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Astronomers team up to give first look at birthplaces of most current stars

27 December 2016 Stephen Clark

Astronomers have gotten their first look at exactly where most of today’s stars were born. To do so, they used telescope arrays in New Mexico and Chile to look at distant galaxies seen as they were some 10 billion years ago.

Cassini sees tilted terminator of Saturn’s moon Enceladus

14 March 2016 Astronomy Now

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured this view of Saturn’s moon Enceladus that shows wrinkled plains that are remarkably youthful in appearance, being generally free of large impact craters.

New Kepler planet could be Earth’s closest cousin yet

23 July 2015 Keith Cooper

A super-earth discovered by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope and orbiting an older version of our Sun, is tantalising astronomers as potentially being the closest thing to a world like Earth.

ALMA witnesses assembly of galaxies in early universe

22 July 2015 Astronomy Now

The Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA) has been used to detect the most distant clouds of star-forming gas yet found in normal galaxies in the early universe. The new observations allow astronomers to start to see how the first galaxies were built up and how they cleared the cosmic fog during the era of reionisation.

Dead galaxies may be packed with dark matter

20 July 2015 Astronomy Now

Research using powerful computer simulations to study galaxies that have fallen into the Coma Cluster, one of the largest gravitationally-bound structures in the universe roughly 300 million light-years from Earth, suggests that it could contain as much as 100 times more dark matter than visible matter, according to an Australian study.

First detailed images of rare asteroid to pass close by Earth on 19 July

19 July 2015 Astronomy Now

Asteroid 2011 UW158 passes just 6.4 lunar distances (1.53 million miles) miles from Earth at 3:37pm BST today. The 300 metre by 600 metre body was imaged in detail by radar during observations made with the Arecibo Observatory on 14 July, revealing that it is not a typical asteroid.

Gaia satellite and amateur astronomers spot one in a billion star

17 July 2015 Astronomy Now

The Gaia satellite has discovered a unique binary system where one star is ‘eating’ the other, but neither star has any hydrogen, the most common element in the universe. The system could hold the key to what causes Type Ia supernova explosions: one of the greatest mysteries in modern astrophysics.

Brazilian-led team leading the search for a Solar System 2.0

15 July 2015 Astronomy Now

A newly discovered planet orbiting a star known as HIP 11915 is the most accurate analogue yet found for the Sun and Jupiter. HIP 11915 is about the same age and composition as the Sun, suggesting that there may also be rocky Earth-like planets orbiting closer to the star.

New contact with intractable comet lander

11 July 2015 Stephen Clark

Europe’s Rosetta comet probe re-established momentary contact with the Philae lander late Thursday, renewing hopes of starting up the craft’s research instruments after two weeks of radio silence dampened the moods of scientists.

Huge new survey to shine light on dark matter

11 July 2015 Astronomy Now

The first results have been released from a major new dark matter survey of the southern skies using ESO’s VLT Survey Telescope (VST) at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. The VST KiDS survey will allow astronomers to make precise measurements of dark matter, the structure of galaxy halos, and the evolution of galaxies and clusters.