16 November 2010 – After five months of testing, Japanese scientists have confirmed that particles brought back by the Hayabusa probe in June this year are indeed from the 300 million km-distant asteroid 25143 Itokawa. This is the first time asteroid samples have been brought back to Earth, and only the fourth set of extra-terrestrial samples returned by spacecraft.
The Hayabusa space probe spent three weeks in orbit round the 500m-long asteroid in 2005. Although the craft failed to fire a pellet into the asteroid’s surface as planned, it did seemingly manage to disturb the asteroid’s surface enough to stir up dust which was captured by Hayabusa – about 1500 particles in all. Numerous tests carried out by JAXA (the Japanese space agency) have identified minerals including olivine, pyroxene, plagioclase and troilite.
The Royal Observatory, Greenwich will be showing a Hayabusa planetarium show next year as part of our forthcoming ‘Impact’ season.
Read more about asteroids in our fact file.
Astronomers in the US believe they have found a 50 million-year-old ‘baby’ black hole in the relatively nearby M100 galaxy (still 47 billion, billion miles from Earth).
Supernova remnant SN 1979C is the product of a blast observed just 30 years ago, and has been investigated by several telescopes including most recently NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. All of these show that it is a bright source of X-rays which have remained steady for 15 years, strongly suggesting that it is a black hole. It probably formed when a star 20 times more massive than the Sun collapsed in on itself at the end of its life.
However, it is also possible that the source of the X-rays could be a young, fast-spinning neutron star with a strong wind of high-energy particles.
Read more about black holes in our fact file.
From dying stars to dead star-gazers – the body of the 16th-century Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe is being exhumed in Prague in an another attempt to determine the cause of his death.
The court mathematician, alchemist and astronomer who catalogued over 1000 stars led a colourful life, including a duel in which he lost his nose. It’s thought by some that high levels of mercury found in a previous exhumation may have resulted from deliberate poisoning, and suspicion has pointed to his assistant Johannes Kepler or to the Danish king Christian IV with whose mother Brahe allegedly had an affair.
Scientists also hope to determine the kind of metal Brahe’s nose prosthesis was made from.
Read more about Tycho Brahe and his star maps in our fact file.
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