... Today this year's largest group of sunspots will cross the Sun's central meridian. ... The next day, the number of spots in the group reached five, and the day after, on June 2nd, it was possible to count thirteen sunspots on solar disk, which had been clear prior to this. ... This year's two most powerful active areas, which passed across the solar disk at the beginning of May, 2009, are set to appear in the Sun's eastern sector in two days, on June 6th. ...

... There has been a heated public discussion in the past few years about whether our ninth planet is really deserving of the name. Since Pluto orbits a star, and is much less luminous, it certainly satisfies the definition we have above. The problem is actually not with Pluto, but with a very large number of other bodies in our Solar System which also satisfy this definition, but which are not called planets. Perhaps the most notable of these is Ceres, the largest asteroid. ... Planet . ...

... Planets . ... The planets were found using the HARPS instrument on the 3.6m telescope at ESOтАЩs La Silla Observatory. ... A planet in orbit around a star causes the star to regularly move towards and away from observers on Earth. ... One newly discovered planet, HD 85512 b, is best hope found so far for a habitable exoplanet. ... The HARPS team so far have found that about 40% of stars similar to own Sun have at least one planet smaller than Saturn (which is 95 times more massive than Earth). ...

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 Unit Telescopes Overview - This page is outdated, an update is in process.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 Secondary mirror (M2 Unit) - This page is outdated, an update is in process.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 Coating Unit - This page is outdated, an update is in process.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

... Bad Astronomy . ... Bitesize Astronomy . ... Ceres, the largest asteroid in the solar system is about 900 kilometers in diameter. ... How many asteroids do you think there are larger than 100 meters across (0.1 kilometers)? ... Using the numbers he supplied, I calculated how many asteroids there are larger than 100 meters in diameter. ... A billion asteroids 100 meters across would occupy the same space as a single asteroid with a radius of the cube root of one billion times 100 meters. ...

... Galactic or open star clusters are young. These swarms of stars are born together near the plane of the Milky Way, but their numbers steadily dwindle as cluster members are ejected by galactic tides and gravitational interactions. ... One Armed Spiral Galaxy NGC 4725 . ... What would it look like to fly through a total eclipse of the Sun? ... Shadows play on the water and in the sky in this panoramic view of the April 4 total lunar eclipse over San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. ... April 2016 . ...

... Behemoth black hole found in an unlikely place . ... black holes . ... Observing springtime deep-sky objects with a large telescope . ... Could large numbers of black holes account for much of the "dark matter" estimated to exist in our universe? ... NASA, ESA, M.J. Jee and H. Ford (Johns Hopkins University) No, because the universe never had the raw material to grow enough black holes to account for current estimates of dark matter. Get instant access to subscriber content on Astronomy.com! ...

N-BODY SIMULATIONS OF PLANET FORMATION: VARYING THE NUMBER OF PLANETARY EMBRYOS J.E. CHAMBERS Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh, Northern Ireland, BT61 9DG, UK. ... These gained mass until they became large enough to gravitationally per- turb other objects in the nebula. ... Their simulations started with a few tens of planetary embryos, moving on circular nearly-coplanar orbits in the region now occupied by the terrestrial planets. ... Rev. Earth Planet. ... 4 J.E. CHAMBERS Figure 2. ...

... Abstract Return the value of the largest (positive) number representable in a double precision variable. Required_Reading None. Brief_I/O The function returns the value of the largest (positive) number that can be represented in a double precision variable. Detailed_Input None. Detailed_Output The function returns the value of the largest (positive) number that can be represented in a double precision variable. ... 2) Initialize a CSPICE "window." ... Link to routine source . ...

... casa::Primes . ... Creates a reference table of prime numbers, and some functions. ... This function returns the closest integer larger than number from the table of primes. static uInt . ... If there is no entry in the table of primes which is larger than number, a zero is returned. static Block < uInt > casa::Primes::cachedPrimes . ... This function finds the next largest prime than number, returns that value and stores it in the table of primes. static uInt casa::Primes::smallestPrimeFactor . ...