... Yesterday, at about 10 am Universal Time, Mars and Earth passed closer than in nearly 60,000 years. ... The largest canyon in the Solar System cuts a wide swath across the face of Mars. Named Valles Marineris, the grand valley extends over 3,000 kilometers long, spans as much as 600 kilometers across, and delves as much as 8 kilometers deep. ... The Tarantula Nebula is more than 1,000 light-years across - a giant emission nebula within our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud. ...

... 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 | ...

... Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG, +44 (0)28 3752 2928 . ... Risks Comparable to NEOs . ... The Increasing Rate of Discovery of Asteroids . ... Comet and Asteroid Collision Probabilities . ... Extreme albedo comets and the impact hazard (PDF Format) . ... Asteroid Impact Animations . ... Workshop on Scientific Requirements for Mitigation of Hazardous Comets and Asteroids - 2002 . ... The Spaceguard Survey Report, 1992 (PDF) . Tsunami from Asteroid/Comet Impacts . ...

... An artificial comet holds secrets to Earths life . ... Astronomers recently discovered that Scholz's star passed close to the Sun 70,000 years ago. Wouldn't its gravity have sent Oort Cloud comets raining into the inner planets? ... COMETS | OORT CLOUD . Based on the number of long-period comets that enter the inner solar system, astronomers estimate there are probably trillions of them in the Oort Cloud. Get instant access to subscriber content on Astronomy.com! ... Discover | ...

... Armagh Planetarium . ... Universe . ... Posted on January 19, 2012 | ... Continue Reading.. ... 1 Comment A new image of the Omega Nebula reveals amazing detail in a cosmic landscape of gas clouds, dust and newborn stars.€а Captured by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the [ ] . ... Welcome to our annual guide to what the Universe has waiting [ ] . ... The furthest you can travel from home across the [ ] . ... This local school has its own observatory and astronomy club for the students [ ] . ...

... November 12, 1996 . Comet Hale-Bopp Passes M14 . ... Explanation : Comet Hale-Bopp continues its slow trek across the night sky, and can now be seen superposed near the bright globular cluster M14 . Will Comet Hale-Bopp become as bright in early 1997 as Comet Hyakutake did in early 1996? It is still too early to tell. ... Because of the size of coma , some speculate that the nucleus of Hale-Bopp is unusually large. ... Tomorrow's picture: Seven Jets from Comet Hale-Bopp . ... About APOD . ...

GALAXIES cenA .tiff 40 Bright Radio Galaxy M31.tiff Nikon Andromeda Galaxy (note HII regions in spiral arms) ngc6744.tiff 40 NGC 6744 a face-on spiral clouds_20d.tiff H'blad The Magellanic Clouds our nearest neighbours Lmc_7.tiff Nikon The Large Magellanic Clouds Lmc_zoom.tiff Nikon Detail of previous image smc_7.tiff Nikon The Small Magellanic Clouds smc-zoom.tiff Nikon Detail of previous image 30dor_40_BVR.tiff 40 The 30 Dor ... B [OIII] Halpha trifid.tiff 40" The Trifid Nebula. ...

... Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer Instrument Handbook for Cycle 17 > Chapter 4: Imaging > 4.6 Photon and Cosmic Ray Persistence . ... HgCdTe detector arrays like those in NICMOS are subject to image persistence. ... Experiments using Cycle 7 NICMOS data have shown that it is possible to scale and subtract such ?post-SAA darks? from subsequent science exposures taken later in the same orbit, and thus to remove a significant fraction of the CR persistence signal. ...

... The distances between stars are so immense that we can't use miles or kilometres to measure them, the numbers would become too large. For example, the closest star to our Solar System, is a whopping 38,000,000,000,000 kilometres away! And that's the closest star. ... And this cloud is inside one of the Milky Way s closest neighbours, a nearby galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. ... The colourful clouds of gas and dust are filled with hot new-born stars which make these clouds glow. ...

... Bad Astronomy . ... Bitesize Astronomy . ... The Nine Planets . ... Keep Bad Astronomy close to your heart, and help make me filthy rich. ... The sky can be a crowded place. As the Moon makes its stately orbit around the Earth once a month, there are a lot of objects which it passes along the way. ... It so happens that a handful of bright stars lie near the path on the sky that the Moon takes, and so the Moon does actually pass close to or even in front of stars every now and then. ...

... A faint, dusty rose of the northern sky, emission nebula IC 410 lies about 12,000 light-years away in the constellation Auriga. The cloud of glowing hydrogen gas is over 100 light-years across, sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from embedded open star cluster NGC 1893. ... These "tadpoles" (seen just below center) are regions of denser, cooler gas, and more slowly resist the erosive radiation from the hot stars. ... Copyright (c) Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston, Inc. ...

... The awsome spectacle of a brilliant comet, with its long ghostly tail streaming behind it, is a rare event. ... Only one other comet, Comet Halley, was seen so far from the Sun, giving scientists an opportunity to watch it as it slowly warmed up and sprouted a tail. ... Comets are the Rip Van Winkles of the solar system -- mini-worlds that have changed little during their 4.5-billion-year nap far from the Sun. ... Observing Comets . ... Once, comets inhabited the entire solar system. ...

... Arecibo Observatory took radar images of asteroid 1998 QE2 and its moon as the space rock sailed safely past earth. ... Both the asteroid and its moon passed 6 million kilometers (3.8 million miles) from earth. ... Radar images of asteroid 1998 QE2 (bottom) and its satellite (top) on June 6. ... Radar images of asteroid 1998 QE2 (center) and its satellite (bottom left) on June 7. ... Radar image from June 7 showing the satellite moving past the primary. ...

... Meta Index / Home Page / Source Flagging Algorithms Any source either having a raw count-rate >= 80, or with quality flag bit 4 set (mod-8 pattern) is checked for "close" neighbours, which may be flagged. ... Check each source in the vicinity of the bright source . ... Compute the maximum distance for flagging the source from maxRad = max(exclusionradius, min(70.0, 35.0 * countTable(i) // 80.0) ) If the flagging is done by omdetect, the exclusion radius is determined from the algorithm at the end . ...

... Today this year's largest group of sunspots will cross the Sun's central meridian. ... The next day, the number of spots in the group reached five, and the day after, on June 2nd, it was possible to count thirteen sunspots on solar disk, which had been clear prior to this. ... This year's two most powerful active areas, which passed across the solar disk at the beginning of May, 2009, are set to appear in the Sun's eastern sector in two days, on June 6th. ...

COSMIC LOVE SONG (David Spangler) Time, vaster than the desert ways, Custodian of minutes days, You do not have what I would give, to one I love For hours live, like foam born dying from the sea. ... Space, the distance I must cross, to find my love, to hold her close Yet even near we are apart, for space lies still between our hearts. ... Let us live in love's infinity. Let us live in love's infinity. @love filename[ COSMLOV SS ===DOCUMENT BOUNDARY=== ...

... The most spectacular view however is from space, where large areas of aurora can be observed simultaneously, even the entire polar cap. ... Such pictures often show a continuous ring of aurora around the polar cap (picture above), caused mostly by electrons leaking out along magnetic field lines, from the plasma sheet of the Earth's magnetic tail. ... Field lines from the auroral oval are believed to lead to the plasma sheet. ... A near-Earth circular polar orbit has many uses. ...

... The most spectacular view however is from space, where large areas of aurora can be observed simultaneously, even the entire polar cap. ... Such pictures often show a continuous ring of aurora around the polar cap (picture above), caused mostly by electrons leaking out along magnetic field lines, from the plasma sheet of the Earth's magnetic tail. ... Field lines from the auroral oval are believed to lead to the plasma sheet. ... A near-Earth circular polar orbit has many uses. ...

Photon Scattering: Basic Principle of Photon Scattering . Audio Narration is available . No Scattering: Photon Source and Detector . ... For optical photons, scattering goes as wavelength to the -4 power. In the case of blue photons compared to red photons, this means that blue photons are about 10 times more likely to get scattered than red photons. ... Watch the blue photons scatter away from the detector . ... Interstellar dust make stars appear redder than they really are . ...

Asteroid 2055 YU55 passes close by Earth; how close did it get? ... As Elizabeth Flock reported: An asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier missed Earth by only 200,000 miles as it flew by Tuesday night the closest an asteroid has been to Earth in 200 years Asteroid 2005 YU55, as it has been dubbed, streaked by at about 30,000 mph, but some scientists and lucky amateur astronomers caught a glimpse in their telescopes, where they saw strange structures on the asteroid\u2019s dark-colored surface. ...