RGO will close in October
The observatory employs 115 staff to provide technical support for the UK’s overseas telescopes. Some of these staff will transfer to the new Astronomical Technology Centre, which is part of the...
France cuts back SPOT programme
The French space agency CNES is hoping to follow in the footsteps of NASA’s Discovery mission programme by using smaller, cheaper spacecraft instead of larger, more expensive missions. SPOT Imag...
Did the Earth get hit by multiple impacts?
Simon Kelley of the Open University in the UK, John Spray of the University of New Brunswick, and David Rowley of the University of Chicago in the US, reached this startling conclusion while trying to...
Three steps to better biomedical images
The technique works on any turbid medium observed with light in the wavelength range 200-1000 nm, making it suitable for a wide range of applications. Patent 5719398 describes how three simple stages ...
Australia joins Gemini
The observing time of the original six partners – the US, the UK, Canada, Chile, Argentina and Brazil – will be slightly reduced, but this loss will be offset by “enhanced scientific...
Water found on Moon!
Rumours that Lunar Prospector – NASA’s first lunar mission in twenty five years – had confirmed the existence of water ice had captivated the space science community since the beginn...
France fails to innovate
The figures are from the French Science and Technology Observatory. “The connection between research and innovation is really bad, ” says Rémi Barré, director of the observatory,...
Germany predicts future markets
The “Delphi 98” report contains the views of more than 2000 experts from industry, research and education, who were asked to predict what they thought would be the most important developme...
Double take makes the most of X-rays to enhance synchrotron images
The results show that the limited quality of conventional X-ray images can be dramatically improved by exploiting synchrotron light (D Chapman et al. 1997 Phys. Med. Biol. 42 2015). Moreover, there is...
China plans massive nuclear programme
China is one of the fastest growing nuclear energy markets in the world. Only one per cent of China’s energy needs presently comes from nuclear power and over the next fifteen years China will s...
