Thirty years ago the Hubble Space Telescope began snapping photos of distant stars, providing a time machine that has taken astronomers back to when the universe was less than a billion years old.
Leap years were devised in Julius Caesar’s time, to fix the pesky problem that Earth’s year isn’t exactly 365 days. But 15 centuries later, our calendars were still slightly askew.
Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation and Antonio Tarquinio, The Conversation
The Dish in Parkes is scanning the southern Milky Way, searching for alien signals
The Conversation50.7 MB(download)
Today we hear about the Parkes radio telescope's role in the search for alien life. Our guide is the irrepressible John Sarkissian, the scientist who's had his eye on The Dish since childhood.
NASA scientists have discovered a new planet orbiting around a nearby star that is in a habitable zone. But does this planet have liquid oceans that can support life?
Sometimes it is difficult to take a photograph of an exoplanet because the star illuminating it is too bright. Now there is a new ‘deluminator’ telescope that can block out the extra light.
Sunanda Creagh, The Conversation and Cameron Furlong, The Conversation
‘The size, the grandeur, the peacefulness of being in the dark’: what it’s like to study space at Siding Spring Observatory
The Conversation, CC BY54.3 MB(download)
Three hours north-east of Parkes lies a remote astronomical research facility, unpolluted by city lights, where researchers are trying to unlock some of the biggest questions about our Universe.
Many people are still upset that Pluto was demoted from being a planet. But definitions of various celestial objects are fairly fluid. So whether it is an asteroid or moon or planet is up for debate.
Smadar Naoz, University of California, Los Angeles
There is a massive black hole in the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Measurements of star orbits near this black hole suggest that there may be a second companion black hole nearby.