|
Top Stories |
Movie reveals details of massive star formation
Bulging galaxy baffles
Scientists confirm abundant water in lunar crater
Vampire star candidate for Type Ia supernova
|
ESO dines out on cannibalistic galaxy
Using ESO's 3.58-metre New Technology Telescope (NTT) astronomers have penetrated the thick dust lanes of giant galaxy Centaurus A to unveil its 'last meal'.
 FULL STORY
|
|
WISE chilled out,
ready for launch
The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer WISE is chilled out and ready to roll onto the launch pad tomorrow, ahead of its planned 9 December launch into space to survey the entire sky in infrared light.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
Movie reveals details of massive star formation
A new high resolution movie of star formation based on radio images of the vast stellar nursery within Orion's Great Nebula shows that massive stars form just like their smaller siblings.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
Bulging galaxy baffles
A recent Hubble image capturing edge-on galaxy NGC 4710 reveals a curious box-shape bulge with a faint, ethereal X-shaped structure pouring from its middle.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
Vampire star candidate for Type Ia supernova
Using ESO's Very Large Telescope, astronomers have made the first time-lapse movie of an unusual shell of material ejected by a 'vampire star' that is a prime candidate progenitor star of a Type Ia supernova.
FULL STORY (includes animations) |
|
 |
| |
Record-breaking radio astronomy project
This week, 35 of the world's greatest radio telescopes will join forces to observe 243 distant quasars to precision map the reference frame scientists use to measure positions in the sky.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
Scientists confirm abundant water in lunar crater
The Centaur rocket stage NASA dispatched on a suicidal plunge into the Moon last month uncovered buckets of water inside a frigidly-cold, permanently-dark crater at the lunar south pole, scientists announced Friday.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
Spirit's roving chances bleak, NASA says
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Monday will begin commanding the Mars rover Spirit to start backing out of the sand pit in the same tracks it left going into the scientifically rich location where it became stuck in April.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
The turbulent heart of
the Milky Way
In celebration of the International Year of Astronomy, NASA is releasing a never-before-seen vista of the turbulent heart of our Milky Way Galaxy to planetaria, museums, libraries, nature centres and schools across America.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
Earth-sized white dwarfs show oxygen atmosphere
Astronomers have discovered two Earth-sized bodies with oxygen-rich atmospheres, but there is no chance of finding life on these worlds for they are two unusual breeds of white dwarf star.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
Rosetta swingby may help solve cosmic mystery
Tomorrow ESA's comet chaser spacecraft Rosetta will swing by the Earth for a critical gravity assist, but mission controllers will also be looking out for a curious change in orbital speed that may help unravel a long-lived mystery.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
Solar lithium shortage blamed on planets
New findings from one of the most sensitive spectrographs in the world look to have finally answered the decades-long mystery as to why the Sun contains less lithium than many other stars. The resolution to the puzzle appears to be the fact that our Sun has planets orbiting it.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
Tuning in to a middleweight black hole
Lightweight and heavyweight black holes are pretty run of the mill while middleweight contenders have remained somewhat elusive, but now astronomers have found an X-ray source emanating from a galaxy that represents one of the best examples of an intermediate candidate.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
Star factory found in
faraway galaxy
A young galaxy that existed just over a billion years after the big bang has been found to be making stars at the furious rate of about fifty per year, showing that star formation and galaxy growth was a much quicker process in the distant past than it is today.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
Chaos on Mars
This stunning new image of Mars, captured by the European Space Agency’s Mars Express probe, shows the boundary between the fragmented Sacra Fossae region and the flat plains of Kasei Valles, which is one of the largest ancient outflow regions on the red planet.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
Repaired Hubble showcases Southern Pinwheel
The sharp vision of Hubble's new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) has captured swarms of young stars bursting into life in the curving arms of nearby spiral galaxy M83.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
"Dropouts" pinpoint
earliest galaxies
By looking far back into the depths of the Universe, astronomers have found a galaxy located at just 787 million years after the big bang, and 22 other early galaxies.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
A new exotic class of exploding star
An unusual supernova unearthed in seven year old data may be the first example of a new type of exploding star, say astronomers publishing their results in the online journal Science Express this week.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
Carbon atmosphere found on neutron star
The ten year mystery of supernova remnant Cassiopeia A's central compact X-ray source can be explained by a hot neutron star with a low magnetic field and a carbon atmosphere, say scientists Wynn Ho and Craig Heinke.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
More hidden territory revealed on Mercury
NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft made its third passage by planet Mercury at the end of September, revealing more secrets about this relatively unknown world.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
Orbiter camera sees ice-covered Phoenix lander
A sharp-eyed camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has spotted the Phoenix lander encased in dry ice in the depths of winter on the northern polar plains of Mars.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
Cassini tastes icy material from Saturn moon geyser
The Cassini spacecraft touring Saturn is beaming back data and stunning imagery from Monday's flyby of Enceladus, an enigmatic ice-covered moon with geysers of material spewing from fissures on the surface.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
Seeking the source
of cosmic rays
New results from the VERITAS telescope array and the Fermi space telescope show that cosmic rays – subatomic particles that race through space at nearly the speed of light – are likely powered by exploding stars and stellar winds.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
New measurements confirm standard view of Universe
An international team of astronomers has unveiled a new map of the seed structures of the Universe that support the standard model of cosmology and the existence of dark matter and dark energy.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
Stripping down to the cosmic skeleton
A previously unknown assembly of galaxies has been detected 6.7 billion light years away, the first observation of such a prominent galaxy structure in the distant Universe.
FULL STORY |
|
 |
| |
|
|
|
|
|
For more news stories see our News Archive
|
|
|
This special publication features the photography of British astro-imager Nik Szymanek and covers a range of photographic methods from basic to advanced. Beautiful pictures of the night sky can be obtained with a simple camera and tripod before tackling more difficult projects, such as guided astrophotography through the telescope and CCD imaging.
U.K. STORE
Astronomy Now is pleased to announce the publication of Exploring Mars. The very best images of Mars taken by orbiting spacecraft and NASA's Spirit and Opportunity rovers fill up the 98 glossy pages of this special edition!
Our latest 132-page Astronomy Now special edition is an extravaganza of astronomy for the year ahead, with a complete 30-page guide to observing the planets, moon, meteor showers, two solar eclipses, and the deep sky in 2010.
