Physics and Astronomy

On 14 January ESA’s Huygens probe made an historic first ever descent to the surface of Titan, 1.2 billion kilometres from Earth and the largest of Saturn’s moons. Huygens travelled to Titan as part of the joint ESA/NASA/ASI Cassini-Huygens mission. Starting at about 150 kilometres altitude, six multi-function instruments on board Huygens recorded data during the descent and on the surface. The first scientific assessments of Huygens’ data were presented during a press conference

Further insights into Titan were unveiled today (21st January 2005) as scientists involved in the joint NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens mission presented further results and images a week to the day after the successful descent and arrival of the Huygens probe on the surface of Saturn’s largest moon.

Principal Investigator for the Huygens Surface Science Package [SSP], Professor John Zarnecki from the Open University, Milton Keynes, has spent the last week with his team analysing and

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Technical University Munch have discovered evidence of a phenomenon that may lead to drastically lowering the cost of manufacturing of materials from plastics to fertilizers. Studying nano-sized clusters of gold on a magnesium oxide surface, scientists found direct evidence for electrical charging of a nano-sized catalyst. This is an important factor in increasing the rate of chemical reactions. The research will appear in the 21 January, 2

Although mass is the most important property of stars, it has proved very hard to measure for the lowest mass objects in the universe. Thanks to a powerful new camera, a very rare, low-mass companion has finally been photographed.

The discovery suggests that, due to errors in the models, astronomers have overestimated the number of young “brown dwarfs” and “free floating” extrasolar planets. An international team of astronomers lead by University of Arizona Associate Professor La

VLT Finds Young, Very Low Mass Objects Are Twice As Heavy As Predicted

Thanks to the powerful new high-contrast camera installed at the Very Large Telescope, photos have been obtained of a low-mass companion very close to a star. This has allowed astronomers to measure directly the mass of a young, very low mass object for the first time.

The object, more than 100 times fainter than its host star, is still 93 times as massive as Jupiter. And it appears to be almost twice

Although Huygens landed on Titan’s surface on 14 January, activity at ESA’s European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, continues at a furious pace. Scientists are still working to refine the exact location of the probe’s landing site, seen above.

While Huygens rests frozen at -180 degrees Celsius on Titan’s landscape, a symbolic finale to the engineering and flight phase of this historic mission, scientists have taken little time off to eat or sleep. They have