... The Sun 1. Does anyone know how many stars are there in the solar system? ... Come take a look at the Sun. See that? ... Galaxies 1. Did you know all the stars you see when you look up are inside our galaxy! ... Our galaxy is huge! If the solar system- the sun and all the planets- could fit in the palm of my hand, the Milky Way galaxy would be the size of North America. ... What do you see? ... Did you know that our Sun and solar system were born in a cloud of gas and dust like this. ...

... Thor s Helmet . ... Heroically sized even for a Norse god, Thor's Helmet is about 30 light-years across. ... Two impressive comets will both reach their peak brightness during the next two weeks. ... IC 1805: The Heart Nebula . ... One of the natural wonders of planet Earth, the Grand Canyon in the American southwest stretches across this early evening skyscape. ... Each day on planet Earth can have a serene beginning at sunrise as the sky gently grows bright over a golden eastern horizon. ...

... In most situations, light helps us to see. But when it comes to looking at the night sky, light actually blocks our vision. ... You should be able to see around 2,500 stars with your naked eyes, but if you live in a big city or town, you probably see less than 10 stars on a normal night! This amazing space picture shows the shining star clusters and swirls of colourful gases of the Carina Nebula: an enormous expanse of gas, dust and stars lying deep in the heart of the Milky Way. ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Stars . ... Starbursts are short-lived events, stars are forming so quickly that the reservoirs of interstellar gas from which stars are coalescing would be used up on a timescale much shorter than the age of the galaxy . ... Strong stellar winds from giant new stars in the starburst region combine with the blasts of supernovae to push a mighty flood of extremely hot gas, a ?superwind? from the galaxy thousands of light years into intergalactic space. ...

... We sometimes use the word "nebula" to refer to galaxies, various types of star clusters and various kinds of interstellar dust/gas clouds. ... Early in this century, there was a great debate as to the nature of the nebulae like this one which at that time could not be resolved into individual stars. ... A typical galaxy is 100,000 light-years in diameter. ... M 42 shown) Reflection nebulae are clouds of dust which are simply reflecting the light of a nearby star or stars. ... M 1 shown) . ...

... Bad Astronomy . ... Bitesize Astronomy . ... Keep Bad Astronomy close to your heart, and help make me filthy rich. ... When Venus is on the far side of the Sun, we see the entire near side lit by the Sun. ... When it is on the near side of the Sun, it shows a beautiful thin crescent, because it is between us and the Sun and we see the mostly unlit dark half. ... To see this for yourself, draw a circle one centimeter across, then, next to it, draw a circle 6 centimeters across. ... 2008 Phil Plait. ...

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. ...

Planet Earth only came outside to watch the nightfall with the rain I heard you making patterns rhyme like some new romantic looking for the tv sound you'll see I'm right some other time look now, look all around , there's not sign of life voices, another sound , can you hear me now? this is planet earth , you're looking at planet earth bop bop bop bop bop ...

... X-ray Binaries in the Ultrahigh Collision Rate Globular Cluster NGC 6388 . ... Shooting Stars: Looking for Direct Evidence of Massive Central Black Holes in Globular Clusters . ... Globular Clusters in the Direction of the Inner Galaxy . ... An ACS Survey of a Complete Sample of Luminous Infrared Galaxies in the Local Universe . ... ACS survey observations of eight clusters are scheduled for the coming week, together with follow-up NICMOS observations of a supernova detected in previous ACS images. ...

... The Pleiades star cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45, is a conspicuous object in the night sky with a prominent place in ancient mythology . ... The stars in the Pleiades are thought to have formed together around 100 million years ago, making them 1/50th the age of our sun, and they lie some 130 parsecs (425 light years ) away. ... Data for these stars are listed in a table below. ... Yes . ... WEBDA Pleiades cluster data . ... M45: The Pleiades Star Cluster (2007 November 18) ...

Summer Triangle . Articles | ... As dusk deepens into night in early June, look a bit north of east, not real high in the sky, for a sparkling blue-white star, whose name is Vega . ... Since the stars rise some four minutes earlier with each passing day, expect the stars of the Summer Triangle to light up the twilight dusk around middle to late June -- a sure harbinger of the change of seasons, of spring giving way to summer. ... Re-published on Astronomy Net with permission of the author. ...

... Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG, +44 (0)28 3752 2928 . ... Aurora . ... Corona . Fireballs . ... Zodiacal Light . ... The first thing to do is get acquainted with what the night sky looks like. ... The National Schools Observatory web site has very good horizon views of the sky for the current night. ... If the object is moving slowly across the sky then it may be one of the larger satellites. ... Cloudbait Observatory - October 2002 . ... October 2003 Aurora at Armagh . ...

In this gallery are many images of Low Surface Brightness Galaxies which have recently been discovered and analyzed. ... The central surface brightness of this galaxy is 24.28 . Malin 2 This galaxy is another huge disk galaxy with a scale length of 15 kpc and a redshift of 15000 km/a. The high surface brightness knot in one of its spiral arms actually has the same color, luminosity and H-alpha equivalent width as the entire Large Magellanic Cloud . ... Truly it is a Low Surface Brightness Galaxy. ...

... Ziggy's sun has still not risen, but Ziggy's moon has set, making it much easier to see faint things in the sky. ... When you look anywhere in the sky you see vast numbers of stars. But when you look at any part of the Milkstain, you see vast numbers of stars packed close together. ... The Fuzzballs · While scanning the sky (away from the Milkstain) with your most powerful telescope, you kept coming across small fuzzy objects, which you are calling "fuzzballs". ... Some Fuzzballs. ...

... However, while low mass stars are usually found to form in loose groups with densities of a few stars per cubic parsecs, high mass stars are known to form in dense clusters with up to 10000 stars per cubic parsec. ... We have undertaken a survey of a cospicuous number of fields around intermediate mass young stars (Herbig Ae/Be stars, HAeBe) with the aim of detect and characterize the groups of young stars that may have formed together with the HAeBe star. ... BD +404124 - A rich, compact cluster. ...

... 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....

... In typical nightly use, the wide field and planetary telescope and cameras record images of favorably placed objects in the sky, including constellations, bright variable stars, nebulae through narrow-band filters, comets, the Moon, and planets. ... Shared Skies telescopes are available for use by students at the University of Louisville and the University of Southern Queensland, and by teachers and students in middle and high schools mentored by faculty at the universities. ...

... 1st Announcement IAU Symposium 312 Star Clusters and Black Holes Across Cosmic Time, Beijing, China, Aug. 25-29, 2014 . ... SUBJECT: 1st Announcement IAU Symposium 312 Star Clusters and Black Holes Across Cosmic Time, Beijing, China, Aug. 25-29, 2014 . ... which will be held in Beijing, P.R. China, from August 25-29, 2014, hosted by Chinese Academy of Sciences . ... China), . ... 1st Announcement IAU Symposium 312 Star Clusters and Black Holes Across Cosmic Time, Beijing, China, Aug. ...

... 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. ...

Y ou don't need your own Voyager to see the solar system. ... Refer to Sky Telescope or a similar magazine for up to date positions or check one of the several Web sites that show planetary positions. ... You can see 99.99% of the mass of the solar system with no instruments whatsoever. ... Jupiter . ... Mars . ... For $200 you can get a far better optical instrument than Galileo or Newton had. ... Date . ... William Herschel . ... O f course, the solar system has more than just planets and moons. ...