Category Archives: News and Updates

News about Astronomy and Space Science. Find every news item and update here, in blog format. You can get these updates sent straight to your mailbox by subscribing here, or you can subscribe to the RSS feed by clicking the link.

Enceladus’s geysers caused by Saturn’s gravity

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In 2005, the Cassini spacecraft, which has been exploring the system of Saturn and its satellites since 2004, discovered enormous plumes of water spewing out into space from the satellite Enceladus.  These geysers are so powerful and pump out such enormous volumes of water that they are clearly visible from space.  But until recently, it wasn’t clear where all the water was coming from, or what force was propelling it upwards so violently.The water is expelled from a geographical feature … Continue reading →

Carnival of Space #334

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Happy New Year! It’s time for the last Carnival of Space of 2013, and since so many space bloggers are taking well-earned vacation time, I suggested they offer up anything they like from the previous year that they’re particularly proud of.  So what we have below is a blend of the usual formula of highlighting the best of the past week’s astronomy and space science writing with the best of the past year’s astronomy and space science writing.  Dig in! … Continue reading →

MOND theory gets another boost

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Dark Matter is the leading theory to explain discrepancies in the dynamics of galaxies (The outer regions spin faster than the laws of physics say they should), because of a large and growing body of observational evidence (We’ve seen it, kinda). But alternative theories persist and still have their supporters. One such theory is known as Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND), and it recently scored a win when it was able to predict the motions of stars within dwarf galaxies more … Continue reading →

Hubble’s time-lapse video of Black Hole

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The universe is so big, and changes so slowly, that astro-photographers only ever expect to record still images of their subjects.  But when astronomers studying the supermassive black hole (SMBH) at the centre of the galaxy M87 noticed how fast it was expelling a jet of superheated gas, they commissioned time on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) to make a movie.  Specifically, they recorded 400 images over a period of 13 years and assembled them into a stop-motion video of … Continue reading →

NASA’s WISE decision

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In September this year, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope was reactivated to begin its new mission (NEOWISE) to search for and classify potentially hazardous Near-Earth Objects, like the one which exploded above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk earlier this year, injuring thousands.WISE was originally mothballed after it’s supply of cryogenic coolant ran out early in 2011, marking the end of its original mission to map the entire sky in the far infra-red spectrum. However, its reduced sensitivity … Continue reading →