compiled by Arlene & David Kaplan

-Yu Jingchuan/Beijing Planetarium

Scientists find ‘monster’ black hole
Before now, scientists did not think it was possible for a stellar black hole to have a mass larger than 20 times that of the sun, an approximation based on their understanding of the way stars evolve and die in the Milky Way.

But that assumption was metaphorically crushed in the gravity of a “monster” black hole that a group of Chinese-led international scientists discovered …more

-NASA

Voyagers shed light on Solar System’s structure
Data sent back by the two Voyager spacecraft have shed new light on the structure of the Solar System.
Forty-two years after they were launched, the spacecraft are still going strong and exploring the outer reaches of our cosmic neighbourhood…more

-NASA

Nasa probes oxygen mystery on Mars
The oxygen in Martian air is changing in a way that can’t currently be explained by known chemical processes.
That’s the claim of scientists working on the Curiosity rover mission, who have been taking measurements of the gas. They discovered that the amount of oxygen in Martian “air” rose by 30%…more

-NASA

Supernova 1987A: ‘Blob’ hides long-sought remnant
Scientists believe they’ve finally tracked down the dead remnant from Supernova 1987A – one of their favourite star explosions. Astronomers knew the object must exist but had always struggled to identify its location because of a shroud of obscuring dust…more

-BBC

Supernova 1987A: ‘Blob’ hides long-sought remnant
A team of British scientists has arrived in the Antarctic to try to find the continent’s “missing meteorites”. The group, from the University of Manchester, will spend six weeks scouring a remote region for lumps of iron that have fallen from the sky. These pieces of metal represent the shattered remains…more

-Forbes

‘This Is Not Cool!’ – Astronomers Despair
In the early hours of the morning today, Monday, November 18, two astronomers checked in on their remotely operated telescope in Chile, expecting to see images of distant stars and galaxies. Instead, they saw a train of…more