Debris from Halley’s Comet gives birth to one of 2012’s best meteor showers. By Michael E. Bakich Prospects look good for the peak of this year’s Orionid meteor shower, which occurs the night of October 20/21. Streaking swiftly across the sky, tiny bits of rock and metal burn up as meteors. Although Earth constantly sweeps …
John Saunders, Chairmen of the Hermanus Astronomy Centre, South Africa, recently put the following question to Astronomy Magazine :- How close to each other are the stars at the heart of a globular cluster, specifically Omega Centauri and would they be too close to each other to have a planetary system? Their answer was very …
How close to each other are the stars at the heart of a globular cluster? Read More »
Construction of world’s biggest optical telescope has been approved. The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will have a primary mirror some 40m in diameter, and will be built on top of a mountain in Chile. Member states of the European Southern Observatory (Eso) organisation declared their support for the project on Monday at a meeting …
European Extremely Large Telescope given go-ahead Read More »
Nasa has launched its latest orbiting X-ray observatory. The Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (Nustar) was sent into space on a Pegasus rocket operated out of the Kwajalein Atol in the central Pacific.Nustar will study high-energy X-rays coming from exotic sources such as black holes, exploded stars and the hot gas in galaxy clusters. The observatory …
