Astronomy Now – Astronomy Now

The Dark Tower

3 November 2024 Astronomy Now

This eerie, dark silhouette is a cometary globule designated GN 16.43.7.01. Despite their name, cometary globules have nothing to do with comets, beyond having a similar shape of a dusty head with a tail.

Legendary star lacks evidence for large planet formation

1 November 2024 Astronomy Now

In the 1997 movie “Contact,” adapted from Carl Sagan’s 1985 novel, the lead character, scientist Ellie Arroway, takes a space-alien-built wormhole ride to the star Vega. She emerges inside a snowstorm of debris encircling the star – but no obvious planets are visible. It looks like the filmmakers got it right.

‘Blood-soaked’ eyes: Webb and Hubble examine galaxy pair

31 October 2024 Astronomy Now

By teaming up, these two space telescopes have delivered the highest resolution image of IC 2163 and NGC 2207 to date in a combination of mid-infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light.

Observers across the UK treated to brilliant display of aurora borealis

11 October 2024 Astronomy Now

Observers the length and breadth of the United Kingdom were treated to a brilliant display of the aurora borealis overnight on Thursday/Friday, 10/11 October 2024, during an extremely strong geomagnetic storm.

Cosmic sky of red and blue

20 July 2024 Astronomy Now

Splashes of colour illustrate the clear difference between the two most populous type of bright nebulae in our Milky Way Galaxy, emission and reflection nebulae.

Triple T-Tauri

13 July 2024 Astronomy Now

This cavernous nebula is home to a bundle of young stars, specifically a triple system of T-Tauri stars.

Forming stars like the old days

5 July 2024 Astronomy Now

In this image, JWST strips away the gas that is transparent at infrared wavelengths, and reveals a skeleton of dusty ribbons that are part of the material that is flowing onto the young stars as they grow.

A matter of perspective

3 July 2024 Astronomy Now

There’s an almost 3D quality to this image of a portion of the Milky Way, with the illusion that the nebulae are far more distant when in fact they are much closer than the dark dust lanes that meander through the Milky Way.

A more youthful globular cluster

24 June 2024 Astronomy Now

The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), which is the nearest galaxy to our Milky Way at about 159,000 light years, is home to about 60 globular clusters. Pictured here is one of these great balls of stars, namely NGC 2210, which shines in the night sky at magnitude +11.

Follow the leader

23 June 2024 Astronomy Now

This line of galaxies is a cosmic coincidence behind the interacting system Arp-Madore 2105-332, which is a pair of galaxies 200 million light years away in the suitably small constellation of Microscopium.