... Galaxies, Stars, and Dust . ... Spiky stars and spooky shapes abound in this deep cosmic skyscape. Its well-composed field of view covers about 2 Full Moons on the sky toward the constellation Pegasus. ... Photographed with a camera fixed to a tripod, the well-planned 30 minute exposure records star trails in the northern sky, reflecting the daily rotation of planet Earth. ... Gathered within a region about 1.5 light-years in radius, they dominate the core of the dense Orion Nebula Star Cluster. ...

... 2014 October 1 . The Butterfly Nebula from Hubble . Image Credit: NASA , ESA , and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team ; Reprocessing Copyright: Francesco Antonucci . ... With an estimated surface temperature of about 250,000 degrees C, the dying central star of this particular planetary nebula has become exceptionally hot, shining brightly in ultraviolet light but hidden from direct view by a dense torus of dust. ... APOD Wall Calendar: Nebulas and Star Clusters . ... 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 . ...

... STScI-PRC95-45a CRUCIBLE OF CREATION: PANORAMIC HUBBLE MOSAIC ZOOMS IN ON MAELSTROM OF STAR BIRTH This spectacular color panorama of the center the Orion nebula is one of the largest pictures ever assembled from individual images taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. ... Though this 2.5 light-years wide view is still a small portion of the entire nebula, it includes almost all of the light from the bright glowing clouds of gas and a star cluster associated with the nebula. ...

... Below is a near-final schedule for the meeting "Planets Beyond the Solar System and the Next Generation of Space Missions," to be held at STScI in Baltimore on October 16, 17, and 18, 1996. ... New programs for the detection and study of planets (interferometry, photometry, microlensing) . ... Spinoffs and benefits of planet detection programs and contributions of these programs to understanding planet formation and evolution (astrophysics using small-field interferometry, NGST) . ... K. Noll, STScI...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Solar System . ... Space Flight . ... Posted on February 24, 2012 | 7 Comments Sir Frederick William Herschel is one of the most well-known and highly regarded historical astronomers but many may not know or realise there was more to his genius than his [ ] . Continue Reading.. ... 3 Comments What exciting space events has 2012 in store for us? ... 2 Comments Dwarf planet Haumea is one of the most bizarre small bodies of the outer Solar System. ...

... Star Atlas . ... stars . ... Hubble uncovers surprising evidence for an extrasolar planet under construction . ... Astronomers using NASA s Hubble Space Telescope have found compelling evidence of a planet forming 7.5 billion miles (12.1 billion km) away from its star, a finding that may challenge current theories about planet formation. ... A planet is forming in an Earth-like orbit around a young star . ... Only registered members of Astronomy.com are allowed to comment on this article. ...

Thanks to numerous ground and space-based surveys, we are now aware of over 1800 planets orbiting other stars, with another nearly 5000 candidates from the Kepler Mission awaiting confirmation. ... The answer to this question lies in the study of young planets and their formation environments. In this talk I will show how high-precision time series data from space telescopes is beginning to illuminate the conditions surrounding planet formation and the star-disk connection. ...

Polar Alignment Using The Star Drift Method . Articles | ... This method with, a little practice, can give you reasonable polar alignment within one half hour. ... If the star drifts northward, your scope is west of the pole. ... Remember that as your adjustments get you closer to the pole, the star will drift slower and you must wait longer to detect a north-south drift. If the star drifts south, you are east of the pole and you must turn the mount towards the west. ... www.astronomy.net . ...

... More on 51 Peg: . The discovery of a Jupiter--mass planet in orbit around the solar--type star 51Peg has been reported by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz (Geneva Observatory) on October 6th at the 9th Cambridge workshop on "cool stars, stellar systems, and the sun" held at Florence (Italy). ... Recall that the measurements of radial velocity only yield v sin i which in turn gives us M sin i. For most values of i, sin i will be greater than 0.5 and this gives a mass estimate of 0.5 Jupiter masses. ...

The apparent path of the Sun across the sky. ... The path of the Sun across the celestial sphere is very close to that of the planets and the moon. ... In one year, as the Earth completes a full circuit around the Sun (drawing above), the Earth-Sun line and its continuation past Earth sweep the entire plane. ... Since the Sun and Earth are in the plane of the ecliptic, the line is automatically in that plane too; if the moon is also on the same line, it must be in the plane of the ecliptic as well. ...

I was wondering what conditions should be met to have the "darkest" sky .. ... Upon the above publication of the Southern Galactic hemisphere, TunГ Tezel started seeking opportunities to create the Northern counterpart image. ... So, the initial quest of having the darkest possible sky have delivered us these two all-sky images of the two galactic hemispheres as seen from Planet Earth. Zoomable and 'full-screenable' fisheye view of the "darkest sky" Southern Galactic Hemisphere image. ...

... The air just sit there and doesn't get stirred. ... Normally, the air is hottest near the ground and gets cooler as you go up. ... If it weren't for the temperature profile, convection wouldn't occur: Because the temperature decreases with altitude, cold air sits on top of hot air, allowing convection. ... The air above the ground is hot, the air above the water is cold. ... The land cools down faster than the sea, so the air above the ground is colder than the air above the water. ...

... Credit: Don F. Figer (UCLA), and NASA A photo and caption are available via the World Wide Web at http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/97/33.html and via links in http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Latest.html or http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/Pictures.html. Images are available via the World Wide Web at http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/gif/pistol.gif (GIF), http://oposite.stsci.edu/pubinfo/jpeg/pistol.jpg (JPEG). ... A full resolution TIFF image is available in /pubinfo/tiff/1997/33.tif. ...

... The apparent path of the Sun across the sky. ... Like the planets, the Sun, too, moves around the zodiac, making one complete circuit each year. ... In one year, as the Earth completes a full circuit around the Sun (drawing above), the Earth-Sun line and its continuation past Earth sweep the entire plane. ... Since the Sun and Earth are in the plane of the ecliptic, the line is automatically in that plane too; if the moon is also on the same line, it must be in the plane of the ecliptic as well. ...

... The stars examined here were primarily culled from two lists of X--ray sources in Orion. ... The second region is two degrees in extent east--west and ten degrees north--south with Orionis being near the northern edge. ... In the end, two main regions were chosen for monitoring: stars near Orionis and stars northwest of the belt of Orion. ... The PSPC identified 22 sources within 15 of Orionis in addition to the sources listed in Table 1 , giving a total of 85 X--ray sources in the Orionis region. ...

... AMPLE (Adaptable Minor Planet Ephemerides) is integrated software package to deal with a number of problems concerning minor planets with the aid of IBM-type personal computer. ... compiling a list of all numbered minor planets which can be seen at certain moment within specified sky region and visualization of their mutual positions; . ... As AMPLE is able to reproduce virtually any table of "the Ephemerides of Minor Planets" , it may be considered as computer version of the EMP. ...

... Asteroid . ... In case you didn't hear about it, which you probably didn't: On Jan. 7, an asteroid 1,000 feet across -- nearly three times the current diameter of Marlon Brando -- barely missed the Earth, which is most likely your planet of residence. ... What if this asteroid had hit the Earth? ... As it happens, the American Astronomical Society was holding a conference in Washington AT THE VERY SAME TIME as the asteroid nearly hit the Earth. ...

... Full details of the observations, data reduction and calibration of this survey, and the production of the 7C(G) compact source list, are described in Vessey & Green (1998, MNRAS, 294, 607) . ... b |<5њ, with a resolution of about 1.2 ? ... The survey consisted of 24 fields, spaced 3њ.5 in l , and alternating between b = +3њ and -3њ, but with a gap near l = 110њ. ... Please refer to the source list description for details of the entries ; the catalogue itself is available as: . ...

... The IAUname was INFERRED from the coordinates using the same procedure as in the original publication (i.e. the last digit in declination is the NEAREST tenths of degrees, rather than rounding to the NEXT LOWER tenth of degrees). Note that this procedure is against IAU recommendations, but according to a stronger IAU recommendation (saying that published names should never be changed) I retained the incorrect original naming system in the present electronic version of the catalog. ...