... 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. ...

Astronomy Picture of the Day . ... Eris: More Massive than Pluto . ... Monitoring M2-9 . ... About 2,100 light-years away and over one light-year across, M2-9 is known as a twin jet or butterfly nebula in reference to its striking bipolar symmetry. ... Of course M96 is a spiral galaxy, and counting the faint arms extending beyond the brighter central region it spans 100 thousand light-years or so, about the size of our own Milky Way. vdB 152: Reflection Nebula in Cepheus . ... 100 | ...

... 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 | ...

... Jupiter Eyes Ganymede . Credit: Cassini Team , U. Arizona , JPL , NASA . ... This moon, visible on the lower right, is Ganymede , and the planet it orbits, Jupiter , seems to be keeping a watchful eye, as its Great Red Spot appears serendipitously nearby. This recently released enhanced-contrast image from the robot spacecraft Cassini captures new details of the incredible intricacies of Jupiter's complex cloud patterns. ... Tomorrow's picture: Manicouagan Impact Crater . ...

... Tonight's Sky . ... Observing . ... Sky this Month . ... Astronomy for Kids . ... Can you explain Mercury's retrograde motion? Do other planets appear to do this also? ... When astronomers talk about retrograde motion, generally they refer to the apparent motion outer planets make as Earth passes them while orbiting the Sun. ... Get instant access to subscriber content on Astronomy.com! ... Receive news, sky-event information, observing tips, and more from Astronomy's weekly email newsletter. ...

3) Planets and Brown Dwarfs . ... By its nature, this method is most sensitive to massive planets orbiting close to their stars. ... That means that some of the more massive extrasolar planets could actually be brown dwarfs (although the statistics of the finds suggest that most of them are not). ... Another possible difference between brown dwarfs and massive planets is how they are born. ... They would base the fundamental definition on the mode of formation: a planet is built from planetesimals. ...

Most of these images were obtained by Mike Bessell, Michelle Buxton, Hwankyung Sung, Ralph Sutherland and Bob Watson at SSO using a 2Kx2K Site CCD behind a Nikon or Hasselblad lens or directly on the 1m telescope. A few images are from the Hubble Space Telescope. Some of the M42 images were obtained with the KPNO 1m and ESO NTT telescope. One image is a mosaic of IRAS images. ... Details of the CCD imaging program at MSSSO. ... antenna.jpg (53KB) . ... ngc6744.jpg (59KB) . ...

M1 image More About M1 Nice Color Picture . ... M16 image More About M16 HST image . ... M31 image More About M31 Nice Color Picture . ... M42 image ; M43 image More About M42/43 Nice Color CCD Picture . M51 image More About M51 Color Image of M51 M51 Supernova . M57 image More About M57 Nice Color CCD Picture Very Deep M57 Image . ... M81 image More About M81 M81 Supernova Ultraviolet Image of M81 More about Ultraviolet Imaging . M82 image More About M82 M82 False Color M82 True Color . ...

To initiate orbital motion click on any of the icons in tool bar with red sign + or – , permitting also to speed or to slow planet motion by repeated clicking on them. ... Selecting Orbits item in menu bar and by subsequent choosing corresponding items in drop-down menu one can also fulfil the above actions. ... To enter new initial epoch or to change list of minor or major planets which are shown in the picture, select Orbits in menu bar and then select Input data in drop-down menu. ...

Making HST Pictures: Examples and Illustrations . ... These illustrations represent some of the steps and techniques used to produce “pretty pictures” from HST images. ... TIFFs (ftp) . ... Separate images are exposed through different color filters. ... An alternate way to make color images . ... Eight bit (one byte) images contain 256 different values that may be represented by 256 shades of gray or 256 arbitrary colors from a color map (or palette) of all possible colors. ...

. Image created by Miruna Popescu, showing some of the objects displayed in the Armagh Observatory's Human Orrery. Original images from NASA were used.

... Active Disk Building in a Local HI-massive LIRG . by Michelle Cluver (UCT) . ... However, the mid-infrared uncovers a star-forming disk housing an intense starburst with a star formation rate of approximately 21 Msun/yr (Cluver et al. 2008 , 2010 ).This luminous infrared galaxy (LIRG) appears to be undergoing asymmetric inside-out disk building, with a star formation efficiency comparable to local disk galaxies and quite different to merger-driven starbursts. ... today * ATNF | ...

... The remote planet Pluto and its moon Charon orbit the Sun at a mean distance of almost 6,000 million kilometres, or nearly fourty times farther out than the Earth. During a recent investigation by an international group of astronomers [1], the best picture ever of Pluto and Charon [2] was secured with the European Space Agency's Faint Object Camera at the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). ... The new HST image was taken when Charon was near its maximum elongation from Pluto (0.9 arcseconds). ...

T he solar system consists of the Sun ; the nine planets, sixty four (64) satellites of the planets, a large number of small bodies (the comets and asteroids), and the interplanetary medium. The inner solar system contains the Sun, Mercury , Venus , Earth and Mars : . T he planets of the outer solar system are Jupiter , Saturn , Uranus , Neptune and Pluto : . ... small planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Pluto. ... inferior planets: Mercury and Venus. closer to the Sun than Earth. ...

Subject of Astronomy. ... Celestial Sphere. ... Spherical Frames of Reference: Horisontal and Equatorial Coordinates, Ecliptical System. ... Transformation of Celestial Coordinates. ... Change of Object Coordinates as a Result of Diurnal Rotation of Celestial Sphere. Phenomenons, Which Lead to Celestial Coordinates Change. ... Motion of Equator, Ecliptic, and Their Poles. ... Diurnal Solar Motion on Different Latitudes. ... Time Equation. ... Apparent Motions and Configuration of Planets. ...

Name Sun What is wrong with this picture? ... Shadow Name Make this shadow appear below by using the shapes in front of you and a flashlight. How many shapes can make this shadow? ... Why? 2 pm Name Sun Draw in the shadow for each planet. Name 12 1 11 2 10 9 3 8 4 765 12 1 11 2 10 3 9 8 4 765 12 1 11 2 10 3 9 8 4 5 76 12 Noon Boston San Franciso London If it is 12 noon in Boston, Massachusetts, what time is it in the other two cities? ... Name Using a flashlight, how can you make these shapes? ...

The Earth. ... The middle raiding of the Earth is 6371,032 km, the pole 6356,777 km equatorial - 6378,160 km. The Earth surface area is 510,2 mln km^2, 70,8% of which is the World ocean. ... According to the modern cosmogonical views the Earth was formed 4,6 - 4,7 billions years ago from the protoplanet cloud captured by the Sun. ... The Earth is conditionally divided into 3 parts: a bark a cloak and a core (in the centre). The external layer - the bark is 35 km thick. ... Above the Earth. ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Armagh Planetarium . ... Moon . Planets . ... Space Flight . ... A gorgeous image of the real ?Lord of the Rings? ... Saturn is a big planet, about nine times as wide as the Earth, so the rings are huge. Let me put them into scale, if Saturn and the rings were moved so that one edge of the rings touched the Earth, then the distance across the rings to the opposite edge would extend more than halfway to the Moon. ... Saturn has a lot of moons. ...

... How to Spot a Pale Blue Dot in the Night Sky - Signatures of Life on Extrasolar Planets . ... Frame 2: Steamy atmosphere, an ocean is covering the entire planet, no oxygen is present, timeline about four billion years ago. ... Using such telescopes as Kepler, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Darwin and Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF), and masking the star light, the light from small Earth-like planets can be collected and analyzed. ... Copyright (c) Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston, Inc. ...

... Aurora from Space . ... Magnetic Storms . ... The "ring of fire" seen by satellite cameras around the polar caps (picture below) is probably created by electrons leaking from the tail's plasma sheet, whose magnetic field lines form a somewhat imperfect trap. ... One possible explanation involves the close association between auroral arcs and electric currents which flow along field lines between the ionosphere and distant space ( Birkeland currents ). ... Why no aurora at the magnetic poles? ...