News – Page 84 – Astronomy Now

Mars and Earth may not have always been neighbours

21 December 2017 Astronomy Now

A study published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters posits that Mars formed in what today is the Asteroid Belt, roughly one and a half times as far from the Sun as its current position, before migrating to its present location.

Titan drone, comet sampler picked as finalists for NASA mission

20 December 2017 Stephen Clark

NASA has narrowed its choices for a new billion-dollar robotic space mission: A nuclear-powered quadcopter to explore the hazy landscape of Saturn’s largest moon Titan, or a probe to scoop up a piece of a comet and return it to Earth.

Artificial intelligence, NASA data used to discover eighth planet circling distant star

17 December 2017 Astronomy Now

Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star, with the recent discovery of an eighth planet circling Kepler-90, a Sun-like star 2,545 light-years from Earth. The planet was discovered in data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope.

Meteorite’s origins point to possible undiscovered asteroid

11 December 2017 Astronomy Now

A new analysis of a meteorite called Bunburra Rockhole has revealed that the rock originated from a previously unknown parent asteroid, allowing scientists to understand the geology of the parent body.

Hydrothermal vent experiments bring Enceladus to Earth

11 December 2017 Astronomy Now

Laboratory experiments on Earth can now simulate the conditions under which life might emerge on Saturn’s moon Enceladus, as well as other icy alien worlds, according to new research published in journal Astrobiology.

Found: The most distant supermassive black hole ever observed

6 December 2017 Astronomy Now

A team of astronomers have discovered the most-distant supermassive black hole ever observed. It resides in a luminous quasar and its light reaches us from when the Universe was only 5 percent of its current age — just 690 million years after the Big Bang.

First light achieved for next-generation planet-hunter

6 December 2017 Astronomy Now

A new planet-seeking instrument installed on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile has made its first observations, beginning a search for exoplanets with unprecedented precision by looking at the minuscule changes in the light of their host stars.

Jupiter’s moons, black holes, exoplanets among JWST’s first scientific targets

4 December 2017 Stephen Clark

The James Webb Space Telescope should start returning its first scientific results by the end of 2019, and scientists recently announced a slate of observations selected to whet the appetites of astronomers who will use the multibillion-dollar facility well into the 2020s.

Voyager 1 probe fires long-dormant thrusters in interstellar space

3 December 2017 Stephen Clark

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has fired a set of four control thrusters for the first time in 37 years, giving the long-lived probe a new way to point itself on its cruise into interstellar space 13 billion miles from Earth.

Stellar motions in nearby galaxy hint at underlying dark matter

1 December 2017 Astronomy Now

By pinning down, for the first time, the three-dimensional motions of individual stars in the nearby Sculptor dwarf galaxy, astronomers have shed new light on the distribution of invisible dark matter that pervades the galaxy.