... Last Thursday evening, stars were not the only lights in Iowa skies. ... A Force from Empty Space: The Casimir Effect . ... NGC 1055 and M77 . ... Large spiral galaxy NGC 1055 (top left) joins spiral M77 in this lovely cosmic view toward the constellation Cetus. ... Light Deposits Indicate Water Flowing on Mars . ... Images of the same parts of mid-latitude Mars taken over the years but released only last week have shown unexpected new light-toned deposits where there were none before. ...

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. ...

... 2008 December 1 . Massive Stars Resolved in the Carina Nebula . ... Explanation: How massive can stars be? ... Such was the case for two of the brightest objects visible in the open star cluster Trumpler 16 , located in the southern Carina Nebula . ... The Carina Nebula , home to unusually shaped dust clouds and the famous variable star Eta Carina , lies about 7,500 light years away toward the constellation of Ship's Keel ( Carina ). ... About APOD | ... A service of: ASD at NASA / GSFC . ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Our Galaxy . ... Other Galaxies . ... Space Flight . ... October . ... Posted on November 19, 2010 | 1 Comment Could HIP 13044 b be the strangest exoplanet yet found? ... Continue Reading.. ... 2 Comments Using the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have been looking ten thousand years into the future of the vast globular cluster Omega Centauri. ... Posted on October 4, 2010 | 1 Comment Gorgeous! ... Posted on September 27, 2010 | ...

Star formation is often best manifested by bright H II regions.These are regions of hydrogen which have been ionized by ultraviolet photons which are emitted from massive stars (typically stars more than 20 times the mass of the Sun). ... A narrowband filter image centered on this wavelength will then readily reveal these H II regions and hence the current sites of star formation in a galaxy, The luminous blobs that can be seen here are all H II regions . ... NGC 3558 Visual . NGC 3558 Infrared . ...

... STScI-PRC00-08 HUBBLE OPENS ITS EYE ON THE UNIVERSE AND CAPTURES A COSMIC MAGNIFYING GLASS Scanning the heavens for the first time since the successful December 1999 servicing mission, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a giant, cosmic magnifying glass, a massive cluster of galaxies called Abell 2218. ... The cluster is so massive that its enormous gravitational field deflects light rays passing through it, much as an optical lens bends light to form an image. ... Blue pinpoints hot young...

Program number . ... Infrared Snapshots of 3CR Radio Galaxies . Abstract . ... Holland Ford, The Johns Hopkins University . ... An ACS H-alpha Survey of the Carina Nebula . ... A Snapshot Survey of the most massive clusters of galaxies . ... An ACS Imaging Survey of the Galaxies Hosting Strong Mg II Absorption . ... ACS observations of the galaxies in a giant Ly-alpha nebula at z~2.7 . ... An ACS Survey of a Complete Sample of Luminous Infrared Galaxies in the Local Universe . ... Past weeks: . ...

... If all photons have the same speed (the speed of light) and the same mass (zero), why does an individual gamma-ray photon have more energy than a radio-wave photon? ... The equation E=mc 2 states that mass ( m ) and energy ( E ) are manifestations of the same thing; mass can change into energy, and energy can change into mass. The speed of light ( c ) is the conversion factor between the two quantities. ... Get instant access to subscriber content on Astronomy.com! ...

... 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. ...

... All previous such superstars have been found along with many companion stars in the centres of crowded star clusters. The star is known as VFTS 682 from the VLT-FLAMES Tarantula Survey catalogue of the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) located at Paranal in Chile by means of the attached FLAMES instrument. ... Although VFTS 682 seems to be alone now it is not very far away from a very rich star cluster known as RMC 136 that contains several similar superstars. ...

... 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. ...

Collins School Star Party - Oct. 5, 1999 Presented by the North Shore Amateur Astronomy Club (NSAAC) For more information: NSAAC: http://www.star.net/people/~nsaac 1.0 Using a telescope Close one eye (use your hand if it's easier) and look straight down into the eyepiece. ... Massive stars use up their fuel much faster - in some cases less than 100 million years. ... Jupiter _____. ... With the chart at left and using the brightest stars as a guide, see if you can find Uranus with binoculars. ...

... ATNF Home . ... About ATNF overview . ... Australia Telescope Steering Committee . ... Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder . Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory . ... Parkes radio telescope . Australia Telescope Compact Array . ... Visiting Australia Telescope Compact Array . ... Observations taken with the Australia Telescope Compact Array for the giant radio galaxy B0114-476 reveal a "double-double" structure with two outer diffuse lobes and two inner jet-like features. ...

home publications > mercury . ... Big Clusters, Tiny Galaxies . ... Astronomers struggle to understand why giant star clusters form in the tiniest of galaxies . ... These clusters are probably young versions of globular clusters, but they are commonly called super star clusters. Seven dwarf galaxies within 16 million light-years have formed super star clusters, with one of these galaxies, NGC 1569, possessing two young clusters. ... Super star clusters have a lot to tell us about star formation. ...

... The most powerful and widely used methods to calculate the scattering matrix of a fractal cluster are based on the coupled dipoles methods (e.g. the Discrete Dipole Approximation, DDA) and the theory of light scattering by a cluster of spherical particles [2-4]. ... At present the procedure of calculation of the scattering matrix is well developed for both an oriented cluster of spherical particles and for chaotically oriented clusters of such particles [4]. ...

... ESO is building what will be the World's largest optical telescope array, The Very Large Telescope (VLT). The VLT Project organisation is responsible for the design and construction of the Unit Telescopes, including enclosures, optics, adapter-rotators and coating unit. ... Unit Telescopes Overview - This page is outdated, an update is in process. ... Secondary mirror (M2 Unit) - This page is outdated, an update is in process. ... Coating Unit - This page is outdated, an update is in process. ...

... Image Quality of the VLT . Total Optical Control . First light for the ESO VLT unit telescope 1 occurred during the workshop. ... The image shown (Figure 1 ) here was obtained with the VLT on May 16, 1998, in red light (R band), i.e. while the mirror was still uncoated. ... In this diagram (FIgure 2), the measured image quality of the VLT UT1 astronomical images is plotted versus the ``seeing", as measured by the Seeing Monitor, a small telescope also located on top of the Paranal Mountain. ...

... Ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) are located in external galaxies, their X-ray luminosities (10 39 - 10 41 erg/s) are thousand times greater than those of brightest black holes in the Galaxy. ULXs may be supercritical accretion disks around black holes of stellar masses (~10 Solar masses) like that in SS433, or they may be a hypothetical intermediate-mass black holes (hundreds - thousands Solar masses) with standard accretion disks. ... 2) The ULX progenitors were ejected from the star clusters. ...

... 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. ...

Results from 6m telescope observations of globular clusters in dwarf galaxies Sharina M. We consider properties of globular clusters in dwarf galaxies observed with the multi-slit unit of the SCORPIO spectrograph at the SAO 6m telescope. ... Studying GCs in dwarf galaxies at the faintest end of the galaxy luminosity function provides valuable information for a better understanding of galaxy evolution and evolutionary connection between globular clusters and nuclei of galaxies. ...