Astronomy

By Matthew McMahon (Museum Collections Officer) and Malcolm McCleery (Volunteer Researcher)  Figure 1. Dr Lindsay, the 7th Director, posing with the Grubb 10 in the late 1940’s for the Irish Times (Armagh Observatory and Planetarium) Curators and Historians are not meant to have favorites. Like good parents or carers (the root of the word curator is to care after all), we are meant to love all our charges equally, from the oldest manuscripts to the newest computers, that we keep for future generations. However, if you press any of them, you’ll discover they all secretly have a favorite and this is ours.  140 years ago, workmen had been bustling during the summer of 1885 on College Hill, Armagh, to prepare a new dome and telescope for use by the Director, Dr John Louis Emil Dreyer. The tele...

by Astronomy Now Editor, Stuart Clark We are pleased to announce that our new Astronomy Now app is live! Since taking ownership of the magazine in July, creating an enhanced digital experience has been a high priority for our new Astronomy Now team. Today we’re in a position to share an early version of the new digital platform, complete with the last 12 back issues and more – including this month’s issue! And we’re inviting all of you to try it for free until 16 October.   How to access the Astronomy Now App All you need to do is open a browser and navigate to astronomynowdigital.com. You will then be prompted for an email address, and you will gain entry. The new platform is optimised for both web browsing and mobile usage. When using it on your computer, you can simply read the magazi...

New James Webb Space Telescope observations of a supermassive black hole near the edge of the observable universe have the potential to uncover how such behemoths came to be. Supermassive black holes — singularities surrounded by vast event horizons, boundaries from which nothing, not even light, can return — are surprisingly common in our universe. Almost every large galaxy near us has one. Some of them lurk quietly at galactic centers (like the one in our Milky Way), while others blaze across the electromagnetic spectrum as they feed on gas buffets. Yet we don’t understand their origins. Now, a new study posted on the astronomy arXiv preprint server provides a glimpse at the earliest years of one of these monstrous black holes. How to ...

Skywatchers at Nasa have discounted a Harvard astronomer’s hypothesis that a rare interstellar object hurtling through our solar system is a relic from a civilization in another celestial neighborhood, and “could potentially be dire for humanity”.Avi Loeb, head of Harvard University’s Galileo Project, which searches for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence, raised eyebrows by suggesting in a scientific paper in July that Comet 3I/Atlas, set for a close pass with Mars next month, could be artificially made.It is only the third known object originating outside the solar system to pass through and was named for the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (Atlas) survey telescope in Río Hurtado, Chile, that discovered it on 1 July.Loeb says observations of the object so far have not...

The fractional linear and circular polarizations measured for PSR B1937+21 as a function of frequency, along with the best-fitting lines and uncertainties (shaded). Credit: The Astrophysical Journal (2025). DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/add728 Within our Milky Way galaxy, in the direction of the constellation Vulpecula, a cosmic "lighthouse" named PSR B1937+21 spins at an astonishing rate of 642 revolutions per second. It emits electromagnetic pulses that rival the precision of atomic clocks. For the first time, a Chinese research team has captured the complete polarization pattern of PSR B1937+21's main pulse and interpulse as they vary with frequenc...