... Sometimes staring into empty space is useful. Pictured above is a region of sky that was picked because it had, well, nothing: no bright stars, no bright galaxies, and no picturesque nebulas. What could not be avoided, however, were a few stars in our own Galaxy, and many distant galaxies strewn across the universe. ... The center of our Galaxy is obscured in visible light by dark dust that rotates with the stars in the Galactic Plane. ... Many Moons . ... A Deep Field In The Southern Sky . ...

... 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. ...

... 2001 April 24 . NGC 2264: Stars, Dust, and Gas . ... Explanation: The nebula surrounding bright star S Mon is filled with dark dust and glowing gas. The strange shapes that haunt this star forming region originate from fine interstellar dust reacting in complex ways to the energetic light and hot gas being expelled by the young stars. ... The blue glow directly surrounding S Mon results from reflection , where neighboring dust reflects light from the bright star. ... About APOD | ...

... 2000 April 24 . Reflection Nebula M78 . ... Explanation: An eerie blue glow and ominous columns of dark dust highlight M78, a bright reflection nebula in the constellation of Orion . The dust not only absorbs light, but also reflects the light of several bright blue stars that formed recently in the nebula. ... M78 belongs to the larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex that contains the Great Nebula in Orion and the Horsehead Nebula . ... About APOD | ...

... This beautiful new image shows a glowing cloud of cosmic dust sitting boldly against a backdrop of shining stars. To the naked eye, thick clouds like these appear empty and dark, but some are actually home to the brightest nebulae and hottest young stars in the Universe! Stars are made of gas, so it is no surprise that they are born inside thick, gassy clouds. But the clouds that give birth to stars also block our view of them growing within. ...

... 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 ...

... SEARCH ASP SITE: Match ALL words Match ANY word . ... ASP Conference Series . ... Accidental Astrophysics: The Devil's In the Magnitudes, Part II . ... The star second to the Sun in brilliance is Sirius. ... Recall the magnitude system, passed down to us through a hundred generations of sky watchers, as a means of quantifying stellar brightness ("Accidental Astrophysics," May/June, p. 9). ... Yes, it is a magnitude difference, but that difference is due to the distance between us and the star. ...

... From Terry Moseley: "A very bright fireball was seen widely over Ireland, and even as far away as Liverpool, at about 00.30 on Sunday morning, 4 April. John McConnell saw it from Maghaberry, Co Antrim, and a woman saw it from her home in Newry, Co Down. The Liverpool observer reports that the fireball appeared at 30 - 40 degrees altitude in the western sky at 00:33 UT on 2009 April 05. ... I saw it) early Sunday morning at 00:32 BST. ... International Year of Astronomy, Ireland National Node . ...

... 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 [ ] . ...

... HUBBLE UNCOVERS DUST DISK AROUND A MASSIVE BLACK HOLE . Resembling a gigantic hubcap in space, a 3,700 light-year-diameter dust disk encircles a 300 million solar-mass black hole in the center of the elliptical galaxy NGC 7052. ... Because the jets in NGC 7052 are not perpendicular to the disk, it may indicate that the black hole and the dust disk in NGC 7052 do not have a common origin. ... NGC 7052 is located in the constellation of Vulpecula, 191 million light-years from Earth. ...

... Circumstellar disc of beta Pictoris: constraints on grain properties from polarization. To appear in the Astronomy & Astrophysics . abs , src , ps ] . ... Dust influx to Titan from Hyperion . ... abs ] . ... Characteristics of bulges and disks in interacting galaxies . ... Dust grains around Herbig Ae/Be stars: porous, cometary-like grains? ... To appear in the Astronomy & Astrophysics Supplement . ... Finally, Links may lead you to more options (e.g. via the LANL preprint system). ...

... We have measured this "redshift" for the pink black holes,