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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.

Spectroscopic survey probes uncharted depths of Hubble Ultra Deep Field

1 December 2017 Astronomy Now

Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory have conducted the deepest spectroscopic survey ever. They focused on the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, measuring distances and properties of 1600 very faint galaxies, including 72 galaxies that have never been detected before, even by Hubble itself.

Giant black hole pair photobombs Andromeda galaxy

1 December 2017 Astronomy Now

It seems like even black holes can’t resist the temptation to insert themselves unannounced into photographs. A cosmic photobomb found as a background object in images of the nearby Andromeda galaxy has revealed what could be the most tightly coupled pair of supermassive black holes ever seen.

Infant stars discovered surprisingly near galaxy’s supermassive black hole

28 November 2017 Astronomy Now

At the centre of our galaxy, in the immediate vicinity of its supermassive black hole, is a region wracked by powerful tidal forces and bathed in intense ultraviolet light and X-ray radiation. These harsh conditions, astronomers surmise, do not favour star formation, especially low-mass stars like our Sun. Surprisingly, new observations suggest otherwise.

Astronomers create most detailed radio image of nearby dwarf galaxy

28 November 2017 Astronomy Now

Astronomers at The Australian National University have created the most detailed radio image of nearby dwarf galaxy, the Small Magellanic Cloud, revealing secrets of how it formed and how it is likely to evolve.