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NASA studies mission to return samples from Mars by end of 2020s

29 August 2017 Stephen Clark

NASA is examining options to launch a robotic mission as soon as 2026 to pick up rock specimens from the surface of Mars and bring them back to Earth, moving forward the timeline for a sample return mission as the agency postpones plans for a new Mars reconnaissance and data relay orbiter.

NASA releases inside-out view of Saturn’s rings

29 August 2017 Stephen Clark

Continuing to make discoveries in the final weeks of a historic mission at Saturn, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has recorded a unique time lapse movie looking out toward the planet’s iconic icy rings.

Best ever image of another star’s surface and atmosphere

26 August 2017 Astronomy Now

Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer astronomers have constructed the most detailed image ever of a star — the red supergiant star Antares. They have also made the first map of the velocities of material in the atmosphere of a star other than the Sun, revealing unexpected turbulence in Antares’s huge extended atmosphere.

Supermassive black holes feed on cosmic jellyfish

26 August 2017 Astronomy Now

Observations of “Jellyfish galaxies” with ESO’s Very Large Telescope have revealed a previously unknown way to fuel supermassive black holes. It seems the mechanism that produces the tentacles of gas and newborn stars that give these galaxies their nickname also makes it possible for the gas to reach the central regions of the galaxies, feeding the black hole that lurks in each of them and causing it to shine brilliantly.

Sneak peek of Gaia’s sky in colour

23 August 2017 Astronomy Now

While surveying the positions of over a billion stars, ESA’s Gaia mission is also measuring their colour, a key diagnostic to study the physical properties of stars. A new image provides a preview of Gaia’s first full-colour all-sky map, which will be unleashed in its highest resolution with the next data release in 2018.

NASA counts down final month of Cassini’s tour of Saturn

15 August 2017 Stephen Clark

NASA’s Cassini orbiter sailed through the tenuous outermost reaches of Saturn’s atmosphere without trouble Monday, performing the first of five close swings nearer to the planet than any previous spacecraft before a final dive Sept. 15 to end the probe’s nearly 20-year mission.

TRAPPIST-1 is older than our Solar System

15 August 2017 Astronomy Now

Scientists now have a good estimate for the age of one of the most intriguing planetary systems discovered to date — TRAPPIST-1, a system of seven Earth-size worlds orbiting an ultra-cool dwarf star about 40 light-years away. Researchers say in a new study that the TRAPPIST-1 star is quite old: between 5.4 and 9.8 billion years. This is up to twice as old as our own Solar System, which formed some 4.5 billion years ago.

Hint of relativity effects in stars orbiting centre of galaxy

10 August 2017 Astronomy Now

A new analysis of data from ESO’s Very Large Telescope and other telescopes suggests that the orbits of stars around the supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way may show the subtle effects predicted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Gravity wave’s detected in Sun’s interior reveal rapidly rotating core

8 August 2017 Astronomy Now

Scientists using the ESA/NASA SOHO solar observatory have found long-sought gravity modes of seismic vibration that imply the Sun’s core is rotating four times faster than its surface.

New Horizons’ next target might be a binary pair

8 August 2017 Stephen Clark

Ground observations of the New Horizons spacecraft’s next target last month revealed the distant object, lurking in the outer Solar System more than four billion miles from Earth, might have an unconventional elongated shape, or even consist of two icy bodies orbiting one another in an age-old cosmic dance.