... 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. ...

... 2009 July 27 . NGC 1097: Spiral Galaxy with a Central Eye . Credit: NASA , JPL-Caltech , SINGS Team ( SSC ) . Explanation: What's happening at the center of spiral galaxy NGC 1097? ... Near the left edge and seen in blue, a smaller companion galaxy is wrapped in the spectacular spiral arms of the large spiral, lit in pink by glowing dust . ... Note: An APOD editor will review great space images this Saturday night at Ft. ... About APOD | ... NASA Web Privacy Policy and Important Notices . ...

... NGC 1097: Spiral Galaxy with a Central Eye . ... Credit Copyright: NASA , JPL-Caltech , SINGS Team ( SSC ) Explanation: What's happening at the center of spiral galaxy NGC 1097? No one is sure, but it likely involves a supermassive black hole . Matter falling in from a bar of stars and gas across the center is likely being heated by an extremely energetic region surrounding the central black hole . ... Publications with keywords: spiral galaxy - supermassive black hole . ...

... 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 Unit Telescopes Overview - This page is outdated, an update is in process.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 Secondary mirror (M2 Unit) - This page is outdated, an update is in process.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 Coating Unit - This page is outdated, an update is in process. ...

... The TRACE images may be used without restrictions in publications of any kind. ... These two images, taken on 18 November 2000 at 15:54UT and 16:11UT, respectively, show such an event: the red circle in the image to the left shows a region where many loops are cooling, with bright loop tops (the intensity scales with the square root of the image to reduce the dynamic range). ... See also a collection of images related to the Sun, other cool stars, and solar-terrestrial effects . ... Images | ...

... These Frontier Fields will combine the power of HST with the natural gravitational telescopes of high-magnification clusters of galaxies. ... We are soliciting gravitational lensing maps for the last four Hubble Frontier Fields clusters (MACSJ0717.5+3745, MACSJ1149.5+2223, AbellS1063, and Abell 370) based upon the exceptionally deep HST FF imaging and other new ancillary data. ... For the full set of proposal instructions and requirements, see the FY16 Frontier Fields Lensing Map Call for Proposals....

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Solar System . ... Planets . ... This bizarrely shrunken planetary system was found by NASAтАЩs Kepler mission, hence the parent star has been named Kepler-11. ... Planetary scientist and Kepler science team member Jack Lissauer said ?These six planets are mixtures of rock and gases, possibly including water.тАЭ ?аNone of these strange new worlds are likely to be home to any form of life; their surface conditions are simply too extreme. ...

... When using a single spectral window, and observing spectral lines, the bandwidth of the ATCA can be problematically narrow, or the channel widths can be too coarse. ... A partial work around for this situation is to use the two ATCA frequency bands to observe in adjacent somewhat overlapping windows, and using the same bandwidths and channel counts for the two windows. ... In so doing, it handles any overlap region between the two windows in a sensible fashion. ...

Next: Selection effects Up: Emission-line galaxies Previous: Emission-line galaxies . ... O III ] ? ... In Fig. 4 emission-line galaxies from the HSS sample are plotted in comparison with some BCGs from the SBS (Izotov et al. [ 1994 ], [ 1997b ]; Thuan et al. [ 1995 ]) and ELGs from the Case survey (Weistrop & Downes [ 1988 ], [ 1991 ]; Augarde et al. ... We tentatively classify it as a possible LINER (low-ionization nuclear emission-line region galaxies; Heckman [ 1980 ]). ... emission lines. ...

. The hot gas in the galaxy cluster Abell 2052 is being sloshed back and forth. The sloshing was set in motion when a small cluster smashed into the larger central one. The large spiral structure on the outside of the image was also caused by that off-center collision. Sloshing of hot gas like this can affect how the giant elliptical galaxy and its supermassive black hole at the center grow. X-ray: NASA/CXC/BU/L.Blanton; Optical: ESO/VLT

... For us to see them from such great distances, quasars must be producing enormous energy -- they are about 1000 times brighter than an average galaxy! ... One of their choices for the energy source of quasars was a black hole. ... On the one hand, it may seem difficult to think that mere friction between bits of matter could account for the energy of a quasar, but, on the other hand, gravity is unimaginably strong near a black hole. ... How does matter actually rush towards the black hole? ...

... Samara region . SSAU History . ... An alignment meeting on data mining, storage and processing of very large data amounts on the basis of hardware and software complex Big Data took place in Samara State Aerospace University. ... The laboratory for processing of very large data amounts on the basis of the hardware and software complex was made in the University and the necessary equipment was purchased. ... Data processing requires powerful processors and advanced computer programs. ... Big Data. ...

... The large field size of UIT is ideal for studies of globular clusters. ... Very metal poor clusters are conducive for the formation of very hot horizontal branch stars which radiate most of that energy in the UV part of the spectrum. ... M31 is the nearest large spiral galaxy to us. ... These are small dwarf galaxies and NGC 205 is a bit unusual because it still has retained some gas for star formation despite its low mass. M33 is an actively star forming spiral galaxy in the local group. ...

... Special Reports Giant space cloud may be powered by black holes 17:57 23 April 2007 NewScientist.com news service David Shiga An enormous cloud of roiling plasma in space may be drawing its energy from black holes, new observations suggest. Such clouds might be sources for the mysterious particles that occasionally crash into Earth's atmosphere at ultra - high speed. ... But higher energy particles in the cloud may be able to escape, he says. ...

LARGE-SCALE PHENOMENA AT THE SUN ASSOCIATED . WITH FILAMENT ERUPTIONS OUTSIDE ACTIVE . ... Considering the 12.09.1999 event as an example, we analyze manifestations of large-scale disturbances associated with coronal mass ejections (CMEs) caused by filament eruptions outside of active regions. ... The filament eruption occurred in relatively weak magnetic fields, but it was accompanied by larger-scale phenomena than flare events do. ...

This WWW form allows the user simplified access to images produced by the NRAO/VLA Sky Survey (NVSS). This service determines which NVSS image is desired based on a celestial position and returns either the image directly or a Web page with a link to the file. ... The NVSS Postage stamp (small FITS file) server can be used to obtain images with other geometries.) ... Web browsers use external viewers to display files like FITS images which they do not understand. ...

... Meta Index / Home Page To improve the execution time of the task the source region is divided into a grid which is used to check whether pixels lie on a CCD. The width of each grid element is set to be 10 detector pixels ( arcseconds) for small regions (region half-width less than 2 arcminutes) and 20 detector pixels ( arcsecond) for larger regions. ...

Likely Impact Sites of Large Fragments of the Tunguska Cosmic Body . ... Kulik. Kulik schematized the tree fall around the Cranberry Hole and at the Southern Bog in order to elucidate the possible location of meteorite fragments. ... We consider that it is necessary to verify the Kulik proposal and to perform at first georadar investigations in the Suslov and Cranberry holes and then drill in the craters to find possible meteorite fragments. ...

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. ...

... Our Sun is part of a huge wheel-shaped collection of stars. ... Astronomers have long suspected it was a very massive black hole, and that every galaxy had such a central mass, created early in the history of the universe. ... However, unless that object happens to be headed directly at the black hole (a relatively small target) it will just swing around and fly away again, like a comet making a pass at the Sun. The velocity acquired in falling towards the black hole also helps it escape. ...