... 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. ...

... An Extremely Long Filament on the Sun . ... A filament is actually hot gas held aloft by the Sun's magnetic field, so that viewed from the side it would appear as a raised prominence . ... Sun-following telescopes including NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) are tracking this unusual feature , with SDO yesterday recording a spiraling magnetic field engulfing it. ... Publications with keywords: Sun - filament - magnetic field . Publications with words: Sun - filament - magnetic field . ...

Visit: . ... For most observations, plan windows are 8 weeks in duration, but they can be shorter or longer depending on the visit's constraints. ... See also the long range plan status below.) ... Contact your Program Coordinator for more information. ... This visit is not yet ready for long range planning. ... Although most visits are placed on the long range plan, some visits have special scheduling considerations which require them to be tracked in a different manner (e.g. snapshot programs). ...

... Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2015 February 10 . An Extremely Long Filament on the Sun . ... Visible as the dark streak just below the center in the featured image, the enormous filament extended across the face of the Sun a distance even longer than the Sun's radius -- over 700,000 kilometers. ... Follow APOD on: Facebook , Google Plus , or Twitter . ... 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 . ...

The Wideband Arecibo Pulsar Processor - File Format Page . WAPP files have three sections that appear sequentially in this order: an ASCII header description, the binary header, and finally the actual binary data. ... The WAPP realtime observation engine does not produce files larger that 2 Gbytes. At one time this represented a fundamental limit to Linux files. ... Each file will have it's own header, even when the files are simply continuations of a single observation. ... long int . ...

... 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. ...

Ariel . ... Ariel [AIR-ee-al] is a relatively small satellite and is the brightest moon of Uranus. ... This image of Ariel shows a world pock-marked with craters. ... This image is a mercator map of Ariel. ... This image is a polar stereographic map of the southern hemisphere of Ariel. ... This image is an orthographic view of Ariel centered at -66 degrees latitude and 316 degrees longitude. ... This image of Ariel is at the same geometry of the highest resolution mosaic of Ariel taken by Voyager. ...

... The changebar (represented by two hyphens in the image) appears in the 10px space to the left of the paragraph. The illustration shows a vertical line that represents the left edge of the paragraph's containing block. ... The change bars (two red hyphens) appear to the left of the word "THIS", which begins the fourth line of text. The following PRE element simulates the example. Vertical bars represent the left containing block edge. ... to the left of the line containing | ...

January 1998 One of the great unsolved problems in software development is the task of estmating time required for a software project. ... Rather than focusing on causes, or theoretical approaches, I herein offer a practical guide to improving time estimates for the worst-case scenario, the dreaded Five Minute Task . ... deal with the compile-time errors you failed to anticipate: . ... install software: . ... deal with installed software changes crashing all systems at random intervals: . ... test: . ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Moon . Planets . ... Monthly Sky Notes . ... February . ... The ringed planet will be quite bright, but unlike Jupiter it will not be the brightest point of light in the sky, this accolade will return to Sirius which is the brightest star in our night sky in the constellation of Canis Major. ... Seven days later on February 18, the Moon will be in its full Moon phase. ... Tweets that mention Wonders of the February Night Sky | ... Astronotes . ...

... Astrophysics Group . ... COAST . COAST Astronomical Results . ... Surface Imaging of Betelgeuse . ... This page highlights some astronomical results obtained with COAST over the years. These are listed in chronological order (most recent first). ... Measurements of cyclic variations in the angular diameter of Chi Cygni . ... The first infrared image from an aperture synthesis array . ... The images of Betelgeuse below were reconstructed from COAST data taken in early 2004. ...

... Data It is now clear that fuzzballs are actually galaxies. ... Using the automatic telescope, we measured the redshifts and brightnesses of a large number of fuzzballs in all regions of the sky. ... Correlation between brightness and redshift Redshifts and Brightnesses 0.005 0.004 0.003 0.002 0.001 0 -0.001 0 -0.002 -0.003 -0.004 -0.005 Redshift of Fuzzball 500 1000 1500 2000 Brightness of Fuzzball The brightnesses and redshifts of all the fuzzballs measured are shown in this graph. ...

... David P. Stern Laboratory for Extraterrestrial Physics NASA . ... Alfv?n's Theory and Electric Fields . ... The debate between proponents of a static corona, Parker's solar wind theory, and an alternative "solar breeze" theory of Chamberlai n [1960, 1961; Dessler 1967] was only settled by observations from space. ... Rapidly spreading plasma clouds produced by solar flares, like those envisioned by Chapman and Ferraro, are sometimes superposed on the solar wind flow. ...

... Namespaces . ... Files . ... casa . ... Typedefs | ... typedef long . Long . ... Definition at line 6 of file LatticeStatistics.h . ... typedef long casa::casa::FitsLong . ... typedef long long casa::casa::Int64 . ... typedef long double casa::casa::lDouble . ... typedef long casa::casa::Long . ... typedef unsigned long long casa::casa::uInt64 . ... typedef unsigned long casa::casa::uLong . ... All Classes Namespaces Files Functions Variables Typedefs Enumerations Enumerator Friends Defines . ...

... Answer: Stars live different lengths of time, depending on how massive they are. ... All stars age at different rates, depending on how massive they are at the start their lives. The stars in this photograph are part of an open star cluster called NGC 3293, containing around 50 stars that were all born around the same time. ... Each star in this cluster is much more massive than our own. ... This is a gigantic Red Giant star, around six and a half times larger than the Sun! ...

November 1-4, 1993 . ... On Nov 2 (b), strong evolution of the chain takes place during the LDE/CME event occurred in AR 7613 (see Figure 2 for details): new chain fragments are developed from the regions 1 and 2 eastward and westward respectively. (d)-(e) - Comparing the Nobeyama radio heliograms with the Yohkoh/SXT images, one can see that during three days the long-living chain between sources 1 and 2 coincides with a sharp SE boundary of the large coronal hole. ...

... The Sun has come all of one day away from breaking its record for the longest period of inactivity for the last decade - reaching a mid-summer low and falling into yet another state of "hibernation". Yesterday, on the first day of autumn, new sunspots appeared on the surface of the Sun following an absence of almost 50 days. ... The first low lasted 51 days, from 21 July until 11 September last year. ... Now, almost a year later, it seems the Sun has hit a new low almost as "deep" as the first. ...

... The awsome spectacle of a brilliant comet, with its long ghostly tail streaming behind it, is a rare event. ... Only one other comet, Comet Halley, was seen so far from the Sun, giving scientists an opportunity to watch it as it slowly warmed up and sprouted a tail. ... Comets are the Rip Van Winkles of the solar system -- mini-worlds that have changed little during their 4.5-billion-year nap far from the Sun. ... Observing Comets . ... Once, comets inhabited the entire solar system. ...

... dal (dal-1.182.1) [xmmsas_20080701_1801-8.0.0] . ... The FITS standard supports the notion of long strings. These are FITS keywords with string values which exceed 68 characters and are continued across several lines. The continuation is specified with the & character (at the end of each string value to be continued) followed by one or more lines beginning with the reserved keyword CONTINUE (followed by the contined string value). Long string values are handled transparently by the DAL. ...