... NASA , NSF Explanation: Is our Earth unique? In continuing efforts to answer this question, astronomers have now discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a distant normal star. ... Slight, fast, but regular wobbles of nearby small M - dwarf star Gliese 876 showed evidence for a planet with a likely mass slightly higher than a minimum six times the mass of Earth. ... Publications with keywords: planets - Earth - Gliese 876 . Publications with words: planets - Earth - Gliese 876 . ...

... Planets . ... Stars . Exoplanets . ... Most exoplanets so far discovered fall into the category of тАШhot JupitersтАЩ, these are giant planets orbiting very close to their parent star. ... Note that we have discovered so many hot Jupiters because they are the easiest type of planet to find, they are not necessarily particularly common in the galaxy. ... Subsequently several similar hot and€а fuzzy worlds have been discovered the same way, proving this that this planet is not a one-off oddball. ...

... 2005 June 14 . Gliese 876 System Includes Large Terrestrial Planet . ... Slight, fast, but regular wobbles of nearby small M - dwarf star Gliese 876 showed evidence for a planet with a likely mass slightly higher than a minimum six times the mass of Earth. The planet's small mass indicates that it is likely terrestrial in nature, similar in composition to the inner planets of our Solar System . ... The newly discovered terrestrial-like planet is depicted in the insert. ... About APOD | ...

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 Unit Telescopes Overview - This page is outdated, an update is in process.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 Secondary mirror (M2 Unit) - This page is outdated, an update is in process.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 Coating Unit - This page is outdated, an update is in process.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

Titan . ... Hubble Space Telescope Images of Titan's surface . ... Later that year, it will release the European-built Huygens probe for a descent through Titan's atmosphere. ... This artist's rendering shows the European Space Agency's Huygens probe descending into the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan after being released by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. ... This artist's rendering shows the Huygens probe on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan after being released by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. ...

Ganymede is the largest moon in our solar system, larger even than the planets Pluto and Mercury. ... Ganymede's surface consists of two main types of terrain: old, dark polygonal units, and young, bright valleys and ridges (see figure 11 ). ... In a similar way, hitting a large block of ice with a hammer makes white marks. ... Ganymede as seen by Voyager 2. ... Because Voyager couldn't spot any large impact craters, scientists have concluded that the moon's surface is young. ... Moon . ... Europa . ...

Astronomers Detect Coolest Radio Star . ... The new radio-star is much smaller and colder than our Sun.€а With a surface temperature not much higher than that of a giant planet, and a size comparable to JupiterтАЩs, it is scarcely visible in optical light.€а Yet the radio flares seen at Arecibo show it must have a strong magnetic field, implying that the same could be true of other similar stars. ...

The small solids. Asteroids or the small planetes . ... The comets. ... Ceneca the Young.Procuring about the nature.63 y. The comet is a celestial body of a great size, but a rare one... transparent. Sometimes there seen a core and the medium forms a kind of a tail, beard or dishevelled looks. ... The core is an ice body - conglomeration of frosted gas and dust. ... The comet state is variable: ones have the con tails, others the dust tails, and the third have both. ... Meteors and meteorites. ...

... Tonight's Sky . ... The Magazine . ... Star Atlas . ... An artificial comet holds secrets to Earths life . ... Astronomy for Kids . ... Observing springtime deep-sky objects with a large telescope . ... The planet has extreme temperature swings and perhaps active lava flows. ... A digital supplement to Astronomy magazine. ... Join TravelQuest International with Astronomy and Discover magazines on one of three great tour options surrounding this celestial spectacle . ... Astronomy Magazine . ...

... Astronomers have recently discovered about a dozen planets orbiting stars similar to the Sun. ... The Earth is the only known planet which has water in the liquid, solid and gaseous forms. ... A planet is termed "habitable" if it has surface liquid water. The presence of liquid water depends on the planet's distance from its parent star. John Chambers' programme yielded a number of artificial planetary systems, all of which showed at least one habitable, or possibly habitable, planet. ...

... A dynamo is created in a magnetic field by an electric circuit, part of which is moving relative to the rest (additional conditions must also be met). ... Furthermore, the plasma between them conducts electricity very well along its magnetic field lines, which act as if they were wires connecting Io and the planet (drawing). ... The drawing is not to scale. ... The Hubble Space Telescope , using its Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, has been photographing auroras of the planet Jupiter. ...

The giant planet Jupiter has four large moons, discovered by Galileo and visible through good binoculars. ... A dynamo is created in a magnetic field by an electric circuit, part of which is moving relative to the rest (additional conditions must also be met). ... Furthermore, the plasma between them conducts electricity very well along its magnetic field lines, which act as if they were wires connecting Io and the planet (drawing). ... Exploration" home page (index) Glossary . ...

... 142,800 Mean density (kg/m^3) .. ... 5.203 Rotation period (length of day in Earth hours).. 9.8 Revolution period (length of year) (in Earth years). 11.86 Obliquity (tilt of axis) (degrees).. 3.08 Orbit inclination (degrees).. 1.3 Orbit eccentricity.. 0.048 Mean surface temperature (K)........................ 120 (cloud tops) Visual geometric albedo.. 0.44 Atmospheric components.............................. 90% hydrogen, 10% helium, .07% methane Rings.. ...

Now that well over 100 planets have been discovered, we no longer need to ask the question "Are there planets out there?" ... The objective of XO is to find additional hot-Jupiters (like HD 209458b) that transit stars bright enough for detailed follow-up studies to be done with existing telescopes such as HST, Keck, and the VLT. ... Transit observations by themselves provide no information about the mass of the planet and radial velocity studies can yield only minimum masses. ...

God Science Forum Message . Forums: . ... God and Science ћ SETI ћ Software ћ UFO ћ XEphem . ... God and Science | ... Discover The Science Behind The "Wormwood Star Prophecy" . ... Scientific Scenario Of A Comet's Impact And The "Wormwood Star" Prophecy . ... The Wormwood prophecy cites a "great star, blazing like a torch". ... www.astronomy.net . ... Forum posts are Copyright their authors as specified in the heading above the post. "dbHTML," "AstroGuide," "ASTRONOMY.NET" & "VA.NET" . ...

... Bad Astronomy . ... Mad Science . ... Site Info . ... Public Talks . ... Keep Bad Astronomy close to your heart, and help make me filthy rich. ... Who is this guy who calls himself "The Bad Astronomer?" ... First, yes, I am a real live astronomer (when people ask me what astronomers do, I tell them "They astronom !" ... These are emitted by powerful objects like black holes, exploding stars, and super-dense neutrons stars. ... Finally, am I really a bad astronomer? ... 2008 Phil Plait. ...

... Many massive planets contrary to Jupiter have large eccentricities of orbits. ... Another problem is to study the conditions and boundaries of stable, regular motions of small mass planet in systems having `Jupiter' with large orbital eccentricity as well as properties of regular, stable, and irregular, chaotic motions. ... The regular eccentricity evolution described above demonstrates that stable quasi--circular orbits of small planet are unusual. ...

In ancient times the solar system was thought to be the whole Universe, so the study of planetary motions was cosmology. ... The planets other than the Moon and Sun generally move West to East through the stars, but occasionally stop and move in the opposite direction ( retrograde motion). In order to explain the retrograde motion of the planets, the geocentric model of the Solar System shown above puts the planets on small circles called epicycles . ...

T he Siding Spring Survey (SSS) is a Near-Earth Object search program that utilises the 0.5-m Uppsala Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring Observatory, N.S.W., Australia. ... The mission of the Siding Spring Survey is to contribute to the inventory of near-earth objects (NEOs), or more specifically, the potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) and comets (PHOs) that may pose a threat of impact and thus harm to civilization. ... Based on the CSS Mission page . ... Siding Spring Survey Main Page . ...

... Given the observing time and frequency, task plplt plots the expected visibility function for a planet. You will most likely want to check this visibility function before observing and discovering that the planet is resolved out! NOTE that mfboot and plplt do not include the effect of the ATCA's primary beam - the planet is implicitly (and silently) assumed to be small compared with the primary beam. ... Information on using the ATCA to observe a planet is available on-line . ...