... Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2011 February 23 . The Solar System from MESSENGER . ... Nearly such a view was taken recently from the MESSENGER spacecraft currently orbiting the Sun from the distance of Mercury . ... MESSENGER, which has flown by Mercury three times now, is on schedule to enter orbit around the Solar System's innermost planet next month. ... About APOD | ...

... 22.02.2011 . ... Credit Copyright: NASA / JHU APL / CIW Explanation: If you looked out from the center of the Solar System, what would you see? Nearly such a view was taken recently from the MESSENGER spacecraft currently orbiting the Sun from the distance of Mercury . ... MESSENGER, which has flown by Mercury three times now, is on schedule to enter orbit around the Solar System's innermost planet next month. ... February 2011 . ... 2011 2012 . ... Publications with keywords: Solar System . ...

... 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....

... Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG, +44 (0)28 3752 2928 . On Friday 15th February the recently discovered Apollo-class near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 will make a close pass by the Earth. The asteroid will come within about 34,000 km (21,000 miles) of the centre of our planet at 7.26 p.m. That is, within the ring of geostationary communication satellites which orbit at some 35,800 km above the surface of the Earth. ... Last Revised: 2013 February 11th . ...

Comets are small, fragile, irregularly shaped bodies composed of a mixture of non-volatile grains and frozen gases. ... Most become visible, even in telescopes, only when they get near enough to the Sun for the Sun's radiation to start subliming the volatile gases, which in turn blow away small bits of the solid material. ... Nearly 100 known comets have periods (the time it takes them to make one complete trip around the Sun) five to seven Earth years in length. ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Planets . ... Monthly Sky Notes . ... October . ... By admin October 8, 2010 Posted in: Monthly Sky Notes . A giant from close up: an image made using data from the Cassini probe which flew past Jupiter in 2000. ... As it is so far from us, it takes JupiterтАЩs light a significant time to reach us тАУso when you see Jupiter tonight you are seeing it as it was 35€а minutes in the past. ... Posted October 12, 2010 at 11:15 PM . ... Astronotes . ...

... 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. ...

Lab . Main page News People . ASA . Master . Master net Homepage . ... Lomonosov Moscow State University Sternberg Astronomical Institute . ... MASTER . ... Lomonosov (ShOK) . ... About Space Monitoring Laboratory, scientific directions, instruments, contacts . People, who work in lab . Latest news and news archive . ... All news ...

My research efforts have focused on three areas which are: . More than 200 extrasolar planets have been discovered around relatively nearby stars, primarily through the Doppler line shifts owing to the reflex motions of their host stars, and more recently through transits of some planets across the face of the host stars. ... Gravitational microlensing provides a novel technique to look for planets around lens stars, and this is the only technique currently capable of detecting Earth-mass planets. ...

The Search for Planets Around Other Stars As we live out our lives securely attached to the Earth, breathing its air, and using its water, it becomes all too easy to take planets for granted. ... Yet the surprising fact is, we do not know for certain whether there are planets around other stars. ... A few years ago there was a flurry of excitement as some astronomers found wobbles in the motions of several nearby stars, suggesting the presence of planets. ... a stillborn star, if you will ? ...

... Since planets are expected to form out of the material in disks around young stars, the formation of a planet will thoroughly alter the structure of the circumstellar disk of their host star, forming significant gaps in the radial distribution of matter around the star. Additionally, processing of solids (annealing/crystallization) and changes in the overall gas/dust ratio are thought to happen during the planet formation process and are believed to alter the observational signature of the disk. ...

The basic problems of the Laboratory are connected with researches of dynamics of minor planets and comets. ... THE ORBIT IMPROVEMENT of minor planets from optical and radar observations, . the utilization of minor planet observations for THE DETERMINATION OF ORIENTATION OF STAR CATALOGUES and DETERMINATION OF MASSES OF MINOR PLANETS BY DYNAMICAL METHOD, . THE ESTIMATION OF COLLISION PROBABILITY of minor planets with other bodies and with each other, . ...

... Comet Tutorial . ... On July 1, 1993 an image was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) that clearly shows at least 15 individual fragments in one image frame of the train. ... This made an accurate orbit (or orbits) difficult to determine; however, after numerous observations of the comet, astronmers determined that the comet had passed within 96,000 kilometers (60,000 miles) of the center of Jupiter or 25,000 kilometers (16,000 miles) from the cloud tops during the July 8, 1992, approach. ...

... More on 51 Peg: . The discovery of a Jupiter--mass planet in orbit around the solar--type star 51Peg has been reported by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz (Geneva Observatory) on October 6th at the 9th Cambridge workshop on "cool stars, stellar systems, and the sun" held at Florence (Italy). ... Recall that the measurements of radial velocity only yield v sin i which in turn gives us M sin i. For most values of i, sin i will be greater than 0.5 and this gives a mass estimate of 0.5 Jupiter masses. ...

... Click on an object in the solar system or choose from the list at left to learn more . The Arecibo Observatory planetary radar is the world's most powerful instrument for post-discovery characterization and orbital refinement of near-Earth objects. ... The Solar System Studies group is a department of the Arecibo Observatory, which is an NSF facility operated under cooperative agreement by SRI International, Universities Space Research Association (USRA), and la Universidad Metropolitana (UMET). ...

... Spacecraft . ... To space by cannon? Finally, the deep space explorers --spacecraft which break away from the Earth's gravity . ... The "Luna" series of the USSR conducted 7 soft landing of unmanned probes, two of them with wheeled robotic "Lunokhods," and two of those missions returned samples to Earth. Others spacecraft have visited the major planets of the Solar system. ... The Mariner series have explored Venus and Mars--and Mariner 10 even reached Mercury, for three separate encounters! ...

Finding Himalia, The Fifth Brightest Moon Of Jupiter . Articles | ... Himalia is the only moon other than the Galilean moons of Jupiter that is visible in an amateur size telescope. ... I normally use “The Sky” from Software Bisque for planning my observing sessions and in helping me find objects, but it only has the Galilean moons for Jupiter so I used Red Shift (version 3 at the time) which I also had on my computer. ... www.astronomy.net . ... dbHTML," "AstroGuide," "ASTRONOMY.NET" & "VA.NET" . ...

Giant Jupiter. Jupiter . ... Jupiter has no solid surface that is why speaking about its dimensious point the radius of the upper border line of the clouds, where the presseru is about 10 KPa; radius of Jupiter on the equator is 71400 km. ... The Jupiter satellites. ... Nowadays 16 satellites of the Jupiter are known: Adrastea, Mitis, Amaltea , Phina,then 4 Galilei satellites: Io , Europe , Hanimed , Callisto , Leda, Aimalia, Zicitea, Elara, Ananke, Carme, Pasipe and Sinope. ... Jupiter's ring. ...

Check out the new images (Jan 18-25) and (Jan 26-Feb 05) of the comet by Rob McNaught. ... Every few years a comet becomes bright enough to be easily seen with the naked eye but only every decade or so are these comparable with comets like Halley. ... Before Jan 13, the comet is not visible in the Australian sky after sunset. ... SOHO images . ... On Jan 12 at approximately 09:00 UT (8pm NSW time), comet C/2006 P1 McNaught appears at the 11 o'clock position in the images. ... STEREO images . ...

... ATNF Home . ... About ATNF overview . ... Australia Telescope Steering Committee . ... Astrophysics graduate student programs . ... Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder . Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory . ... Parkes radio telescope . Australia Telescope Compact Array . ... Visiting Parkes radio telescope . Visiting Australia Telescope Compact Array . ... Radio emission from Jupiter was first serendipitiously discovered at decametric wavelengths by Franklin and Burke in 1955. ...