... Bright Comet SOHO . ... Discovered this month with an orbiting solar observatory, bright Comet SOHO has now emerged from the Sun's glare. This telephoto picture of the new naked-eye comet was taken by astrophotographer Michael Horn after sunset in the western twilight above Lake Samsonvale, Brisbane, Australia on May 18. ... After taking spectacular pictures of our Solar System's outer planets, Voyager 1 looked back at six planets to take our Solar System's first family portrait. ...

... 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. ...

... 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 . ...

... 2013 November 16 . Active Comet ISON . ... Explanation: Falling through planet Earth's predawn skies toward its close encounter with the Sun on November 28, Comet ISON is coming to life . The much anticipated comet has now been reported to have substantially increased in activity, surging to naked-eye visibility for dark sites and sprouting a more complex tail. ISON's tail stretches over two degrees in this telephoto skyview from southern Kenya , captured on the morning of November 14. ...

... Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG, +44 (0)28 3752 2928 . ... September Perseid meteors captured by the . ... Its occurrence provides astronomers with interesting new data about the hidden trails of meteoroids тАФ small bodies ranging in size from fine dust particles to objects of marble-size and larger тАФ in the solar system and their supposed sources: comets and asteroids passing through the inner solar system. ... The particular comet that created the September Perseids is unknown...

Supernova 2009js in NGC 918 . This page is devoted to information on Supernova 2009js in NGC 918 . Basic information on this SN, including the last reported brightness, on this Supernova can be found on the main page . Information on the original web pages for many of these images can be found on the updates and links web pages. Discovered independently by Lick Observatory Supernova Search (USA) and Koichi Itagaki (Japan). ... 2009/10/11.44 . 17.2 . ... Joseph Brimacombe . ...

... ESO PR Photo 07a/01 . ... ESO PR Photo 07b/01 . ... Caption : PR Photo 07a/01 shows Comet Hale-Bopp , still active at a distance of nearly 2,000 million kilometres from the Sun. ... This is quite unusual for a comet and is clearly confirmed on the present photo ( PR Photo 07a/01 ) from the WFI camera on the MPG/ESO 2.2-m telescope at La Silla, obtained a few days ago. ... ESO-Chile . ... ESO PR Photos 07a-b/01 may be reproduced, if credit is given to the European Southern Observatory (ESO). ...

... The planets are still growing slowly as comets and meteoroids collide with them. ... In the 1950s, American astronomer Fred Whipple suggested that comets are dirty snowballs: clumps of ice mixed with interplanetary dust. ... For most of its orbit, a comet remains far from the Sun, little more than the dirty snowball that it is -- what is usually called a bare nucleus. ... As Comet Hyakutake approached the Sun, jets of dust erupted from the Sun-facing side of its nucleus. ...

Amalthea . Jupiter V . Amalthea [am-al-THEE-uh] is one of Jupiter's smaller moons. ... These four images of Jupiter's moon, Amalthea, were taken by Galileo's solid state imaging system at various times between February and June 1997. ... Amalthea, whose longest dimension is approximately 247 kilometers (154 miles) across, is tidally locked so that the same side of the satellite always points towards Jupiter, similar to how the near side of our own Moon always points toward Earth. ...