... Yesterday, at about 10 am Universal Time, Mars and Earth passed closer than in nearly 60,000 years. ... The largest canyon in the Solar System cuts a wide swath across the face of Mars. Named Valles Marineris, the grand valley extends over 3,000 kilometers long, spans as much as 600 kilometers across, and delves as much as 8 kilometers deep. ... The Tarantula Nebula is more than 1,000 light-years across - a giant emission nebula within our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud. ...

... 2001 December 24 . Asteroid 1998 WT24 Passes Near Earth . ... Passing well outside the orbit of our Moon, Asteroid 1998 WT24 posed no danger, but became bright enough to see with binoculars and to track with radar . ... Every few years, an asteroid will actually pass inside the orbit of the Moon. Large impact features on the Earth are testaments to asteroids or comets that actually impacted the Earth in the distant past. ... 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 . ...

... An artificial comet holds secrets to Earths life . ... Astronomers recently discovered that Scholz's star passed close to the Sun 70,000 years ago. Wouldn't its gravity have sent Oort Cloud comets raining into the inner planets? ... COMETS | OORT CLOUD . Based on the number of long-period comets that enter the inner solar system, astronomers estimate there are probably trillions of them in the Oort Cloud. Get instant access to subscriber content on Astronomy.com! ... Discover | ...

... Armagh Planetarium . ... Universe . ... Posted on January 19, 2012 | ... Continue Reading.. ... 1 Comment A new image of the Omega Nebula reveals amazing detail in a cosmic landscape of gas clouds, dust and newborn stars.€а Captured by the Very Large Telescope (VLT) at the [ ] . ... Welcome to our annual guide to what the Universe has waiting [ ] . ... The furthest you can travel from home across the [ ] . ... This local school has its own observatory and astronomy club for the students [ ] . ...

... November 12, 1996 . Comet Hale-Bopp Passes M14 . ... Explanation : Comet Hale-Bopp continues its slow trek across the night sky, and can now be seen superposed near the bright globular cluster M14 . Will Comet Hale-Bopp become as bright in early 1997 as Comet Hyakutake did in early 1996? It is still too early to tell. ... Because of the size of coma , some speculate that the nucleus of Hale-Bopp is unusually large. ... Tomorrow's picture: Seven Jets from Comet Hale-Bopp . ... About APOD . ...

GALAXIES cenA .tiff 40 Bright Radio Galaxy M31.tiff Nikon Andromeda Galaxy (note HII regions in spiral arms) ngc6744.tiff 40 NGC 6744 a face-on spiral clouds_20d.tiff H'blad The Magellanic Clouds our nearest neighbours Lmc_7.tiff Nikon The Large Magellanic Clouds Lmc_zoom.tiff Nikon Detail of previous image smc_7.tiff Nikon The Small Magellanic Clouds smc-zoom.tiff Nikon Detail of previous image 30dor_40_BVR.tiff 40 The 30 Dor ... B [OIII] Halpha trifid.tiff 40" The Trifid Nebula. ...

... Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer Instrument Handbook for Cycle 17 > Chapter 4: Imaging > 4.6 Photon and Cosmic Ray Persistence . ... HgCdTe detector arrays like those in NICMOS are subject to image persistence. ... Experiments using Cycle 7 NICMOS data have shown that it is possible to scale and subtract such ?post-SAA darks? from subsequent science exposures taken later in the same orbit, and thus to remove a significant fraction of the CR persistence signal. ...

... The distances between stars are so immense that we can't use miles or kilometres to measure them, the numbers would become too large. For example, the closest star to our Solar System, is a whopping 38,000,000,000,000 kilometres away! And that's the closest star. ... And this cloud is inside one of the Milky Way s closest neighbours, a nearby galaxy called the Large Magellanic Cloud. ... The colourful clouds of gas and dust are filled with hot new-born stars which make these clouds glow. ...

... Bad Astronomy . ... Bitesize Astronomy . ... The Nine Planets . ... Keep Bad Astronomy close to your heart, and help make me filthy rich. ... The sky can be a crowded place. As the Moon makes its stately orbit around the Earth once a month, there are a lot of objects which it passes along the way. ... It so happens that a handful of bright stars lie near the path on the sky that the Moon takes, and so the Moon does actually pass close to or even in front of stars every now and then. ...

... A faint, dusty rose of the northern sky, emission nebula IC 410 lies about 12,000 light-years away in the constellation Auriga. The cloud of glowing hydrogen gas is over 100 light-years across, sculpted by stellar winds and radiation from embedded open star cluster NGC 1893. ... These "tadpoles" (seen just below center) are regions of denser, cooler gas, and more slowly resist the erosive radiation from the hot stars. ... Copyright (c) Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston, Inc. ...