... 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. ...

... 2013 December 18 . Light Pillars over Finland . ... In most places on Earth, a lucky viewer can see a Sun-pillar , a column of light appearing to extend up from the Sun caused by flat fluttering ice-crystals reflecting sunlight from the upper atmosphere. Usually these ice crystals evaporate before reaching the ground. ... These ice crystals may then reflect ground lights in columns not unlike a Sun-pillar . ... Free lecture: APOD editor to speak in NYC on Jan. ... About APOD | ...

... Unusual Light Pillars Over Latvia . ... The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn recently drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. ... NGC 4945 in Centaurus . ... To help find out, the orbiting Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have combined their efforts to survey the region in unprecedented detail in infrared light. Jupiter Eclipsing Ganymede . ... Comet and Meteor . ...

... 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 Unit Telescopes Overview - This page is outdated, an update is in process.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 Secondary mirror (M2 Unit) - This page is outdated, an update is in process.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 Coating Unit - This page is outdated, an update is in process. ...

The annual Geminid meteor shower makes its return to the vicinity of the Earth over the period 7th to 16th December, with the peak of activity expected to occur during the morning of 14th December. ... The Geminids appear to radiate from the constellation Gemini, The Twins, which lies high in the west in the early morning December skies. ... The near-Earth asteroid, Phaeton , discovered in 1983 using a NASA satellite, appears to be the source of the shower. ... Photographing Meteors . ...

... 6161: FOC Aperture location appears to be off by 1 arcsec. ... FOC team supported Phase II proposal development . ... The Bright Object Camera: Part 2 нн ND Filters SPACE TELESCOPESCIENCE INSTITUTE TIPS Meeting 22 Feb 1996 Mark Voit Summary of FOC Activities for the period 18 January 1996 -- 21 February 1996 SPACE TELESCOPESCIENCE INSTITUTE TIPS Meeting 22 Feb 1996 Mark Voit Summary of FOC Activities for the period 18 January 1996 -- 21 February ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Solar System . Sun . ... Stars . ... Monthly Sky Notes . ... Among the wonders of the sky they shared may have been something we do not have today, a neighbouring star roaming through the outer edge of the Solar System. ... Today Scholzт??s Star is about 20 light years from the Sun in the constellation of Monoceros. ... Seen from our Solar System, Scholzт??s Star barely moves across the across the sky. ... Astronotes . ... Subscribe to Astronotes . ...

Classroom Activity: Making a Rainbow . ... When white light from the Sun or a light bulb passes through a prism, the light splits into its component wavelengths. ... Red, blue, green colored filters - if possible, cut 1x4-inch pieces of the filters for each student . ... Many students have the misconception that filters somehow dye the light a certain color. ... Younger students can draw the rainbow and make up a mnemonic for remembering the order of the colors (such as, ROY G. BIV). ...

... The European HST Archive has been moved to ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre ( ESAC ), Spain, where most of ESA's Space Science Archives are located and operated from. ... The Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF), jointly operated by ESA and the European Southern Observatory ( ESO ) was, until the end of 2010, the European HST science facility, supporting the European astronomy community in exploiting the research opportunities provided by the Hubble Space Telescope. ...

... were entered in the atlas. ... In so doing lines were selected which yielded radial velocities close to the symbiotic velocity of MWC 560 (+35 km/s). ... The visible spectrum of MWC 560 is poor in absorption lines especially near the brightness maximum. In our atlas are visible only the blue-shifted components of , , NaI and FeII(42), interstellar lines NaI, a few diffuse interstellar bands (DIB) and telluric lines of and and, at length, traces of the spectra of the M giant. ...

This huge elliptical galaxy NGC 5128 (Centaurus A) is the closest such galaxy to Earth, at a distance of about 12 million light-years. Observations with ESO s Very Large Telescope in Chile have discovered a new class of dark globular star clusters around this galaxy. ... Normal globulars are marked in blue and globulars showing similar properties to dwarf galaxies are in green. The dark globulars appear very similar to other globulars around this galaxy but contain much more mass. ...

Hubble Observations Shed New Light on Jupiter Collision . Was it a comet or an asteroid? ... Their initial findings, combined with results from other space-borne and ground-based telescopes, shed new light on Jupiter's atmospheric winds, its immense magnetic field, the mysterious dark debris from the impacts, and the composition of the doomed comet itself. ... Hubble's ultraviolet observations show the motion of very fine impact debris particles now suspended high in Jupiter's atmosphere. ...

... 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) ...

... A wonderful site where the debate about the nature of light sits. ... Shadow and Light science activities - A short list of activities for students about light and shadow designed by an undergraduate Education major in New Foundland. ... Projecting Shadows - Fantastic interactive site about how to make shadows from the Light/Block/Shadow technique. ... The Energy Story: Solar Energy - Aimed towards children, this is a short introduction about solar energy. ... You Light Up My Life | ...

The Sun is our nearest star and the source of energy for life on Earth. ... For centuries astronomers wondered whether they were clouds floating in the Sun's atmosphere, but we now know that they really are huge regions of magnetic field, about as intense as the field at the poles of an iron magnet. ... Such abrupt events were named solar flares , and what made them especially interesting was that occasionally, after a prominent flare, a magnetic storm would erupt on Earth. ...

... 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. ...

National Aeronautics and Space Administration . ... Mark L. Polansky . NASA Astronaut (FORMER) . ... His primary responsibilities involved teaching the astronaut pilots Space Shuttle landing techniques in the Shuttle Trainer Aircraft and instructing astronaut pilots and mission specialists in the T-38 aircraft. ... He retired from NASA in June 2012. ... The STS-98 crew continued the task of building and enhancing the International Space Station by delivering the U.S. laboratory module Destiny. ...

... 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. ...

... Celebrating the International Year of Light 2015 we present a stunning multi-wavelength image of Pictor A , the closest powerful Fanaroff-Riley class II radio source. The host galaxy appears as a non-descript point at the centre of the background optical image (grey: ESO DSS-2 R-band image). ... Two nearly circular lobes, normally reminiscent of a "dying" radio source, are seen at radio wavelengths ( red : 6 cm ATCA radio continuum image by Emil Lenc, published in the Wilson et al. ... ATCA | ...

... The Sun has come all of one day away from breaking its record for the longest period of inactivity for the last decade - reaching a mid-summer low and falling into yet another state of "hibernation". Yesterday, on the first day of autumn, new sunspots appeared on the surface of the Sun following an absence of almost 50 days. ... The first low lasted 51 days, from 21 July until 11 September last year. ... Now, almost a year later, it seems the Sun has hit a new low almost as "deep" as the first. ...