Astronomy Picture of the Day . Infrared Horsehead . ... The false-color picture shows the bright infrared emission from dust and molecular gas in part of the Orion star forming region surrounding the Horsehead Nebula. Ganymede: Torn Comet Crater Chain . ... What happens when a comet encounters a planet? ... IRAS Orion . ... This striking but unfamiliar looking picture of the familiar Orion region of the sky was produced using survey data from the InfraRed Astronomical Satellite (IRAS). ...

... Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2015 July 2 . Venus and Jupiter are Close . ... Explanation: On June 30, Venus and Jupiter were close in western skies at dusk. Near the culmination of this year's gorgeous conjunction , the two bright evening planets are captured in the same telescopic field of view in this image taken after sunset from Bejing, China. ... About APOD | ...

. Home . News . Gallery . Events . Twitter . Press Releases . Links . Contact Us . Calendar . Press & Web Coverage . Previous . Next . List . Taken 30th November by John McConnell. It shows the planetary conjunction of Venus and Jupiter at their closest, with the Moon below. Friday, 2 January 2009 23:14 . International Year of Astronomy, Ireland National Node . [Back To Top] .

... Planets . ... Earth Satellites . ... Looking in the direction of the constellation Cygnus the Swan and launched by NASA in 2009 is the Kepler Space Observatory.Many previous missions searching for exoplanets mainly detected large giant planets, like large hot Jupiters (it is easier to detect larger planets).However KeplerтАЩs main objective is to search for much smaller planets located in a habitable zone which is not too close nor too far from their star; planets which may be just like our Earth. ...

... Impact craters and associated concentric rings are about the only features to be found on Callisto. ... It has a bright central region that is 600 kilometers in diameter, and its rings extend to 3000 kilometers in diameter. ... This image shows the heavily cratered surface of Callisto. ... Also visible is a fresh, sharp-rimmed crater some 90 km (56 miles) across named Igaluk (center left third of picture), and a bright zone in the south polar area (bottom of image) which could be an impact scar. ...

... Impact craters and associated concentric rings are about the only features to be found on Callisto. ... It has a bright central region that is 600 kilometers in diameter, and its rings extend to 3000 kilometers in diameter. ... This image shows the heavily cratered surface of Callisto. ... Also visible is a fresh, sharp-rimmed crater some 90 km (56 miles) across named Igaluk (center left third of picture), and a bright zone in the south polar area (bottom of image) which could be an impact scar. ...

... Tonight's Sky . ... The Magazine . ... Observing . ... Magazine . ... Gravitational wave search provides insights into galaxy evolution and mergers . ... galaxies . ... The double star 54 Leonis, spiral galaxy NGC 3198, and emission nebula NGC 3199 . ... Astronomy for Kids . ... A pair of close encounters . ... Get instant access to subscriber content on Astronomy.com! ... Receive news, sky-event information, observing tips, and more from Astronomy's weekly email newsletter. ... Astronomy Magazine ....

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. ...

MAIN PAGE . ... Nova Cygni August 1975! ... 1975/76: Comet West! ... Dr. Richard West (4th from left) & AAL members visiting SES Betzdorf on occasion of our club's 25th anniversary - October 1996 . Comet West Information . ... It was the brightest comet visible from Earth since Comet West in 1976. ... 1997: Comet Hale-Bopp! ... Thus Comet Hale-Bopp never got closer to Earth than Earth gets to the Sun. ... Comet Hale-Bopp JPL Page . ... 1999: Total solar eclipse over Luxembourg! ...

... In summer 1994, the biggest news in astronomy was the collision of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter. During this school year, Jupiter will charge back into the limelight with the arrival of the Galileo spacecraft (see figure 8 ). On Dec. 7, following a tortuous six-year ramble through the solar system, Galileo will begin its two-year mission studying Jupiter and its gaggle of moons. ... Besides the camera, Galileo will carry instruments capable of identifying minerals on Jupiter's moons. ...

... 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. ...

... What's New? Bad Astronomy . ... News . ... Bad Astro Store . ... The Nine Planets . ... Keep Bad Astronomy close to your heart, and help make me filthy rich. ... When two objects in the sky are as close as they can get, we say they have reached appulse . ... Venus and Jupiter are the third and fourth brightest objects in the sky, and this was a particularly close appulse; they got within a quarter of a degree of each other. ... 2008 Phil Plait. ... THE BIRDCAGE: ARCHIVE OF OTHER BAD NEWS ITEMS . ...

This is a new popup window - close it when you are done . Submitted by Robert Halstead on 06/30/2015 23:19:35 . Planets Passing in the Night, June 30, 2015 . ... Captured using my Canon 6D at the prime focus of my 8-inch f/10 Celestron Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. ISO 1600, 0.6 seconds for the image at the left; and ISO 400, 1/50 second for the image at the right. Images captured between 8:57 and 9:02 pm EDT on June 30, 2015. ... Copyright (c) Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston, Inc. ...

... Gallery . ... Sidebar Left . Sidebar Top . No Sidebar . Sidebar Bottom . Sidebar Right . View full size . Title: Ganymede . Description: A close up view of Ganymede taken with the 24-inch (60cm) telescope at Siding Spring in October 1999. Areas of varying brightness define subtle differences in the surface terrain of the Moon. ... File name: ganymede.jpg . ... Ganymede A close up view of Ganymede taken with the 24-inch (60cm) telescope at Siding Spring in October 1999. ...

Finding Himalia, The Fifth Brightest Moon Of Jupiter . Articles | ... Himalia is the only moon other than the Galilean moons of Jupiter that is visible in an amateur size telescope. ... I normally use “The Sky” from Software Bisque for planning my observing sessions and in helping me find objects, but it only has the Galilean moons for Jupiter so I used Red Shift (version 3 at the time) which I also had on my computer. ... www.astronomy.net . ... dbHTML," "AstroGuide," "ASTRONOMY.NET" & "VA.NET" . ...

... 8, ``Celestial Mechanics'', 2002 CCD observations of planetary satellites and occultations and close approachments of stars by asteroids with 26­ inch refractor of Pulkovo observatory T. P. Kiseleva, I. S. Izmailov, M. A. Mozhaev Pulkovo Observatory, St. Petersburg, Russia ST--6 CCD camera has been used with 26-- inch Refractor at Pulkovo for ob­ servations of ... These estimates are \Sigma0:015 arcsec and \Sigma0:014 arcsec for X and Y correspondingly. ...

... Centaurus A : 15,000,000 light years away, in the constellation Centaurus, the closest AG to Earth . ... Astronomers think that the reason for the unusual shape of this galaxy is because hundreds of millions of years ago two galaxies, one dusty spiral and one bright ellipictal, collided causing a massive black hole in the middle and bright emmision of light. ... Andromeda galaxy: 2.8 million light years away, closest spiral galaxy to earth, farthest object one can see without a telescope. ...

... Close What Happened to Comet Holmes? November 15, 2007 by J. Kelly Beatty Click here to get a sky chart and simple instructions for finding Comet Holmes in the sky. ... The tiny black square indicates the area around the nucleus imaged three days later by the Hubble Space Telescope. ... Acquired on November 4, 2007, this Hubble Space Telescope view of Comet Holmes's nucleus is 10 wide, about 7,500 miles at the comet's distance. Even HST's powerful camera cannot resolve the 2-mile-wide nucleus. ...

NATIONAL ASTRONOMY AND IONOSPHERE CENTER . ... Astronomy . ... Planetary Radar . Mercury . ... One of the major recent successes in the field of planetary radar astronomy was the discovery and mapping of deposits of volatiles on the shadowed floors of impact craters at the poles of Mercury. ... The figure shows the most recent Arecibo 12.6 cm wavelength radar image of the north polar region of Mercury made at a resolution of 1.5 km by J. Harmon (NAIC), P.Perrilat (NAIC) and M. Slade (JPL). ...

... 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 . ...