... Enjoying the 2004 Transit of Venus from Stuttgart, Germany, astronomer Stefan Seip recorded this fascinating, detailed image of the Sun. Revealing a network of cells and dark filaments against a bright solar disk with spicules and prominences along the Sun's limb, his telescopic picture was taken through an H-alpha filter. ... With Venus in transit at the Sun's edge on June 8th, astronomers captured this tantalizing close-up view of the bright solar surface and partially silhouetted disk. ...

... 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. ...

... 2004 December 22 . Comet, Meteor, Nebula, Star . ... Above Sirius and slightly to the right of the belt of Orion is the red Orion Nebula , one of the most famous nebulas on the sky. Below and to the right of the Orion Nebula streaks a yellow meteor, although moving in the wrong direction to be from the Geminids meteor shower that peaked the night. Finally, above and to the right of the meteor is Comet Machholz , whose coma appears here relatively green. ... About APOD | ...

... This meteor shower, which reaches a peak of up to 120 meteors per hour, as seen from a clear, dark site, can be observed anytime after about 10.00pm for a few nights either side of the maximum, that is from about the 12 to 16 December. The Geminid meteors, which sometimes appear as brightly coloured relatively slow-moving fireballs, are caused by small particles mostly about the size of marbles or smaller, ejected into space from the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Phaethon . ... NASA Site . ...

... December 8, 1996 . Degas Ray Crater on Mercury . ... Explanation : Like the Earth's Moon, Mercury is scarred with craters, testifying to an intense bombardment during the early history of the Solar System. ... In the above mosaic the bright rays emanating from the 27 mile wide Degas crater almost appear to be painted on . The rays consist of light colored material blasted out during the crater's formation. Numerous smaller, younger craters are seen superposed on the Degas crater itself. ...

... To be read in conjunction with Section 4.11 of the WFPC2 Instrument Handbook , -Version 4.0. ... 1 The second study found evidence that CTE loss for faint stars has increased with time (Whitmore, 1998). The primary observational consequence of CTE loss is that a point source at the top of the chip appears to be fainter than if observed at the bottom of the chip, due to the loss of electrons as the star is read out down the chip (see Figure 1 ). ... Last updated: 06/16/98 10:38:00 . ...

... V838 Mon is a member of a new class of eruptive variables which appear as a peculiar novae having late K-M type spectra in their outburst. Before its outburst, it was a wide binary system of B3V type stars. ... The B3V companion was seen in the outburst in the UV spectrum taken with HST (Rauch et al., ... In the latest spectra, the light of B3V companion was predominating in the short-wave photometric bands. ... CCD blue frames of V838 Mon before the eclipse (left) and in the eclipse (right). ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Space Flight . ... Earth Satellites . ... Leonid meteors seen from 13 km altitude aboard an aircraft during the 1999 Leonids Multi-Instrument Aircraft Campaign (Leonid-MAC). Comet Tempel-Tuttle provides the cometary debris for the Leonid meteor shower. ... Every 17-19 November Earth crosses Tempel-TuttleтАЩs orbit and the Leonids become visible. With clear, dark skies observers may see 10 to 15 Leonid meteors every hour on those mornings. ...

... Since moonshine is really reflected sunlight, the full Moon is on the average slightly brighter in mid-winter, when Earth is closest to the Sun. In addition, the distance of the full Moon also varies, due to the ellipticity ("eccentricity") of the Moon's orbit. On 22 December, 1999, the two effects combined to produce the brightest full Moon of the century. ... This year will be the first full moon to occur on the winter solstice, Dec. 22nd, commonly called the first day of winter. ...

... This program was created for correlating chosen regions in the series of fts images. ... Chosen regions' . ... In this section the program counts the integral for each region of the grid for each image. ... As a matter of fact, the integral is total brightness of the region and it is counted by 'int_tabulated' IDL function. ... In addition, the program will show the count of the regions which correlate with the corresponding region (the brighter region means the bigger count) and its contour. ...

... 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) ...

Umbriel . Uranus II . Umbriel [UM-bree-ul] is the darkest satellite of Uranus. It is about the same size as Ariel and has about the same density. The surface appears to be old with large craters and does not change much from one location to another. Near the top is a puzzling bright ring called the fluorescent cheerio . ... Dark regions are represented as red and bright regions are represented as blue. The two white regions are bright ejecta from two fresh craters. ...

... Tonight's Sky . ... SUN MOON MERCURY VENUS MARS, JUPITER SATURN . ... Observing . ... The double star 54 Leonis, spiral galaxy NGC 3198, and emission nebula NGC 3199 . ... Jupiter brightens the December sky . ... The largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter, reaches maximum brightness the night of December 2. ... Only registered members of Astronomy.com are allowed to comment on this article. ... Receive news, sky-event information, observing tips, and more from Astronomy's weekly email...

Check out the new images (Jan 18-25) and (Jan 26-Feb 05) of the comet by Rob McNaught. ... Every few years a comet becomes bright enough to be easily seen with the naked eye but only every decade or so are these comparable with comets like Halley. ... Before Jan 13, the comet is not visible in the Australian sky after sunset. ... SOHO images . ... On Jan 12 at approximately 09:00 UT (8pm NSW time), comet C/2006 P1 McNaught appears at the 11 o'clock position in the images. ... STEREO images . ...

XMMNewton EPIC MOS MOS1 CCD1 Hot Column Tony Abbey ­ University of Leicester Tony Abbey afa@star.le.ac.uk XMM Cal/Ops meeting - ESAC, Spain ­ 3 Oct 2005 XMM impacts history XMMNewton EPIC MOS XMM was launched on 10 December 1999 into a highly elliptical orbit and each revolution takes 2 days. ... This was done on rev 1044 ? Review level of column 324 at 3 month intervals and adjust as necessary Tony Abbey afa@star.le.ac.uk XMM Cal/Ops meeting - ESAC, Spain ­ 3 Oct 2005 ...

Browse the articles below for new ideas for your classroom. Mercury September/October 2005: Astronomy Education and Public Outreach: Steps and Missteps Toward an Emerging Profession (pdf) . Focus on Education articles as they appeared in Mercury: . ... March/April 2000: . ... Education Newswire articles as they appeared in Mercury, by issue. ... January/February 2000 . November/December 1999 . ... March/April 1999 . ... November/December 1998 . ... November/December 1997 . ...

... EXPN DNO D A T E UT TIME FQ SOURCE CORR-Telescopes VT734 355-MO Dec 21 08:00-21:00 C TAU-A Pointing VT735 356-TU Dec 22 08:00-21:00 C TAU-A Pointing VT736 358-TH Dec 24 09:00-20:00 K ORIONKL Pointing VT737 359-FR Dec 25 09:00-20:00 K ORIONKL Pointing VT738 360-SA Dec 26 09:00-20:00 C 0528+134 Mitk-UD KA SH W018c 364-WE Dec 30 06:00-15:00 L 0552+398 Socr-VLBA W071n 6-WE Jan 06 10:00-17:00 L J0745+10 Mitk-AT HO MP UD SH KA W059e 7-TH ...

True Color Image Gallery: Galactic SNR | Magellanic Cloud SNR . ... Chandra Proposer's Guide pile up section ] During frame readout, the ACIS CCDs take 40 microsec to (parallel) transfer the charge by one pixel. As a result of this, each frame readout, each pixel is exposed for 40 microsec to a source (plus cosmic X-ray background) at each location along its column. ... Note also that the image does not just trail, it extends along the whole column. ... Chandra Supernova Remnant Catalog . ...

Supernova 1999gs in NGC 4725 . This is a prediscovery image of 1999gs in NGC 4725 taken by Marco Migliardi on December 23.21 1999, during the CROSS Program with the Col DrusciХ 20" "Helmut Ullrich" telescope. This image was taken 5 days before the "discovery" image of 1999gs which was taken by LOSS this image shows a significantly brighter SN than the discovery image shows. ... Back to Bright Supernovae . Back to Bright Supernovae - 1999 . ...

Astronomy Discussion Forums . ... Atm ћ Astrophotography ћ Blackholes ћ Blackholes2 ћ CCD ћ Celestron ћ Domes ћ Education . ... New model: How do the Sun and Moon appear to move across the sky - mito111 - September 15, 2011 - 04:22 UTC . ... Note the change - rick_crockett - April 19, 2007 - 09:38 UTC . ... A Question Regarding Photons and Absolute Zero - inalitalllane - December 25, 2004 - 22:06 UTC . ... Virtual Space Agency - dupagepilot - November 18, 2003 - 12:03 UTC . ... www.astronomy.net . ...