... 2005 December 19 . Thin Rings Around Polarized Saturn . Credit: Cassini Imaging Team , SSI , JPL , ESA , NASA . Explanation: How thin are the rings of Saturn? ... This thinness sometimes appears in dramatic fashion during an image taken nearly along the ring plane. The robot Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn has now captured another shot that dramatically highlights the ring's thinness. ... If alone in space, the unlit part of Saturn would be much darker. ... About APOD | ...

... Jupiter's Rings . ... Unlike Saturn's bright rings which are composed of chunks of rock and ice, Jupiter's rings appear to consist of fine particles of dust. ... Exploring Saturn's Rings . ... By watching a star flicker and fade as it passed behind Saturn's rings, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft was able explore the ring system in amazing detail. ... Saturn's spectacular system of bright rings has been the subject of study and wonder since Galileo first turned his telescope on the ringed planet in 1610....

... 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. ...

... This meteor shower, which reaches a peak of up to 120 meteors per hour, as seen from a clear, dark site, can be observed anytime after about 10.00pm for a few nights either side of the maximum, that is from about the 12 to 16 December. The Geminid meteors, which sometimes appear as brightly coloured relatively slow-moving fireballs, are caused by small particles mostly about the size of marbles or smaller, ejected into space from the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Phaethon . ... NASA Site . ...

... Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. December 18, 1999 . Irregular Galaxy Sextans A . ... Their newly formed, bright, blue star clusters found along beautiful, symmetric spiral arms are guaranteed to attract attention. But small irregular galaxies form stars too , like this lovely, gumdrop-shaped galaxy, Sextans A . ... About APOD > . ...

... 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 ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Colin Johnston . ... Our Galaxy . ... To locate it, look along the imaginary line between the two end stars on the leading edge of the PloughтАЩs blade (Merak and Dubhe) and Polaris (the North Star), the galaxy M82 (also known as the Cigar Galaxy) along with its companion M81, lies just off this line about a third of the way between the Plough and Polaris. €а€аAs usual, the supernova is far brighter than its home galaxy, appearing as an extra star. ...

... January 8, 2007 . ... SENTINEL CORRESPONDENT . Astronomers at UC Santa Cruz have discovered a surprisingly massive halo of bright, old stars around our galactic neighbor Andromeda, pushing the outer limits of the galaxy to 1.5 million light years, and teaching them how spiral galaxies behave. ... Younger stars may be remnants of a galaxy devoured, but older stars could have formed with the birth of the galaxy. ... http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2007/January/08/local/stories/03local.htm . ...

... V838 Mon is a member of a new class of eruptive variables which appear as a peculiar novae having late K-M type spectra in their outburst. Before its outburst, it was a wide binary system of B3V type stars. ... The B3V companion was seen in the outburst in the UV spectrum taken with HST (Rauch et al., ... In the latest spectra, the light of B3V companion was predominating in the short-wave photometric bands. ... CCD blue frames of V838 Mon before the eclipse (left) and in the eclipse (right). ...

... While staring up at the dark night sky from their homes all over the world, they were startled to witness a bright point of light appear in the sky where there had been none before! After studying the new star, they decided it was a nova (which just means ?something new in the sky?) and they named it ?Nova Vul?. A nova is powerful explosion on a star that causes it to instantly become much brighter. You can see the remains of Nova Vul in this space photograph! ...

... Главная . ... Новости . ... Проекты . Любителям астрономии . Проект ISON . ... Подробнее . ... Категория: Новости проекта ISON . ... Метки: Космический мусор ,љ Астероиды ,љ Гамма-всплески ,љ Любителям астрономии ,љ Кометы љ . ... Метки: Космический мусор ,љ Астероиды ,љ Любителям астрономии љ . ... Новости обсерваторий проекта] - Обсерватория Кубанского государственного университета от Иванов А - 09.04.2016 11:08:49 . ... 1999-2013 Copyright "Астрономия и Телескопостроение" . ...

... We have measured this "redshift" for the pink black holes, and allowed for it in our calculations. ... We see this effect in the emission from gas around these pink black holes, but it is far too small an effect to account for the pinkness. Thus the swirling motions of gas around or into the black holes cannot produc the colour. ... At first we thought that these things were normal blue black holes hidden behind clouds of interstellar dust, that absorbed the blue light and made them appear pink. ...

... EXPN DNO D A T E UT TIME FQ SOURCE CORR-Telescopes VT734 355-MO Dec 21 08:00-21:00 C TAU-A Pointing VT735 356-TU Dec 22 08:00-21:00 C TAU-A Pointing VT736 358-TH Dec 24 09:00-20:00 K ORIONKL Pointing VT737 359-FR Dec 25 09:00-20:00 K ORIONKL Pointing VT738 360-SA Dec 26 09:00-20:00 C 0528+134 Mitk-UD KA SH W018c 364-WE Dec 30 06:00-15:00 L 0552+398 Socr-VLBA W071n 6-WE Jan 06 10:00-17:00 L J0745+10 Mitk-AT HO MP UD SH KA W059e 7-TH ...

Astronomy Articles . Articles | ... Moon | ... Astronomy Binoculars - The Skies The Limit - by Scott Gray, September 2006 . ... Astronomy Terms - To Help You Study The Universe - by Scott Gray, October 2006 . ... Himalia is the only moon other than Europa, Ganymeade, Callisto and IO visible with small telescopes. ... The Harvest Moon refers to the Full Moon that comes closest to the autumnal equinox, or the first day of autumn. ... Think the study of stars is best left to professional astronomers? ...

... Tonight's Sky . ... SUN MOON MERCURY VENUS MARS, JUPITER SATURN . ... Observing . ... The double star 54 Leonis, spiral galaxy NGC 3198, and emission nebula NGC 3199 . ... Jupiter brightens the December sky . ... The largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter, reaches maximum brightness the night of December 2. ... Only registered members of Astronomy.com are allowed to comment on this article. ... Receive news, sky-event information, observing tips, and more from Astronomy's weekly email...

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 ). ... That produces an extra resistance to the flow of current. ...

... Since moonshine is really reflected sunlight, the full Moon is on the average slightly brighter in mid-winter, when Earth is closest to the Sun. In addition, the distance of the full Moon also varies, due to the ellipticity ("eccentricity") of the Moon's orbit. On 22 December, 1999, the two effects combined to produce the brightest full Moon of the century. ... This year will be the first full moon to occur on the winter solstice, Dec. 22nd, commonly called the first day of winter. ...

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... This artist's concept shows a lump of material in a swirling, planet- . ... Astronomers have witnessed odd behavior around a young star. Something, perhaps another star or a planet, appears to be pushing a clump of planet-forming material around. ... Spitzer observed infrared light coming from one such disk around a young star, called LRLL 31, over a period of five months. ... could be shoving planet-forming material together, causing its thickness to vary as it spins around the star. ...