The Astronomical Society of Australia has been asked by STANDARDS AUSTRALIA to compile a list of "designated" optical observatories that are valuable resources for (i) research, (ii) education and (iii) community use. The ASA is the final arbiter of whether any particular observatory is so designated. ... Upon receipt of your application form, your observatory will be entered on a list of "Pending Designated Observatories" on the ASA Home Page. ... It will be emailed for you. ... Email . ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Comets and Asteroids . ... Image credit:ESO/J.Emerson/VISTA. ... However others are less pessimistic and it has even been claimed that the mysterious ?Wow! signal? received in 1977 originated from the direction M55.б  Sadly, this still unexplained pulse of radio energy originated from a location rather to the northwest of M55 so I doubt if the source was this cluster (if indeed the signal was genuinely of extraterrestrial origin). ... Mysterious Wow! ...

... The following charts/text are intended as tools for monitoring the Type Ia supernovae ( SNe ) event visually or photographically (utilizing telescope equipped CCD equipment).The files include: A replication of The Type Ia SNe , V- magnitude (with data point checks from other cited references)and color index (B-V) templete (to indicate a general color-related trend of the type Ia ... I believe this might help alleviate some of the problems involving the making of acceptable amateur light curves...

... M6: The Butterfly Cluster . ... M6, also known as NGC 6405, spans about 20 light-years and lies about 2,000 light years distant. A New Jupiter Oval Rotates . ... It is difficult to hide a galaxy behind a cluster of galaxies. The closer cluster's gravity will act like a huge lens, pulling images of the distant galaxy around the sides and greatly distorting them. ... The Year of Distant Supernovae . ... Supernova 1994D and the Unexpected Universe . ... NEAR to Asteroid Eros . ...

... What's New? Bad Astronomy . ... News . ... The questions was: "During a flight, I saw a round rainbow shaped like a doughnut. ... However, she said that all rainbows are actually circles, and that she could not find a name for this phenomenon. ... One is that rainbows really aren't full circles. ... Basically, rainbows are due to light getting bent ("refracted") inside of raindrops. ... It's called a "glory", and is formed in a somewhat different way than rainbows. ... 2008 Phil Plait. ...

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... Villains of Lighting . ... The prime night sky exists only in pictures or at a planetarium. This is true not only in cities but also in suburbs and in rural areas where street lamps and other sources of "light pollution" have obscured our view of constellations, meteor showers, and even the planets. ... Most sky glow is unnecessary. ... Astronomers require observations of extremely faint objects that can be made only with large telescopes at sites free of air pollution and urban sky glow. ...

Next: Caverns in Binary Systems Up: Ejectors in Massive Binary Previous: The Number of Ejectors . In the very first years after the discovery of radiopulsars, it became clear that for some reason they avoid forming binary systems. ... Illarionov and Sunyaev (1975)[ 76 ] noted the fact that coherent radiowaves with a wavelength longer than 75 cm, which make it possible to observe most of the radiopulsars, are absorbed effectively in the stellar wind of a normal star. ...

... ESO is building what will be the World's largest optical telescope array, The Very Large Telescope (VLT). The VLT Project organisation is responsible for the design and construction of the Unit Telescopes, including enclosures, optics, adapter-rotators and coating unit. ... Unit Telescopes Overview - This page is outdated, an update is in process. ... Secondary mirror (M2 Unit) - This page is outdated, an update is in process. ... Coating Unit - This page is outdated, an update is in process. ...

In the outermost layers of stars - especially cool stars - and in interstellar space, temperatures become very low and conditions are favourable for atoms to combine as molecules and for molecules to aggregate as grains of dust. What sorts of molecules and dust are formed in interstellar space? This dust is very important for us because eventually it is gathers together to form new stars and planets. ... R Corona Borealis ( R CrB ) was the first star discovered to show this dimming in 1795. ...

... now - return the registration form . May 10 - deadline for conference registration and accommodation form . ... July 1 - final information to participants . ... RETURN] . ... Please send the abstracts to LOC. E-mail address: astro@te.net.ua . ... All participants are requested to fill in the enclosed Registration Form and send it to us before May 10, 1999 (via electronic mail to astro@te.net.ua ) . ... Please complete and return this form (even if you sent the pre-registration form) . ...

The Calendar of Bloody A.tecs. Living in Central Mexico from the XII century to the being of the XVI century warlike A.tecs devoted much time to sciences including astronomy. For needs of agriculture A.tecs, using the knowledge received from the forecomers, developed the exact calendar system. 52 years of the moon-and-the sun cycle formed the basis of it (something like our conception of "a century"). ... A.tecs year was divided into 18 months with 20 days each. ... Mesopotamian astronomy. ...

... For the past years I have been working on the problem of synthesis of light curves of close binary systems, consisting of a normal star and a compact object (point object with fixed X-ray luminosity). ... Possible existence of a bright spot on the disk's lateral surface is taken into account. ... The last of then will be published in Gordon and Breach Publishers ( Cherepashchuk A.M., Katysheva N.A., Khruzina T.S., Shugarov S.Yu. ... Cherepashchuk A.M., Katysheva N.A., Khruzina T.S., Shugarov S.Yu. ...

... Image Quality of the VLT . Total Optical Control . First light for the ESO VLT unit telescope 1 occurred during the workshop. ... The image shown (Figure 1 ) here was obtained with the VLT on May 16, 1998, in red light (R band), i.e. while the mirror was still uncoated. ... In this diagram (FIgure 2), the measured image quality of the VLT UT1 astronomical images is plotted versus the ``seeing", as measured by the Seeing Monitor, a small telescope also located on top of the Paranal Mountain. ...

... SS433 is a close binary system, one star is a supergiant, a second one is a black hole. ... Even a black hole cannot accept such an enormous mass flux, a supercritical accretion disk appears, all the excess gas glows up to several tens of thousands degrees and is ejected off the disk with enormous velocities. ... SAO researchers have found an evidence of the supercritical accretion onto a black hole in SS433, which follows from a brightness variability of the SS433 disk. ...

Astronomers have uncovered patterns of light that appear to be from the first stars and galaxies that formed in the universe. ... The top panel show's Spitzer's initial infrared view of this patch, including foreground stars and a confusion of fainter galaxies, seen at a wavelength of 4.5 microns. In the lower panel, all of the resolved stars and galaxies have been masked out of the image (grey patches), and the remaining background glow has been smoothed and enhanced. ...

ALBUM: floating Artist: Eloy @ SONG : Floating Instrumental @ SONG : The Light From Deep Darkness Out of the depth of nothing In nobobdy's time The earth was created The first morning starts Sun appears in the sky Winds stroking waves Evening shadows tumble down Eclipse the sun of life Herald the night Burning lights arise people take their places Dance a merry round They live without fear Help each other in their way through life Tomorrow we'll see They forget ...

... STScI-PRC00-05 HUBBLE FINDS YOUNG STARS IN COSMIC DANCE This composite image, made with two cameras aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows a pair of 12 light-year-long jets of gas blasted into space from a young system of three stars. The jet is seen in visible light, and its dusty disk and stars are seen in infrared light. These stars are located near a huge torus, or donut, of gas and dust from which they formed. ... The huge jet comes from one of the stars in this tight binary pair. ...

... Figure 1 (a) shows a cross section of a photodiode. ... The usual P-layer for a silicon photodiode is formed by selective diffu- sion of boron, to a thickness of approximately 1 m or less and the neutral region at the junction between the P- and N-layers is known as the depletion layer. ... When light strikes a photodiode, the electron within the crystal structure becomes stimulated. ... current generated by the incident light (proportional to the amount of light) . ... Series resistance . ...

... The person next to Brad (don't recall who it was) spoke to what an important general question that was. But I also,later, thought of a slightly better answer for Brad: If you DO have some kind of good parametrized physical model (e.g. light-curve formed by two stars of type X and Y, at such and such inclination, with hot-spot and oddly stretched atmosphere, etc etc) then "forward fitting" to make a good likelihood ratio is ALWAYS going to be the most powerful, most sensitive test. ...