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 Unit Telescopes Overview - This page is outdated, an update is in process.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 Secondary mirror (M2 Unit) - This page is outdated, an update is in process.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 Coating Unit - This page is outdated, an update is in process.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