the big bang that incorporate dark energy.