... GRB 060218: A Mysterious Transient . ... The entire space mystery began on February 18 when the Earth-orbiting robot Swift satellite noticed an unusual transient began to glow dimly in gamma rays . Dubbed GRB 060218, the object is a type of gamma ray burst (GRB) but the way its brightness changes is very unusual. ... Whether GRB 060218 represents a new type of gamma ray burst , a new type of supernova , or an unusual link between the GRBs and supernovas has become an instant topic of research. ...

... 2006 February 27 . GRB 060218: A Mysterious Transient . Credit: SDSS Collaboration , Swift Collaboration , Sloan Foundation , NSF , NASA . ... Telescopes around the globe are tracking an unusual transient there as it changes day by day. ... The entire space mystery began on February 18 when the Earth-orbiting robot Swift satellite noticed an unusual transient began to glow dimly in gamma rays . ... The oddball GRB is visible in the center of the right image. ... About APOD | ...

... Tonight's Sky . ... The Magazine . ... Observing . ... The double star 54 Leonis, spiral galaxy NGC 3198, and emission nebula NGC 3199 . ... Astronomy for Kids . ... Observing springtime deep-sky objects with a large telescope . ... Bright planets meet at dusk . ... Astronomy magazine subscribers can read the full article for free. ... Get instant access to subscriber content on Astronomy.com! ... Receive news, sky-event information, observing tips, and more from Astronomy's weekly email newsletter....

... In principle, two observers on the ground can tell, by comparing the position of the same auroral arc against the background stars. ... The display stretches across Canada; just below it, in the middle of the picture, are the lights of Chicago, next to Lake Michigan. ... The Canadian scientific satellite Isis-2 (1971) carried an auroral imaging camera and discovered the diffuse aurora, a broad ribbon around the auroral oval, too spread-out to be noticed from the ground. ... Auroral Acceleration . ...

... Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG, +44 (0)28 3752 2928 . The Geminid meteor shower is the last, and one of the best, major meteor showers of the year. ... Shower meteors appear to come from a point in the sky known as the radiant. ... The number of meteors that may potentially be observed during the maximum of the shower on the evening of the 13/14 December, and from a clear, dark site with no light pollution and little moonlight, can range up to as many as 100 or more per hour. ...

Various types of stars have dust around them. In the well known case of the Pleiades the dust around the stars is unrelated to the stars, and is instead dust from an interstellar cloud that the Pleiades cluster has drifted into on its way through the galactic disk. ... The dust in interstellar space is observed in a variety of ways: due to its passive absorption of starlight ("extinction"), by its production of polarization in starlight, and then at long wavelengths due to its thermal radiation. ...

I was wondering what conditions should be met to have the "darkest" sky .. ... Upon the above publication of the Southern Galactic hemisphere, TunГ Tezel started seeking opportunities to create the Northern counterpart image. ... So, the initial quest of having the darkest possible sky have delivered us these two all-sky images of the two galactic hemispheres as seen from Planet Earth. Zoomable and 'full-screenable' fisheye view of the "darkest sky" Southern Galactic Hemisphere image. ...

... Fit the ring around the equator and then change its inclination from 0 degrees (equatorial orbit used by geosynchronous satellites) to 28.5 degrees (space shuttle orbit) to 51.6 degrees (space station orbit) to 90 degrees (polar orbit used by spy satellites). by Rob Landis, Space Telescope Science Institute . ... With so many satellites now in orbit, it is likely that you have seen an artificial satellite zipping across the night sky. ... http://www.amsat.org/amsat/ftpsoft.html . ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Earth Satellites . ... Monthly Sky Notes . ... By admin March 5, 2013 Posted in: March , Monthly Sky Notes . ... It has been a hard object not to spot due to its intense brightness in the constellation of Taurus following the beautiful bright star Aldebaran across the sky, and although Jupiter has been mentioned a lot recently in the night sky Astronotes this month will provide a particularly exciting view of the solar system record breaker. ...

Halo around the Moon. Halo arises when the light beams refracted on the high clouds icy chips ina form of a six side prism. As a result we see a small halo circle with a 22°-radius. The big circle is formed by the beams paased through the side edge and the base of prismochips. Its radius is equal to 46° (nearly). The big circle is observed rarely and is shining weaker but it is easier to observe it near the Sun, if comparing with the small halo invisible in the bright Sun light. ...

Comets are small, fragile, irregularly shaped bodies composed of a mixture of non-volatile grains and frozen gases. ... Most become visible, even in telescopes, only when they get near enough to the Sun for the Sun's radiation to start subliming the volatile gases, which in turn blow away small bits of the solid material. ... Nearly 100 known comets have periods (the time it takes them to make one complete trip around the Sun) five to seven Earth years in length. ...

MAIN PAGE . ... Nova Cygni August 1975! ... 1975/76: Comet West! ... Dr. Richard West (4th from left) & AAL members visiting SES Betzdorf on occasion of our club's 25th anniversary - October 1996 . Comet West Information . ... It was the brightest comet visible from Earth since Comet West in 1976. ... 1997: Comet Hale-Bopp! ... Thus Comet Hale-Bopp never got closer to Earth than Earth gets to the Sun. ... Comet Hale-Bopp JPL Page . ... 1999: Total solar eclipse over Luxembourg! ...

... About ATNF overview . ... Australia Telescope Steering Committee . ... Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory . ... Parkes radio telescope . ... Australia Telescope 20GHz Survey . ... Bright prospects: Comparing the H Survey with large-scale radio continuum emission . ... Prospects for comparisons between the AAO/UKST H \ survey and large-scale radio continuum emission are considered, with particular reference to the recently completed Parkes 2.4-GHz survey of the southern Galactic Plane. ...

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 . ...

... Auroral Currents . ... 25c. Space tether . ... Aurora from Space . ... But the best view is still from space. ... The Canadian scientific satellite Isis-2 (1971) carried an auroral imaging camera and discovered the diffuse aurora, a broad ribbon around the auroral oval, too spread-out to be noticed from the ground. ... Currently, NASA's Polar (1996) collects images of the polar aurora using three cameras--in visible light (sometimes as frequently as 12 seconds apart), in ultra-violet and in x-rays. ...

Finding Himalia, The Fifth Brightest Moon Of Jupiter . Articles | ... Himalia is the only moon other than the Galilean moons of Jupiter that is visible in an amateur size telescope. ... I normally use “The Sky” from Software Bisque for planning my observing sessions and in helping me find objects, but it only has the Galilean moons for Jupiter so I used Red Shift (version 3 at the time) which I also had on my computer. ... www.astronomy.net . ... dbHTML," "AstroGuide," "ASTRONOMY.NET" & "VA.NET" . ...

... Centaurus A : 15,000,000 light years away, in the constellation Centaurus, the closest AG to Earth . ... Astronomers think that the reason for the unusual shape of this galaxy is because hundreds of millions of years ago two galaxies, one dusty spiral and one bright ellipictal, collided causing a massive black hole in the middle and bright emmision of light. ... Andromeda galaxy: 2.8 million light years away, closest spiral galaxy to earth, farthest object one can see without a telescope. ...

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. ...

... Bad Astronomy . ... On Thursday, February 15th 2001 (and replayed on March 19), the Fox TV network aired a program called ``Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?'', hosted by X-Files actor Mitch Pileggi. ... Dust around the lander . ... However, it appeals to our common sense: when the sky is black here on Earth, we see stars. ... Bad: The program claims that when the top half of the lander took off from the Moon to bring the astronauts back into orbit, there was no flame from the rocket. ...

... The Galactic low-mass X-ray binary GS 2023+338 was discovered during the burst on May 22, 1989 with the Japanise satellite Ginga (aka Galaxy). The flux reached 17 crabs (this unit of flux measurement is an bright X-ray source, Crab Nebula) at 10-35 keV. ... No other radio telescope worldwide carried out multi-frequency measurements. ... Upon 14 days the radio flux fell below the detection level at the RATAN-600 in relation to the decrease of the X-ray flux. ...