General Articles

The Abell 370 galaxy cluster, seen here by Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, is 5 billion light years from Earth. The cluster’s gravity bends the light of galaxies that are even more distant, distorting and magnifying them in a phenomenon called gravitational lensing. (Image: NASA/ESA/Hubble SM4 ERO Team/ST-ECF) The most dramatic example of gravitational lensing …

Upgraded Hubble telescope spies cosmic ‘dragon’ – New Scientist magazine Read More »

Cassini has found Titan’s upper atmosphere to consist of a surprising number of layers of haze, as shown in this ultraviolet image of Titan’s night-side limb, colourised to look like true colour. The many fine haze layers extend several hundred kilometres above the surface. Although this is a night side view, with only a thin …

Unravelling the chemistry of Titan’s hazy atmosphere Read More »

A trip to Phobos comes with extras (Image: NASA/JPL) 16 September 2009 by David Shiga FORGET the risk of exploding rockets or getting sideswiped by a wayward bit of space junk. Radiation may be the biggest hurdle to human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and could put a damper on a recently proposed mission to Mars …

Too much radiation for astronauts to make it to Mars Read More »

ESO – The expanding shell around V445 Puppis Using the NACO adaptive optics instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope and its ability to obtain images as sharp as if taken from space, astronomers have made the first time-lapse movie of a bipolar shell ejected by a “vampire star”, which underwent an outburst after gulping down …

Ticking Stellar Time Bomb Identified-Astronomers find prime suspect for a Type Ia supernova Read More »

Brought to you by:  Hermanus Times 01/10/2009 02:01 PM – (SA) South Africa and more particularly, the HMO (Hermanus Magnetic Observatory) have been engaged in an exciting space technology programme which resulted in the launch of the second SA satellite, Sumbandilasat, on 17 September from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Russia. This satellite was designed and built …

Hermanus Magnetic Observatory helps put micro-satellite in space Read More »