... Iridescent Clouds from the Top of the World Highway . ... Why would a cloud appear to be different colors? ... Sun 360: STEREO Captures Views of the Entire Sun . ... The bright colors on the blue background indicate that an anomalous signal was received here on Earth by a radio telescope involved in a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). ... Last week, Japan launched the robotic Kounotori2 spacecraft to bring needed supplies, including food, to the International Space Station (ISS). ...

... 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. ...

... 2008 October 27 . Beneath the South Pole of Saturn . Credit: Cassini VIMS Team, JPL , ESA , NASA . Explanation: What clouds lurk beneath Saturn's unusual South Pole? To help find out, the robotic Cassini spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn imaged the nether region of the gigantic ringed orb in infrared light. ... Surprisingly, a haze of upper level clouds visible towards Saturn's equator disappears near the pole, including over Saturn's strange polar vortex . ... About APOD | ...

... self-absorption - the absorption of light shining on an object by a process similar to that which produced the light originally; if a cloud emits less light than it absorbs from other clouds behind it, this net loss of light, termed self-absorption , causes the foreground cloud to appear darker than the background field (the term is from spectroscopy, where small absorption dips sometimes occur in larger emission lines, making the latter look as if it is absorbing part of itself) . ... HISA Main ...

... Jupiter Eyes Ganymede . Credit: Cassini Team , U. Arizona , JPL , NASA . ... This moon, visible on the lower right, is Ganymede , and the planet it orbits, Jupiter , seems to be keeping a watchful eye, as its Great Red Spot appears serendipitously nearby. This recently released enhanced-contrast image from the robot spacecraft Cassini captures new details of the incredible intricacies of Jupiter's complex cloud patterns. ... Tomorrow's picture: Manicouagan Impact Crater . ...

... The spacecraft of Magion type have been selected as the subsatellites of the Interball project: Magion-4 (C2-X) for the Tail Probe and Magion-5 (C2-A) for the Auroral Probe. ... Magion-4 was produced in the Czech Republic in collaboratrion with Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, Austria and has onboard scientific instruments and sensors designed and built in Czech Republic, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Slovak Republic. ... Plasma flow detector VDP-S (Czech Republic, Russia) . ...

... Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG, +44 (0)28 3752 2928 . Noctilucent clouds as photographed by Mark Bailey from Lisdoart on 14th July 2006 at 11.30 pm. ... These so-called noctilucent (night glowing) clouds (NLCs), are formed by sunlight reflecting off ice crystals high in the atmosphere, and usually appear in the northwest, through north to northeast during twilight in the late spring and summer months at our latitude. ...

The Mars Flag has a different design on the reverse side. obverse side of flag . ... The orbit lines on the obverse cross the Sun on the lower half of the flag and appear to go behind the Sun on the upper half of the flag. The reverse side has the orbits lines continuing around the Sun on the upper half of the flag. ... The Mars Flag reverse side is a continuation of the obverse side and not just a different design on the back and not a mirror image of the obverse. Main Flag Background Color . ...

Next: The Scenario Machine: Operational Up: Evolution of Magnetic Rotators Previous: Ejector-propeller hysteresis . ... The length of this segment is determined by the eccentricity. ... In this case no hysteresis occurs and transitions E -- P and the reverse take place in symmetrical points of the orbit. ... Here EP means a mixed state of the rotator at which it is in the ejector state during one part of the orbit, and in the propeller state during the rest of the orbital cycle. ...

GRANAT is the Russian x-ray sattelite launched to the high apogee orbit (200,000 km) and operated almost for 10 years (1989 -1999) , carrying out four major instruments: French SIGMA coded-mask hard x-ray telescope (30-1000 keV), Soviet ART-P coded-mask telescope (2??-60?? keV), all-sky monitor WATCH (6-150 keV), and a gamma-burst detector PHEBUS . ... Since September 1994, GRANAT is in the survey mode. ... Explore pages devoted to individual GRANAT instruments (including main scientific results): . ...

Different types of satellite orbits have different uses: while the synchronous orbit is best for communication satellites, Lagrangian point orbits help monitor the solar wind before it reaches Earth. A low altitude polar orbit is widely used for monitoring the Earth because each day, as the Earth rotates below it, the entire surface is covered. ... A different choice was made for MAGSAT, orbited 1979-80 to survey the Earth's own magnetic field near its surface. ...

... Data Reduction FAQ > The reduced science spectrum displayed in the Reflex window appears good but when I try to plot it, it is quite different. How can I get it? ... Observing with ESO Telescopes . ... ESO-MIDAS . ... Reflex . ... ESO Data . ... ESO HST Image Galleries . ... ESO Data Access Policy . ... ESO Science Newsletter . ... ESO Annual Reports . ... Seminars at ESO Santiago . ... Seminars at ESO Garching . ... ESO Telescope Bibliography . ... Last Update: 01.04.14 ESO . ...