... What causes the center of this barred spiral galaxy to light up brighter than almost anything in the universe? ... NGC 3293: A Bright Young Open Cluster . ... Hot Blue stars shine brightly in this beautiful, recently formed galactic or "open" star cluster. ... In the central part of the Lagoon Nebula lies the above pictured Hourglass Nebula. ... Welcome to Planet Earth . ... The nebula cataloged as NGC 604 is a giant star forming region, 1500 light years across, in the nearby spiral galaxy, M33. ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Comets and Asteroids . ... Image credit:ESO/J.Emerson/VISTA. ... However others are less pessimistic and it has even been claimed that the mysterious ?Wow! signal? received in 1977 originated from the direction M55.б  Sadly, this still unexplained pulse of radio energy originated from a location rather to the northwest of M55 so I doubt if the source was this cluster (if indeed the signal was genuinely of extraterrestrial origin). ... Mysterious Wow! ...

... STScI-PRC95-45a CRUCIBLE OF CREATION: PANORAMIC HUBBLE MOSAIC ZOOMS IN ON MAELSTROM OF STAR BIRTH This spectacular color panorama of the center the Orion nebula is one of the largest pictures ever assembled from individual images taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. ... Though this 2.5 light-years wide view is still a small portion of the entire nebula, it includes almost all of the light from the bright glowing clouds of gas and a star cluster associated with the nebula. ...

Photon Scattering: Basic Principle of Photon Scattering . Audio Narration is available . No Scattering: Photon Source and Detector . ... For optical photons, scattering goes as wavelength to the -4 power. In the case of blue photons compared to red photons, this means that blue photons are about 10 times more likely to get scattered than red photons. ... Watch the blue photons scatter away from the detector . ... Interstellar dust make stars appear redder than they really are . ...

... 2014 October 1 . The Butterfly Nebula from Hubble . Image Credit: NASA , ESA , and the Hubble SM4 ERO Team ; Reprocessing Copyright: Francesco Antonucci . ... With an estimated surface temperature of about 250,000 degrees C, the dying central star of this particular planetary nebula has become exceptionally hot, shining brightly in ultraviolet light but hidden from direct view by a dense torus of dust. ... APOD Wall Calendar: Nebulas and Star Clusters . ... About APOD | ...

... Science . ... Science Users Information > Science and Technical Meetings > Conferences 2012 > Star and Planet Formation Workshop . ... Observing with ESO Telescopes . ... On 14 May 2012 we held a one-day workshop in the ESO Auditorium with the aim of bringing the star and planet formation community from ESO-MPE-USM together. ... J. Ascenso (ESO) Star formation in giant complexes . ... C. Manara (ESO) The role of accretion in the formation of stars and planets: a VLT/X-Shooter perspective . ...

... STScI-PRC00-25 A DYING STAR IN GLOBULAR CLUSTER M15 The globular cluster Messier 15 is shown in this color image obtained with the NASA Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2). ... Known as Kuestner 648, this was the first planetary nebula to be identified in a globular cluster. ... At the present time, the most massive stars remaining in M15 have about 80 percent of the mass of our Sun, a fact that makes the existence of a planetary nebula like K 648 something of a mystery. ...

... Indeed, one alteration of orbits can be the outright ejection of a planet. When several big planets are orbiting a star under each other's influence, the system is inherently unstable. ... We know of no good reason why the smallest objects with fusion should have the same mass as the smallest objects that can form by themselves. ... 6) Mission Definition . ... I don't think this mission is impossible, and will suggest a definition in a future article in Mercury. ... Good luck! . ...

... GSAOI Home . ... Science . ... Deep imaging at J , H , and K is required to identify all stellar objects, brown dwarfs, and planetary mass objects in the central region of the Orion Nebula Cluster down to masses comparable to that of Jupiter. This is required to establish the initial mass function, i.e., the number of stars of each mass that have formed, in this region of intense massive star formation. ... The fields of the GSAOI detectors are shown as four green squares in each frame. ...

... HST . ... Data . ... HST Overview . Overview . ... Retrieving HST Data . ... This FORM is a quick tool for flux conversion between diverse unit systems. ... INPUT FLUX or MAGNITUDE UNITS CLEAR Jy W/m2/Hz W/m2/um W/cm2/um erg/cm2/s/Hz erg/cm2/s/A photons/m2/w/um photons/cm2/s/A AB magnitude magnitude V magnitude U magnitude B magnitude R magnitude I magnitude J magnitude H magnitude K magnitude L magnitude L1 magnitude M magnitude N magnitude Q . ... Enter the Input Flux or Magnitude Value : . ...

... Bad Astronomy . ... Bitesize Astronomy . ... The next step up are true clusters, called open clusters . Open clusters (sometimes misleadingly called "galactic clusters") are groups of stars ranging in size from a few dozen stars up to tens of thousands. ... The youngest is about 1 or 2 million years old, while the oldest is about 6 or 7 billion years, making it just older than our own solar system. ... So by looking at the stars in the cluster we can tell pretty well how old they are. ...

The solar system probably formed about 4.5 billion years ago from a giant disk of gas, dust and ice in space. ... All forms of life on Earth require liquid water to survive, so the presence of liquid water is a good criterion for deciding whether other planets in the universe could be habitable. Earth is the only habitable planet in the solar system. Venus, closer to the Sun, is too hot to have liquid water. Planets and moons in the outer solar system are too cold for liquid water. ...

... Tonight's Sky . ... The Magazine . ... Observing . ... The double star 54 Leonis, spiral galaxy NGC 3198, and emission nebula NGC 3199 . ... Astronomy for Kids . ... Observing springtime deep-sky objects with a large telescope . ... Bright planets meet at dusk . ... Astronomy magazine subscribers can read the full article for free. ... Get instant access to subscriber content on Astronomy.com! ... Receive news, sky-event information, observing tips, and more from Astronomy's weekly email newsletter....

... The Impact of HST on European Astronomy . ... These range from the study of nearby planets, the processes of star and planet formation, the stellar and interstellar components of galaxies, the discovery that most, if not all, galactic nuclei harbor a massive black hole that profoundly affects their evolution, to the realisation that the universe as a whole is undergoing acceleration as a result of a yet unknown form of dark energy . ... Formation, structure and evolution of galaxies . ...

Class 1 Introduction, Background History of Modern Astronomy The Night Sky, Eclipses and the Seasons Kepler's Laws Newtonian Gravity General Relativity Matter and Light Telescopes Class 2 Solar System Characteristics Formation Exosolar Planets Class 3 Stars The Sun Stellar Evolution of Low and High Mass Stars Deaths of Stars Exotic Stars Class 4 Galaxies Galaxy Classification Formation of Galaxies Galactic Evolution ... So far, one planet has been studied by this method. ...

... Australia Telescope Compact Array Radio Imaging of the Proplyd-like Objects in the Giant HII Region NGC 3603'' . M?cke, A., Koribalski, B.S. , Moffat, A.F.J., Corcoran, M.F., Stevens, I.R. 2002, ApJ 571, 366 . ... Brenneman, L., Corcoran, M.F., Moffat, A.F.J., Marchenko, S.V., Ptak, A., Skalkowski, G., Mushotzky, R., Stevens, I.R., Mueke, A., Koribalski, B.S. , et al. ... Physical Properties of visual counterparts to X-ray sources in the giant HII region NGC 3603'' . ...

... Dept. for Astrometry & Space Geodynamics . ... Dept. for Physics of Stars&Galaxies . ... Dept. for Physics of Planetary Systems . ... Science . ... All Pages . ... Research of the stars with planets which pass apparent star disk (transiting exoplanets). The transit method based on a detection star brightness decrease during a passing of planet in front of its disk. Observed brightness system decries when planet pass star disk and its volume depend of the relative sizes star and planet. ...

... no comet has been observed with an orbit that indicates that it came from interstellar space, . ... From this he proposed that comets reside in a vast cloud at the outer reaches of the solar system. ... Unfortunately, since the individual comets are so small and at such large distances, we have no direct evidence about the Oort Cloud. ... T he Kuiper Belt is a disk-shaped region past the orbit of Neptune roughly 30 to 100 AU from the Sun containing many small icy bodies. ... Small Bodies .. ...

... 8, ``Celestial Mechanics'', 2002 Formation and migration of trans -- Neptunian objects S. I. Ipatov 1;2 1 Institute of Applied Mathematics, Moscow, Russia 2 NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, USA We support the Eneev's idea [1] that the largest (with diameter d?100 km) trans ­ Neptunian objects ( TNOs ) moving now in not very eccentric orbits ... The total amount of water delivered to the Earth during the formation of the giant planets was about the mass of water in the Earth's oceans. ...

... 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. ...