Astronomy

In this artist's view, a white dwarf (left) robs gas from its companion star. The material spirals down to the dwarf's surface, where it's compressed and ultimately ignites in a thermonuclear blast. ESO / M. Kornmesser For the first time, astronomers have spotted the X-ray flash that was issued as the entire surface of a distant stellar remnant ignited in a colossal fireball. The observation, reported in the May 12th issue of Nature, adds the last missing piece to the puzzle of white dwarfs gone nova. A New Star On July 15, 2020, amateur astronomer Robert McNaught noticed a new star in the sky from his observatory in Australia. The nova, dubbed YZ Reticuli, ultimately brightened 1,500-fold to magnitude 3.7, making it clearly visible to the unaided e...

A supernova explosion of a massive star appears brighter to an observer on Earth if a black hole sits between the explosion and the observer. The black hole’s gravity distorts the path of light emitted by the supernova, acting as a lens that magnifies the light. Credit: APS/Carin Cain image Gravitational lensing provides an opportunity to see supernovae and other transients much farther than we normally can. A new research proposal outlines a plan to use a comprehensive catalog of strong gravitational lenses to capture these rare events at extreme distances. ...

Figure 1: When setting up a pointing model in TPoint, you can choose the number of stars used via the Fewer Targets/More Targets slider shown at the bottom of the menu. The lower altitude limit of the stars used can be set by clicking on the filled orange circle shown at centre-left and dragging it to increase or decrease the circle size. In this way, stars below a certain altitude are excluded. All images: Nik Szymanek. Back in the July 2018 issue of Astronomy Now, I reviewed The Sky X Professional software with an emphasis on deep-sky imaging. The Sky planetarium package has been available for many years, and each edition has incorporated many new and exciting features. For example, more recent versions introduced the ability to control imaging devices via a ‘Camera Add-on’, which could...