Astro News

(including reports © NASA and © Spaceweather.com
and information from the Royal Astronomical Society)

Updated: 3 February 2012

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Interesting research news (latest news first):

The Australian National University has joined the Giant Magellan Telescope international consortium of research organisations. The GMT is likely to be one of the first of a small number of next-generation Extremely Large Telescopes that are expected to be built in the next 20 years. The telescope's conceptual design anticipates a moving mass of 1000 tonnes and a cylindrical observatory 65 metres high. It will be built by the participating organisations at a site in northern Chile. The primary mirror will have seven circular segments each 8.4 metres across, six of these surrounding the centrally located seventh. The total light-gathering power will be nearly seven times that of the Gemini telescopes, which are the largest ones to which Australian astronomers currently have access, and the images obtained should be ten times clearer than those taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The GMT is expected to see first light in 2016. GMT Home page     ANU's involvement]

What do Australian astronomers need in the next ten years in order to stay at the forefront of astronomical research? Our scientists have a proud record of achievement, innovation and discovery in optical and radio astronomy, and in high-energy particle physics and cosmology. The late, great Mount Stromlo 74 inch telescope led the way, followed by the Parkes Radio Telescope which is still at the leading edge of its field of work. In the 1970s came Hanbury-Brown's Stellar Intensity Interferometer, Paul Wild's Radioheliograph, and the Sydney University Giant Air Shower Recorder (all near Narrabri). The last named had an area of 61 square kilometres. All of these instruments worked away, largely unknown and unheralded by the Australian public, although they were featured on the first $50 paper notes. In 1974 the 3.9 metre Anglo-Australian Telescope and the 1.2 metre Schmidt were commissioned on Siding Spring Mountain, and then in 1988 the Australia Telescope was built at Culgoora as a Bicentennial Project.
Where to next? Our astronomers have prepared a wish list for the next ten years called the 'Decadal Plan for 2006-2015'. Read it here .

NASA's powerful infrared Spitzer Space Telescope has taken an image that rivals the Hubble Space Telescope's 'Pillars of Creation' photograph taken ten years ago of part of the Eagle Nebula. Dubbed the 'Mountains of Creation', it shows huge clouds of matter undergoing intense star formation in the region W5 in Cassiopeia. These clouds, which are ten times bigger than the Pillars, are illuminated in the infrared band, but appear as dark clouds in visible light images. Full story

The Hubble Space Telescope has found a disc of blue stars orbiting around a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Andromeda Galaxy, M31. The disc is only one light year across, and contains 400 hot young stars orbiting the black hole at speeds up to 1000 kilometres per second. As the cores of galaxies typically contain old red Population I stars, this is quite an enigma. Full story

The MAGIC Telescope is the largest and most advanced single instrument yet built to observe very-high-energy cosmic rays from the ground. Its parabolic mirror is made up of about a thousand 50 cm X 50 cm aluminium mirror panels, giving a total area equivalent to a single 15 metre diameter mirror. MAGIC is an acronym for 'Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov'. Full story

The White House has forced NASA to cancel the fourth shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. It is now expected that the HST will be allowed to burn up during re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere sometime during this decade. The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter had also been a victim of budgetary cuts and is to be postponed indefinitely. Full story

The Swift Gamma-ray Observatory observed its first gamma-ray burst on January 17, two months after launch. Full story

Earth's most extensive global topographic map has just been completed by NASA and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The final section to be done included Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific islands. The resolution of the publicly available data is 90 metres at the Equator. Full story

ESA's Smart-1 spacecraft reached its final operational orbit around the Moon in late February. The mission has been extended until August 2006. Full story

Black holes use their intense gravitational fields to draw in nearby matter, which gives out tremendous amounts of radiation as it approaches the event horizon. The process has been found to be anything but smooth, however. Full story

The European Southern Observatory now has the world's largest interferometer using movable 1.8 metre optical telescopes. Two of the telescopes are being tested now, and two more should be operation by the end of next year. Commissioning of the first two telescopes should be finished by this October. Full story

The Chandra X-ray Observatory has discovered two huge clouds of warm-hot intergalactic matter (WHIM) around our galaxy. This may be some of the missing 'dark matter' or the universe. The clouds have a temperature of about 1 million degrees K, and contain ions of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and neon. Full story

Images from space of the December 26, 2004 tsunami are available here, here and here.

The Rosetta space vehicle launched last March by the European Space Agency (ESA) will have four planetary intercepts before it heads off to Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which it will reach in 2014. Full story

The newly-discovered planetoid Sedna, 1700 km across, is the reddest object in the Solar System except for Mars. It is the furthest object in the Solar System except for comets, and takes 10 500 years to circle the Sun once. Should we call it a planet or is it too small? More information about Sedna

The ESA solar spacecraft Ulysses has passed through two, and possibly three comet tails. Full story

The Chandra X-ray Observatory has made the first clear detection of x-rays from Saturn, and has also revealed new information about the atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.   Full story

NASA's Genesis spacecraft completed its collection of solar wind particles last April and is now on its way back to Earth. The samples were placed into a sealed container which will be released into our atmosphere on September 8, hopefully parachuting to Earth over Utah. Helicopter pilots are being trained to snag the return capsule in mid-air.   Full story

NASA's twin Martian Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity conducted a six-week-long eclipse watching program on Mars, during March and April. The tiny moon of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, cross the Sun's disc in a minute or less, and are much smaller than the Sun. Full story and photographs   Both rovers have left their landing sites and are now on the move, in a five-month extended mission until September 25. On that date Mars reaches superior conjunction, passing on the far side of the Sun, when communication with Earth is blocked. Both rovers have found strong evidence for water on Mars. While NASA's rovers are studying the surface, the ESA's Mars Express orbiter is conducting a parallel search from Mars orbit, and has detected water ice at the Poles and possible springs in the large canyon known as Valles Marineris.   More on the Mars Rovers     Mars Express reports

The Hubble Space Telescope has provided the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever taken, with a photograph whose exposure was one million seconds long (over 11.5 days!). It shows the faintest and most distant galaxies (in time as well as distance), some of the faintest possibly being the first galaxies to emerge after the 'big bang'. Hubble's Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) is in the southern constellation Fornax. In ground-based images, the region of the HUDF is largely empty, but the Hubble Telescope has revealed 10 000 galaxies there, in an area of sky only one hundredth the area of the Full Moon. Full story

Latest Astronomical Headlines from the IAU (International Astronomical Union):

Click here.

TO-DAY'S NEWS - 1

TO-DAY'S NEWS - 2

TO-DAY'S NEWS - 3

TO-DAY'S NEWS - 4

    SPACE                                 SPACE WEATHER                        UNIVERSE TODAY                                    NASA

Dateline - 2 February 2012: Space probe to land on a comet in 2014

Europe’s Rosetta spacecraft is en route to intercept a comet, and to make history. In 2014, Rosetta will enter orbit around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko and land a probe on it for a front row seat as the comet heads toward the disintegrating heat of the Sun.    Full story

A video version of this story is available here .

Dateline - 27 January 2012: Powerful solar X-flare

Earth-orbiting satellites detected a powerful X2-class solar flare today, January 28, at 1837 UT (4:37 am AEST). The source was departing sunspot 1402. The blast produced a spectacular CME (not Earth directed) and accelerated energetic protons toward Earth. A low-level radiation storm is now in progress around our planet. Please click here for images and updates.

Dateline - 22 January 2012: Geomagnetic activity

The Earth's magnetic field is reverberating from a CME impact (Coronal Mass Ejection from the Sun) during the eveningy hours of January 22 AEST. The hit compressed Earth's magnetic field, briefly exposing some geosynchronous satellites to solar wind plasma, and disturbed the ionisation structure of Earth's upper atmosphere. Arctic sky watchers are presently reporting bright aurorae in response to a polar geomagnetic storm (Kp=5). Please click here for images and updates.

Dateline - 12 January 2012: Stars blowing bubbles to be counted

An effort to find the "bubbles" that young, massive stars blow has succeeded in finding more than 10 times as many as were known about before. Members of the public are invited to examine astronomical photographs on-line in order to search for more of them. Some may be seen in the Starfield Observatory image below.    Full story     (Contributed by Lee.)

The Cat's Paw Nebula

Dateline - 12 January 2012: Some comets like it hot

Astronomers are still scratching their heads over Comet Lovejoy, which plunged through the atmosphere of the sun in December and, against all odds, survived. The comet is now receding into the outer solar system leaving many mysteries behind.    Full story     A video version of this story is available here .

Dateline - 11 January 2012: Tiny solar system discovered

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered the tiniest solar system so far: a red dwarf star with three rocky planets smaller than Earth.    Full story

Dateline - 5 January 2012: Failed Mars probe photographed

Phobos-Grunt, a Russian Mars probe stuck in Earth orbit since November, is sinking back into the atmosphere. Best estimates suggest re-entry will occur on January 15 or 16. Meanwhile, sky-watchers can see the probe moving through the night sky, sometimes shining as brightly as a first-magnitude star. French astrophotographer Thierry Legault recently photographed Phobos-Grunt through a 14-inch telescope, revealing its outlines and perhaps a clue as to why the probe has had difficulty communicating with Earth. His images and video are highlighted   here (set date to January 5).

Dateline - 3 January 2012: First meteor shower of 2012

The annual Quadrantid meteor shower peaks on Thursday morning, January 5, when Earth passes through a narrow stream of debris from a comet thought to have broken apart some 500 years ago. The shower is expected to be strong (as many as 100 meteors per hour), but elusive, with a peak that lasts no longer than a couple of hours. The shower's radiant near Polaris favours observers in the northern hemisphere. Images, live audio from a meteor radar, and more information are available here .

Dateline - 30 December 2011: Origin of meteorites from the asteroid Vesta ?

The discovery of a towering mountain on Vesta could solve a longstanding mystery: How did so many pieces of the giant asteroid end up right here on our own planet?    Full story

Dateline - 30 December 2011: New spacecraft due to go into lunar orbit in a couple of days

NASA's twin GRAIL spacecraft, on a mission to map the Moon's gravitational field, are nearing their New Year's Eve and New Year's Day main-engine burns to place the duo in lunar orbit.      Full story

Dateline - 28 December 2011: Comet Lovejoy photograph

The following photograph of Comet Lovejoy was taken from Starfield Observatory at Nambour at 3:38 am on Tuesday, December 27. The comet's nucleus is at R.A. 16 hours 58 minutes, Dec. -46 degrees 53 minutes, near the boundary between the constellations Scorpius and Ara. The tail appears on the image to be at least 26 degrees long. As it was superimposed on the molecular clouds that make a dark lane extending from Alpha Centauri to the galactic centre and beyond, it was quite easy to see with the unaided eye. Some stars of the Southern Cross (Alpha and Beta Crucis) appear near the top right-hand corner of the image. The comet is moving away from the Sun, heading towards the star Atria in Triangulum Australe (Southern Triangle) and the South Celestial Pole. The tail is fainter on each successive morning.

This comet was discovered on November 27, 2011 by Terry Lovejoy, a Brisbane amateur astronomer. It is the third comet to bear his name.

Dateline - 23 December 2011: Comet Lovejoy photographs

Astronauts onboard the International Space Station have seen sungrazing Comet Lovejoy from Earth orbit. ISS commander Dan Burbank describes the comet's green-glowing tail as "the most amazing thing I have ever seen in space." Video from the ISS and updated images from Earth are highlighted here .

Dateline - 20 December 2011: Two more Earth-sized planets discovered

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has found two Earth-sized planets orbiting a distant sun-like star. These alien worlds are intermingled in their star system with other much larger planets, an arrangement which challenges orthodox ideas of how planets are formed.     Full story

Dateline - 20 December 2011: Comet Lovejoy survives encounter with Sun, now visible at dawn

Comet Lovejoy is receding from the sun, remarkably still intact after its December 16 plunge through the solar atmosphere. Multiple observers in the southern hemisphere are now reporting that they can see and photograph the comet's tail shining through the twilight of sunrise. Pictures of this rare apparition are highlighted here f(ensure you have the date of December 20 chosen).

Dateline - 16 December 2011: Comet Lovejoy collides with Sun

Sungrazing Comet Lovejoy has shocked astronomers by surviving its 'death plunge' into the sun. Must-see movies of the comet's passage through the sun's atmosphere are featured in today's story.

Dateline - 10 December 2011: Eclipse of the Moon tonight

A total eclipse of the Moon will occur on December 10 next, and will be visible from all of Australia. It will begin later in the evening, and will continue until the early hours of December 11. The circumstances are as follows (Queensland time):
                                                                                     Penumbral eclipse begins:                  9:34 pm;
                                                                                     Partial umbral eclipse begins:           10:46 pm;
                                                                                     Total eclipse begins:                          12:06 am;
                                                                                     Mid-eclipse:                                        12:32 am;
                                                                                     Total eclipse ends:                             12:57 am;
                                                                                     Partial umbral eclipse ends:                2:18 am;
                                                                                     Penumbral eclipse ends:                     3:20 am.
Eclipses of the Moon are quite safe to look at.

Dateline - 9 December 2011: Is Vesta the smallest terrestrial planet ?

NASA's Dawn probe, now orbiting Vesta in the asteroid belt, has found some surprising things on the giant asteroid- - hings that have prompted one researcher to declare Vesta "the smallest terrestrial planet."     Full story

Dateline - 8 December 2011: New evidence for water on Mars

As NASA's newest Mars rover Curiosity heads for the Red Planet, veteran rover Opportunity continues to make discoveries. Opportunity's latest find, an apparent vein of the mineral gypsum, is a definite sign of past water on Mars, say researchers.     Full story

Dateline - 5 December 2011: Kepler space observatory finds a habitable planet

In a significant milestone on the road to finding Earth's 'twin' elsewhere in the galaxy, NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed its first planet in the habitable zone of a distant sun-like star.     Full story

Dateline - 3 December 2011: New Horizons spacecraft passes a milestone

NASA's New Horizons mission has reached a special milestone on its way to study the Pluto system, coming closer to the dwarf planet than any other spacecraft. On board New Horizons are some of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered Pluto, and an experiment called Venetia, after the little girl who named it.    Full story

Dateline - 26 November 2011: Coronal mass ejection and radiation storm

A solar radiation storm is in progress around Earth. At the moment (the early afternoon of November 27), the storm is classified as minor, which means it has little effect on our planet other than to disturb HF radio transmissions at high latitudes. Bigger effects, however, could be in the offing. The same blast that caused the radiation storm also hurled a CME into space, and this CME appears set to deliver a blow to Earth's magnetic field on November 28-29. Geomagnetic storms and aurorae are possible when the cloud arrives. Click here for more information and updates.

Dateline - 26 November 2011: Mars rover Curiosity is now on its way to the red planet

NASA's biggest and most capable Mars rover ever (as big as an SUV) left Earth this morning in a perfect launch from Cape Canaveral. The new rover, named Curiosity, is due to reach the Red Planet in August 2012.   Full story

Dateline - 16 November 2011: Evidence found for liquid water on Jupiter's moon Europa

Scientists studying data from NASA's Galileo probe have found evidence for a body of liquid water the volume of the North American Great Lakes locked inside the icy shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa. The finding could have significant implications for the search for life beyond Earth.      Full story

Dateline - 14 November 2011: Does the Moon have an ionosphere ?

How can a world without air have an ionosphere? Somehow the Moon has done it. Lunar researchers have been struggling with the mystery for years, and they may have finally found a solution.   Full story

Dateline - 13 November 2011: Massive increase in solar activity

The sun is putting on one of its best displays in the new solar cycle - not with sunspots and flares, but rather with towering walls of plasma and filaments of magnetism. One dark filament is stretching more than a million kilometres across the face of the sun, about three times the distance between Earth and the Moon.   Click here for pictures and more information about these remarkable structures.

Dateline - 7 November 2011: Near-Earth asteroid close flyby tomorrow

NASA radars are monitoring 2005 YU55, an asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier, as it heads for a November 9 flyby of the Earth-Moon system. There is no danger to our planet. At closest approach on Wednesday at 9:28 am Australian Eastern Standard Time, the space rock will be 324 600 kilometres away, a little closer than the Moon. Nevertheless, professional astronomers are eagerly anticipating the flyby as the asteroid presents an exceptionally strong radar target. Amateur astronomers in Europe or America might be able to photograph it during the hours around closest approach, but this will occur in daylight hours for Australian observers. Click here for observing tips and more information.

Dateline - 3 November 2011: Huge sunspot appears

One of the biggest sunspot groups in many years has just emerged over the sun's eastern limb. The sunspot's magnetic canopy is crackling with M-class (medium-sized) solar flares and seems poised to launch even stronger X-class eruptions. The sunspot, named AR1339, is not yet directly facing Earth but it will be turning toward our planet in the days ahead. Click here for images of the behemoth and updates.

Astro News prior to 1 November 2011                          Observatory Index