BBC Sky at Night - UK (2021-08)

Disc-less dwarfs

The dusty ring of debris

found around white dwarf

stars only appears after

10–20 million years,

according to a recent study.

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appear, after a Sun-like star

goes through its red giant

phase, they are so hot they

vaporise the surrounding

debris, preventing a disc

from forming.

500 radio bursts

The Canadian Hydrogen

Intensity Mapping

Experiment (CHIME)

detected 535 fast radio

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operations. Before CHIME,

only 140 of the mysterious

bursts – which last only a

fraction of a second – had

been detected since their

discovery in 2007.

Colossal comet

An impressive 100km-wide

comet, believed to have

originated in the distant

Oort cloud, was spotted

creeping into the inner Solar

System in June. Comet

C/2014 UN271 is currently

20 times the Earth–Sun

distance away, and will

make its closest approach in

2031, passing just beyond

the orbit of Saturn.

Hubble instrument computer glitch spells trouble

The UK is to play a key role in an upcoming
mission to study the planet Venus, EnVision.
The spacecraft, selected in June by the
European Space Agency (ESA), is a €610m
project to study both Venus’s thick atmosphere
and the surface volcanic activity which created
it. It will be equipped with a radar system
capable of penetrating not only the thick cloud,
but the surface layer of the planet. It will also
use spectrometers to pick out key gases in the
atmosphere. The team will then take these

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about other planets, including Earth, hoping to

gain some insight into why ours is the only

planet that we know of with life.

“EnVision will take that experience to Venus

to make sense of our most un-Earthly

neighbour, and so help us understand what

makes our own world so special,” says Richard

Ghail from Royal Holloway University of

London, lead scientist on the project.

http://www.esa.int

New mission will investigate the planet’s geology and atmosphere

NEWS IN

BRIEF

UK scientists to lead the way to Venus

The Hubble Space Telescope
went into safe mode on
13 June, following a fault in
its payload computer. As of
writing, several attempts to
recover the telescope have
been unsuccessful.

computer. This automatically

put its instruments into safe

mode to prevent them being

damaged. Mission controllers

initially tried resetting the

computer without success,

before tracking down the issue

to the computer’s memory

module. They then attempted

to transfer to one of the three

backup modules, but the

command failed to complete.

After 30 years in space, the

telescope is beginning to show

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time it has experienced

computer problems. Back on

7 March, the telescope suffered

a software fault, which put it

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before being remedied. The

Hubble team say they will

continue attempting to get the

spacecraft back online and

doing science.

http://www.nasa.gov

The payload computer,

built in the 1980s, controls

the telescope’s science

instruments and monitors

the telescope’s performance.

It initially failed to send its

‘handshake’ signal to the main

Þ ESA’s EnVision mission will compare the atmosphere of Venus (right) with Earth (left)

Þ The Hubble Space Telescope has experienced problems before

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August 2021 BBC Sky at Night Magazine 11