Astronomers using data from NASA’s Kepler mission have discovered a planetary system of five small planets dating back to when the Milky Way galaxy was a youthful two billion years old.

The tightly packed system, named Kepler-444, is home to five planets that range in size, the smallest comparable to the size of Mercury and the largest to Venus. All five planets orbit their sun-like star in less than ten days, which makes their orbits much closer than Mercury’s sweltering 88-day orbit around the sun.

“While this star formed a long time ago, in fact before most of the stars in the Milky Way, we have no indication that any of these planets have now or ever had life on them,” said Steve Howell, Kepler/K2 project scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. “At their current orbital distances, life as we know it could not exist on these ancient worlds.”

Kepler-444 formed 11.2 billion years ago, when the universe was less than 20 percent its current age. This makes Kepler-444 the oldest known system of terrestrial-size planets, two and a half times older than the Earth.

To determine the age of the star and thus its planets, scientists measured the very small change in brightness of the host star caused by pressure waves within the star. The boiling motion beneath the surface of the star generates these pressure waves, affecting the star’s temperature and luminosity. These fluctuations lead to miniscule changes or variations in a star’s brightness. This study of the interior of stars is called asteroseismology and allows the researchers to measure the diameter, mass and age of a star.

The Kepler-444 system is approximately 117 light-years away toward the constellation Lyra. A paper reporting this discovery is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

For more information about the Kepler mission, visit NASA

Astronomers have spent decades debating whether some dark trans-Plutonian planet remains to be discovered within the Solar System. According to the calculations of scientists at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM, Spain) and the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) not only one, but at least two planets must exist to explain the orbital behaviour of extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNO).

For the whole story read Astronomy Now

Comet Lovejoy, glowing at 4th magnitude, is now in its best two weeks. It’s nicely placed high in the early-evening sky for your binoculars or low-power, wide-field telescope. It may be dimly visible to the unaided eye under excellent dark-sky conditions — if you know exactly where to look!

Comet Lovejoy, C/2014 Q2, is now having its best two weeks for skywatchers. It’s 4th magnitude, about as bright as it’s predicted to get. Use the finder charts at the bottom of this page to find its location among the stars. Although 4th magnitude would technically make it a naked-eye object, its diffuse fuzziness means that most viewers, who live under light pollution, will probably still need binoculars.

Sky & Telescope

The study presents the velocity dispersion of young, intermediate-age, and old stars in the disk of Andromeda, the first such measurement in another galaxy.

A detailed study of the motions of different stellar populations in the disk of the Andromeda Galaxy has found striking differences from our Milky Way, suggesting a more violent history of mergers with smaller galaxies in Andromeda’s recent past.

For more information you can read the whole story at:
Astronomy magazine

The enormous black holes that lurk at the hearts of all galaxies are significantly bigger than astronomers had imagined, a new study suggests.
Researchers have used a new method to measure the distance to the active spiral galaxy NGC 4151 — whose core is dubbed the “Eye of Sauron” because of its resemblance to the structure in the “Lord of the Rings” films — with unprecedented precision. This calculation enabled them to determine the mass of NGC 4151’s central black hole more accurately — and the results were surprising.

This is an excerpt from Space.com, you can read the full article at this link