... Mars to Appear Normal this 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. On October 30, Mars will be nearly opposite to the Sun, rise at sunset, set at sunrise, and appear highest and brightest around midnight. ...

... 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 | ...

... 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. ...

... Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG, +44 (0)28 3752 2928 . Comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) on 2012 August 9th. ... A new comet, called C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS), is expected to become visible for a few weeks from approximately 10th March in the western sky after sunset. The comet has come from the Oort cloud, which comprises a vast swarm of comets surrounding the solar system and extending more than halfway to the nearest star, that is more than two light years from the Sun. ...

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. ...

... 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. ...

... The TRACE images may be used without restrictions in publications of any kind. ... These two images, taken on 18 November 2000 at 15:54UT and 16:11UT, respectively, show such an event: the red circle in the image to the left shows a region where many loops are cooling, with bright loop tops (the intensity scales with the square root of the image to reduce the dynamic range). ... See also a collection of images related to the Sun, other cool stars, and solar-terrestrial effects . ... Images | ...

... Circumstellar disc of beta Pictoris: constraints on grain properties from polarization. To appear in the Astronomy & Astrophysics . abs , src , ps ] . ... Dust influx to Titan from Hyperion . ... abs ] . ... Characteristics of bulges and disks in interacting galaxies . ... Dust grains around Herbig Ae/Be stars: porous, cometary-like grains? ... To appear in the Astronomy & Astrophysics Supplement . ... Finally, Links may lead you to more options (e.g. via the LANL preprint system). ...

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! ...

... Planets . ... Earth Satellites . ... Looking in the direction of the constellation Cygnus the Swan and launched by NASA in 2009 is the Kepler Space Observatory.Many previous missions searching for exoplanets mainly detected large giant planets, like large hot Jupiters (it is easier to detect larger planets).However KeplerтАЩs main objective is to search for much smaller planets located in a habitable zone which is not too close nor too far from their star; planets which may be just like our Earth. ...

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 . ...

The following are some standard questions that observers have about their fixed target confirmation charts. ... Why doesn't my target appear to be centered on the cross hairs? ... How is proper motion handled? ... Target well centered . If your target is not perfectly centered in the cross hairs, see the questions below for why it may not be centered and how well centered it must be . ... So, targets to be acquired by STIS should appear well centered in the cross hairs on the confirmation chart. ...

... Virginia Kilborn's program gfinder was run on 388 luthered and edge-masked HIPASS cubes , covering the whole southern sky, over all 1024 channels (i.e. -1281 to 12741 km/s), with an HI peak flux cutoff of 60 mJy/beam. ... The large number of candidates is mostly due to artifacts generated in areas of strong continuum flux, mostly the Galactic Plane, (causing a baseline ripple), the HI emission in our Galaxy, and lots of interference (1408 MHz birdie, GPS etc.) ... Number of galaxies: . ... galaxies ...

... The Pleiades star cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45, is a conspicuous object in the night sky with a prominent place in ancient mythology . ... The stars in the Pleiades are thought to have formed together around 100 million years ago, making them 1/50th the age of our sun, and they lie some 130 parsecs (425 light years ) away. ... Data for these stars are listed in a table below. ... Yes . ... WEBDA Pleiades cluster data . ... M45: The Pleiades Star Cluster (2007 November 18) ...

... 2004: . ... An increase in star brightness is followed by a decrease in asphericity and wind velocity to the point where stationary and even accreting fraction of the wind appears in extremely bright objects together with a flowing out fraction. ... Based on an analysis of observations obtained with BTA and on the published data it was found that degree of abnormality of energy distribution in continuum of magnetic chemically peculiar stars increases with an increase of their rotation period. ...

... The most spectacular view however is from space, where large areas of aurora can be observed simultaneously, even the entire polar cap. ... Such pictures often show a continuous ring of aurora around the polar cap (picture above), caused mostly by electrons leaking out along magnetic field lines, from the plasma sheet of the Earth's magnetic tail. ... Field lines from the auroral oval are believed to lead to the plasma sheet. ... A near-Earth circular polar orbit has many uses. ...

... More on 51 Peg: . The discovery of a Jupiter--mass planet in orbit around the solar--type star 51Peg has been reported by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz (Geneva Observatory) on October 6th at the 9th Cambridge workshop on "cool stars, stellar systems, and the sun" held at Florence (Italy). ... Recall that the measurements of radial velocity only yield v sin i which in turn gives us M sin i. For most values of i, sin i will be greater than 0.5 and this gives a mass estimate of 0.5 Jupiter masses. ...

... 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....

... The most spectacular view however is from space, where large areas of aurora can be observed simultaneously, even the entire polar cap. ... Such pictures often show a continuous ring of aurora around the polar cap (picture above), caused mostly by electrons leaking out along magnetic field lines, from the plasma sheet of the Earth's magnetic tail. ... Field lines from the auroral oval are believed to lead to the plasma sheet. ... A near-Earth circular polar orbit has many uses. ...

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 . ...