... Bad Astronomy . ... Bitesize Astronomy . ... Last week's Snack talked about how black holes can affect the environment around them in such a way as to be very bright . ... It's a common misconception that black holes always have matter swirling into them. ... As this matter gets closer and closer to the black hole it piles up and a large, fairly flat disk forms. This is called the accretion disk , because matter from this disk accretes (that is, falls in) on the black hole. ... 2008 Phil Plait. ...

... 2005 August 8 . Mars to Appear Normal This August . ... Regardless of numerous urban legends circulating, Mars will appear relatively normal in August. October is the best month to see Mars this year. ... As Earth catches up to Mars in their respective orbits around the Sun, Mars will keep rising earlier in the night. On 2005 October 30, Earth will have caught up to Mars and the planets will be the nearest to each other in their orbits -- this time around. ... About APOD | ...

... Saturns Rings in Natural Color . ... 23.07.2004 . ... Explanation: What colors are Saturn's rings? Recent images from the Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn confirm that different rings have slightly different colors. ... The rings reflect sunlight and so, even if they were perfectly reflecting, would appear the color of the Sun . ... Thinner and more isolated rings also naturally appear darker. ... Publications with keywords: Saturn - rings . Publications with words: Saturn - rings . ...

... To be read in conjunction with Section 4.11 of the WFPC2 Instrument Handbook , -Version 4.0. ... 1 The second study found evidence that CTE loss for faint stars has increased with time (Whitmore, 1998). The primary observational consequence of CTE loss is that a point source at the top of the chip appears to be fainter than if observed at the bottom of the chip, due to the loss of electrons as the star is read out down the chip (see Figure 1 ). ... Last updated: 06/16/98 10:38:00 . ...

... Tonight's Sky . ... Sky this Month . ... Star Atlas . ... stars . ... The Sky This Week: April 1 - 10 . ... Observing springtime deep-sky objects with a large telescope . ... Why do some stars appear to flash a variety of different colors when you look at them through a telescope? ... So, Earthт??s atmosphere will bend some colors from especially bright stars more so than others, which makes the source look like itт??s flashing colors. Get instant access to subscriber content on Astronomy.com! ...

... SEARCH ASP SITE: Match ALL words Match ANY word . ... ASP Conference Series . ... Accidental Astrophysics: The Devil's In the Magnitudes, Part II . ... The star second to the Sun in brilliance is Sirius. ... Recall the magnitude system, passed down to us through a hundred generations of sky watchers, as a means of quantifying stellar brightness ("Accidental Astrophysics," May/June, p. 9). ... Yes, it is a magnitude difference, but that difference is due to the distance between us and the star. ...

... Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG, +44 (0)28 3752 2928 . On Sunday evening, 28th November, the Armagh Observatory was inundated with reports from people who had seen a bright meteor or fireball. ... The Armagh Observatory would like to thank those who have so far reported observations of this event, and encourage any businesses and others who may operate north-pointing CCTV cameras to inspect any video footage recorded between approximately 17:30 and 18:00 on Sunday 28th November. ...

... Data Reduction FAQ > The reduced science spectrum displayed in the Reflex window appears good but when I try to plot it, it is quite different. How can I get it? ... Observing with ESO Telescopes . ... ESO-MIDAS . ... Reflex . ... ESO Data . ... ESO HST Image Galleries . ... ESO Data Access Policy . ... ESO Science Newsletter . ... ESO Annual Reports . ... Seminars at ESO Santiago . ... Seminars at ESO Garching . ... ESO Telescope Bibliography . ... Last Update: 01.04.14 ESO . ...

In this gallery are many images of Low Surface Brightness Galaxies which have recently been discovered and analyzed. ... The central surface brightness of this galaxy is 24.28 . Malin 2 This galaxy is another huge disk galaxy with a scale length of 15 kpc and a redshift of 15000 km/a. The high surface brightness knot in one of its spiral arms actually has the same color, luminosity and H-alpha equivalent width as the entire Large Magellanic Cloud . ... Truly it is a Low Surface Brightness Galaxy. ...

... Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2000 February 28 . The Sombrero Galaxy from VLT . ... FORS1 , VLT ANTU , ESO . ... Reasons include the Sombrero 's unusually large and extended central bulge of stars, and dark prominent dust lanes that appear in a disk that we see nearly edge-on. Billions of old stars cause the diffuse glow of the extended central bulge. ... About APOD | ...

You Can Make Stellar Images Brighter . Articles | ... A few months ago I wrote an article titled "You Can’t Make Them Brighter". So why am I now writing that you can make them brighter. ... The image of a focused star is actually a small disk called the Airy disk, named after the 19 th century scientist Sir George Airy. ... For a given aperture, a smaller Airy disk means that the light is focused to a smaller disk and is therefore brighter. ... www.astronomy.net . About Astronomy Net | ...

Starbursts are regions of enhanced star formation efficiency, where gas is being converted into stars at much higher rates than can be sustained over billions of years. ... A nice example in the southern sky is the nearby galaxy NGC 7552, which was imaged with the Compact Array at 3 cm by Forbes et al. ... On 9 May we re-observed this galaxy with the Compact Array in the 3-mm lines of HCN and HCO + . ... The two lines were observed simultaneously, allowing a direct comparison of their line strengths. ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Space Flight . ... Earth Satellites . ... Leonid meteors seen from 13 km altitude aboard an aircraft during the 1999 Leonids Multi-Instrument Aircraft Campaign (Leonid-MAC). Comet Tempel-Tuttle provides the cometary debris for the Leonid meteor shower. ... Every 17-19 November Earth crosses Tempel-TuttleтАЩs orbit and the Leonids become visible. With clear, dark skies observers may see 10 to 15 Leonid meteors every hour on those mornings. ...

Check out the new images (Jan 18-25) and (Jan 26-Feb 05) of the comet by Rob McNaught. ... Every few years a comet becomes bright enough to be easily seen with the naked eye but only every decade or so are these comparable with comets like Halley. ... Before Jan 13, the comet is not visible in the Australian sky after sunset. ... SOHO images . ... On Jan 12 at approximately 09:00 UT (8pm NSW time), comet C/2006 P1 McNaught appears at the 11 o'clock position in the images. ... STEREO images . ...

True Color Image Gallery: Galactic SNR | Magellanic Cloud SNR . ... Chandra Proposer's Guide pile up section ] During frame readout, the ACIS CCDs take 40 microsec to (parallel) transfer the charge by one pixel. As a result of this, each frame readout, each pixel is exposed for 40 microsec to a source (plus cosmic X-ray background) at each location along its column. ... Note also that the image does not just trail, it extends along the whole column. ... Chandra Supernova Remnant Catalog . ...

... Observers looking at an object that is moving away from them see light that has a longer wavelength than it had when it was emitted (a redshift), while observers looking at an approaching source see light that is shifted to shorter wavelength (a blueshift). ... By measuring the amount of the shift to the red, we can determine that the bright galaxy is moving away at 3,000 km/sec, which is 1 percent of the speed of light, because its lines are shifted in wavelength by 1 percent to the red. ... Part 2...

... self-absorption - the absorption of light shining on an object by a process similar to that which produced the light originally; if a cloud emits less light than it absorbs from other clouds behind it, this net loss of light, termed self-absorption , causes the foreground cloud to appear darker than the background field (the term is from spectroscopy, where small absorption dips sometimes occur in larger emission lines, making the latter look as if it is absorbing part of itself) . ... HISA Main ...

Low energy noise on the MOS CCDs C M Huber t Chen, CEA Saclay 31- 3-2009 - A.k.a. the MOS2CCD5 effect (Stuhlinger 2008) or `anomalous states' (Kuntz and Snowden 2008). ... Low energy noise on the MOS CCDs ­ p. 4/1 Noise has correlation in ODF E1,E2 ! ... Pattern-0 spectrum: - Low energy noise on the MOS CCDs ­ p. 6/1 Correlation is different in different CCDs MOS 1 CCD 4 MOS 1 CCD 5 MOS 2 CCD 2 MOS 2 CCD 5 Low energy noise on the MOS CCDs ­ p. 7/1 Application: Are the central CCDs noisy? ...

A team of U.S. and German astrophysicists have made the first ever detection of X-rays coming from a comet. ... Following the initial detection, the team reported repeated X-ray emissions from the comet over the next 24 hours. ... One preliminary theory is that X-ray emission from the Sun was absorbed by a cloud of gaseous water molecules surrounding the nucleus of the comet, and then were re-emitted by the molecules in a process physicists call "fluorescence." ... Comets . ...

. To you, the user, it appears as though there is only one type of file in UNIX - the file which is used to hold your information. In fact, the UNIX filesystem contains several types of file. Ordinary files . Directories . Special files . Pipes .