News – Page 82 – Astronomy Now

Curiosity snaps spectacular Mars panorama

31 January 2018 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover sends back a spectacular panorama showing its path across the floor of Gale Crater from its landing site to its current perch on the slopes of Mount Sharp.

Martian dust storms may play role in atmosphere loss

29 January 2018 Astronomy Now

Periodic global dust storms on Mars may play a role in the ongoing loss of the planet’s atmosphere, according to data collected by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft.

New tool for gravitational wave detection

28 January 2018 Astronomy Now

New “deep learning” algorithms are expected to improve the detection of gravitational wave signals and, with additional work, may help identify electromagnetic counterparts to gravity wave events

InSight spreads solar wings in critical test

27 January 2018 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Mars Insight lander deployed its solar wings in a critical milestone on the road to launch from California in May. InSight will reach the red planet in late November, landing near the equator to study the interior of Mars.

Organisers confirm no teams will win Google Lunar X Prize

26 January 2018 Stephen Clark

None of the teams who have spent the last decade chasing a $20 million grand prize by placing a privately-funded lander on the Moon will meet a deadline at the end of March to claim the award, the organisers of the Google Lunar X Prize announced Tuesday.

Astrophysicist proposes new definition of a planet

22 January 2018 Astronomy Now

Pluto hogs the spotlight in the continuing scientific debate over what is and what is not a planet, but a less conspicuous argument rages on about the planetary status of massive objects outside our solar system. The dispute is not just about semantics, as it is closely related to how giant planets like Jupiter form.

Neutron star merger yields new puzzle for astrophysicists

19 January 2018 Astronomy Now

The afterglow from the distant neutron star merger detected last August has continued to brighten — much to the surprise of astrophysicists studying the aftermath of the massive collision that took place about 138 million light-years away and sent gravitational waves rippling through the Universe.

New SOFIA observations help unravel mysteries of the birth of colossal suns

19 January 2018 Astronomy Now

Scientists are using SOFIA to survey young stars more than ten-times the mass of the Sun in an ongoing study to understand how massive stars form in our galaxy.

Asteroid missions on track to reach their destinations in 2018

18 January 2018 Stephen Clark

Pioneering spacecraft from NASA and the Japanese space agency promise to reveal two unexplored asteroids later this year, officials said Wednesday, beginning surveys that will culminate in daring descents to capture samples for return to Earth, where eager scientists await a hands-on look at the specimens.

NASA’s ‘Great Observatories’ team up to find magnified image of distant galaxy

17 January 2018 Astronomy Now

An intensive survey deep into the universe by NASA’s Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes has yielded the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack: the farthest galaxy yet seen in an image that has been stretched and amplified by a phenomenon called gravitational lensing.