... Since moonshine is really reflected sunlight, the full Moon is on the average slightly brighter in mid-winter, when Earth is closest to the Sun. In addition, the distance of the full Moon also varies, due to the ellipticity ("eccentricity") of the Moon's orbit. On 22 December, 1999, the two effects combined to produce the brightest full Moon of the century. ... This year will be the first full moon to occur on the winter solstice, Dec. 22nd, commonly called the first day of winter. ...

... Credit Copyright: 1-Meter Schmidt Telescope , ESO Explanation: The closest star system to the Sun is the Alpha Centauri system . Of the three stars in the system, the dimmest -- called Proxima Centauri -- is actually the nearest star . The bright stars Alpha Centauri A and B form a close binary as they are separated by only 23 times the Earth- Sun distance - slightly greater than the distance between Uranus and the Sun . ... NASA Official: Jay Norris. ... Proxima Centauri: The Closest Star . ...

... 2006 December 27 . IC 5067: Emission Nebula Close-up . ... Explanation: This amazing skyscape lies along a bright ridge of emission in IC 5067, also known as The Pelican Nebula . ... Placing your cursor on the image will bring up a false color image of the nebula made through narrowband filters that also map specific emission from sulfur and oxygen atoms. ... About APOD | ... NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers . NASA Official: Phil Newman Specific rights apply . ...

... Bad Astronomy . ... Mad Science . ... Keep Bad Astronomy close to your heart, and help make me filthy rich. ... There has been an email circulating the 'net recently claiming that the full moon of December 22, 1999 is the brightest in 133 years. ... The brightness changes due to the varying distance of the Moon to the Earth (when it's closest, the Moon appears brightest) and the varying distance of the Earth/Moon system to the Sun (when closest to the Sun, again the Moon appears brightest). ...

Discover the cosmos! ... December 6, 1999 . M83: The Southern Pinwheel Galaxy from VLT . ... Explanation: M83 is one of the closest and brightest spiral galaxies on the sky. Visible with binoculars in the constellation of Hydra , majestic spiral arms have prompted its nickname as the Southern Pinwheel. Although discovered 250 years ago, only in this century was it appreciated that M83 was not a gas cloud but a barred spiral galaxy much like our own Milky Way Galaxy . ... About APOD > . ...

... Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG, +44 (0)28 3752 2928 . ... Although the comet itself never comes dangerously close to the Earth, the particles of dust that it has shed during its many past passages through perihelion found their way into the Earth's atmosphere, appearing as meteors in the cold December sky. ... Animation 1 . ... An Ursid meteor captured by the Armagh Observatory's NE-facing meteor camera in the early morning of 23rd December. ... Meteor Showers Online . ...

... I fixed the bugs that caused the map_point changes to fail tests. Then I removed the no longer needed dimensional variables from the p structure and got those changes to pass all the tests. ... I put the code under subversion control in a new branch called refactor. ... The code change which processes each drizzle kernel over an entire image rather than a line at a time now passes the unit tests and was checked in. ... I got the keywords argument changes done and got the tests to pass. ...

... Planets . ... Earth Satellites . ... Looking in the direction of the constellation Cygnus the Swan and launched by NASA in 2009 is the Kepler Space Observatory.Many previous missions searching for exoplanets mainly detected large giant planets, like large hot Jupiters (it is easier to detect larger planets).However KeplerтАЩs main objective is to search for much smaller planets located in a habitable zone which is not too close nor too far from their star; planets which may be just like our Earth. ...

The "ring of fire" seen by satellite cameras around the polar caps (picture below) is probably created by electrons leaking from the tail's plasma sheet, whose magnetic field lines form a somewhat imperfect trap. ... One possible explanation involves the close association between auroral arcs and electric currents which flow along field lines between the ionosphere and distant space ( Birkeland currents ). ... That produces an extra resistance to the flow of current. ...

... TOA strongly distorted by calibration errors Second ATNF Gravitational Wave Workshop 13 December 2007 Second ATNF Gravitational Wave Workshop 13 December 2007 Second ATNF Gravitational Wave Workshop 13 December 2007 Second ATNF Gravitational Wave Workshop 13 December 2007 Second ATNF ...

The program "Pioneer" . Pioneer - 10", the first space vehicle started in March, 1972 to the Jove, has reached . ... This photo of the Jove was received December, 1, 1973 when space probe " pioneer - 10 " has come nearer to a planet on distance 2,5 million km. ... This photo was received by "Pioneer - 11" December, 6, 1974 from distance 1,1 million km from a planet. ... The picture is received in December, 12, 1974 when "Pioneer - 11" was on distance of 1207 thousand kms from the Jove. ...

... The European HST Archive has been moved to ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre ( ESAC ), Spain, where most of ESA's Space Science Archives are located and operated from. ... The Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility (ST-ECF), jointly operated by ESA and the European Southern Observatory ( ESO ) was, until the end of 2010, the European HST science facility, supporting the European astronomy community in exploiting the research opportunities provided by the Hubble Space Telescope. ...

... 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. ...

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. ...

... Meta Index / Home Page / Source Flagging Algorithms Any source either having a raw count-rate >= 80, or with quality flag bit 4 set (mod-8 pattern) is checked for "close" neighbours, which may be flagged. ... Check each source in the vicinity of the bright source . ... Compute the maximum distance for flagging the source from maxRad = max(exclusionradius, min(70.0, 35.0 * countTable(i) // 80.0) ) If the flagging is done by omdetect, the exclusion radius is determined from the algorithm at the end . ...

... were entered in the atlas. ... In so doing lines were selected which yielded radial velocities close to the symbiotic velocity of MWC 560 (+35 km/s). ... The visible spectrum of MWC 560 is poor in absorption lines especially near the brightness maximum. In our atlas are visible only the blue-shifted components of , , NaI and FeII(42), interstellar lines NaI, a few diffuse interstellar bands (DIB) and telluric lines of and and, at length, traces of the spectra of the M giant. ...

This service is intended as an aid to visually observing close-approaching asteroids. ... By clicking on the column headers for "Object Name", "Maximum Brightness", and "Maximum Angular Speed", you can sort the list by those fields. ... When This is the predicted time when the asteroid will be closest to the Earth. ... This field shows red if an asteroid comes as close as the moon. ... PHA (Potentially Hazardous Asteroid) This does NOT mean that this is going to hit the Earth. ...

August 26, 2006, . ... The 2 nd Asian-Pacific Astronomy Olympiad to be held in Vladivostok and Ussurijsk (Far East of Russian Federation). Preliminary dates for the 2 nd Asian-Pacific Astronomy Olympiad are December 4-11 (a couple weeks later than the 11 th IAO in Bombay ). ... For the teams which ask for Russian visa - together with the personal data for visas (or before). E-mails for sending the applications . ... The Asian-Pacific Astronomy Olympiad 2006 - last information . ...

... 50 Greatest Mysteries . ... Star Atlas . ... Supernova showered Earth with radioactive debris . ... stars . ... Cosmic Adventures . ... Closest type Ia supernova in decades solves a cosmic mystery . ... Confirming a carbon-oxygen white dwarf . ... The spectra gave us the carbon and oxygen, so we knew we had the first direct evidence that a type Ia supernova does indeed start with a carbon-oxygen white dwarf." ... Only registered members of Astronomy.com are allowed to comment on this article. ...

... Well, there are at least a million times more galaxies in the Universe than there are human beings! ... These newcomers are bigger and brighter than anything else in space, and if that wasn't interesting enough, they also glow bright green! This has led astronomers to name them 'green bean' galaxies (look at the little green bean-like spot in the middle of this space picture). ... We think that they shine so brilliantly because of a black hole at their centre. ...