... 2001 December 24 . Asteroid 1998 WT24 Passes Near Earth . ... Passing well outside the orbit of our Moon, Asteroid 1998 WT24 posed no danger, but became bright enough to see with binoculars and to track with radar . ... Every few years, an asteroid will actually pass inside the orbit of the Moon. Large impact features on the Earth are testaments to asteroids or comets that actually impacted the Earth in the distant past. ... About APOD | ...

Supernova 1987A in LMC . One day in 1987, an astronomer by the name of Ian Shelton was making observations of the Tarantula Nebula in Large Magellanic cloud at Las Campanas Observatory, and he noticed something strange on his image. ... SN 1987A got as bright as 2.7, the only other recent SN even to come close was 1885A in M31 which got up to mag 6. ... Mag 4.5 . ... IAUC 4318 2/25/87 Type II? ... IAUC 7354 2/1/00 New structure in the inner ring . ... IAUC 7360 2/7/00 HST observation of new spot . ...

... October 3, 1997 . Comet Halley and the Milky Way . Credit: Kuiper Airborne Observatory , NASA . Explanation: Comet Halley was photographed superposed in front of the disk of our Milky Way Galaxy in 1986 by the Kuiper Airborne Observatory . Comet Halley is the bright white streak near this photograph's center. ... Stars visible in our Milky Way Galaxy typically lie millions of times farther in the distance and orbit the Galactic center every 250 million years. ... About APOD > . ...

Moscow Astronomical Plate Archives: . Contents, Digitization, Current and Possible Applications . ... We describe the astronomical plate archives in Moscow and Zvenigorod and the existing digitization projects. ... 2 The Plate Archive of the Sternberg Institute . The contents of the most important Moscow astronomical plate archive, that of the Sternberg Astronomical Institute, was briefly presented in Shugarov et al. [1] in 1999. ... THE MOSCOW PLATE COLLECTION (STERNBERG INSTITUTE) . ...

... Positions and Proper Motions of 258,997 Stars for the Epoch and |Equinox of 1950.0", Publ. of the Smithsonian Institution of |Washington, D.C., No. ... 1971-1979, "Lowell Proper Motion Survey" |(red dwarfs), Lowell Obs. ... LHS |Luyten, W. J. 1976, "A Catalog of Stars with Proper Motion |exceeding 0".5 annually", Publ. of Univ. of Minnesota, |Minneapolis, Minnesota; Luyten, W. J., Albers, H. 1979, "An |Atlas of Identification Chart for LHS Stars", Publ. of Univ. of |Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota...

... Here is a brief outline of the current theory of the events in the early history of the solar system: . A cloud of interstellar gas and/or dust (the "solar nebula") is disturbed and collapses under its own gravity. ... The gas cools off enough for the metal, rock and (far enough from the forming star) ice to condense out into tiny particles. (i.e. some of the gas turns back into dust). ... Once the larger of these particles get big enough to have a nontrivial gravity, their growth accelerates. ...