The image at left shows the nearby Andromeda galaxy. The rectangular box marks the region probed by NASAтАЩs Hubble Space Telescope (a blend of visible and ultraviolet light). ... The bright area near the center of the image is a grouping of stars nestled around the galaxy's black hole. The blue dots sprinkled throughout the image are ultra-blue stars whose population increases around the crowded hub. The square box shows a close-up view of an area around the core. ...

... Monitoring a region around the center of our Galaxy, astronomers have indeed found evidence for a surprisingly large number.. ... NGC 7331 and Beyond . ... Spiral galaxy NGC 7331 is often touted as an analog to our own Milky Way. ... Explosions from White Dwarf Star RS Oph . ... The International Space Station on the Horizon . ... Last week, the STS-121 crew of the Space Shuttle Discovery undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) and returned to Earth. ... Mira: The Wonderful Star . ...

... WFPC2 Home . ... Bright stars near the WFPC2 field of view can cause various artifacts to appear in science images. ... When writing Phase II proposals, observers will sometimes attempt to avoid bright stars by placing them in the un-imaged "L" shaped region adjacent to CCD PC1, or in the region just outside the nominal field of view. ... In both cases the optics can image this light back onto the CCD's. Bright stars must be placed at least 10 arcseconds outside the field to avoid artifacts. ...

... Feeding the Monster: Gas Caught in its Death Spiral into a Massive Black Hole . ... Stromlo Professor Mike Dopita have used the Hubble Space Telescope to discover how a massive Black Hole in a nearby galaxy feeds itself. ... Earlier Hubble Telescope data obtained by another team member, Professor Holland Ford of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, had found a disk of gas rushing around the Black Hole at a speed of 500 kilometers a second. ...

... 2001 February 16 . Star Forming Region Hubble-X . ... Cataloged as Hubble-X , many skygazers find the appearance of this extragalactic star forming region reminiscent of the most famous stellar nursery in our own galaxy, the Orion Nebula . Hubble-X is intrinsically much brighter than Orion though, and at a distance of 1.6 million light-years it is about 1,000 times farther away. Hubble-X is also about 100 light-years across compared to 10 light-years for the Orion Nebula. ... About APOD | ...

... Resembling a gigantic hubcap in space, a 3,700 light-year-diameter dust disk encircles a 300 million solar-mass black hole in the center of the elliptical galaxy NGC 7052. ... Because the front end of the disk eclipses more stars than the back, it appears darker. ... Despite its size, the disk is 100 times less massive than the black hole. ... The bright spot in the center of the disk is the combined light of stars that have crowded around the black hole due to its strong gravitational pull. ...

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... R.A. = 00h55m04s.86, Decl. = -37 41'43".7 . ... Variable star in NGC 1511 . ... Variable star near Pegasus 2001bn IAUC 8624 BV anon 2001bh 7622 K star ugc11635 2001dh 7482 M star ic5374 1999db 7227 QSO anon 1999dc 7227 AGN anon 1999cx 7210 AGN anon 1999cu 7210 AGN anon 1999bs 7141 cat var ugc11093 1998di 6982 dwarf nova anon 1993U 5818 QSO anon 1993V 5818 QSO anon 1992W 5517 M star mcg 8-23-96 1992X 5517 M star mcg 6-32-24 1991ap 5327 QSO anon 1989Z 5162 var ngc4013 1985J 4059 CV ugc6274 ? ...

. True Color Image Gallery: Galactic SNR | Magellanic Cloud SNR . Images show regions used to extract spectra . Regions with red strikes are excluded . Background was subtracted from a region around or close to the SNR. Back to J0525.4-6559 Index . Chandra Supernova Remnant Catalog . Main Page | Galactic SNR | Magellanic Cloud SNR . True Color Image Gallery: Galactic SNR | Magellanic Cloud SNR .

... 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. ...

... Pluto's orbit is also highly inclined -- tilted 17 degrees to the orbital plane of the other planets. ... Ground-based observations indicate that Pluto's surface is covered with methane ice and that there is a thin atmosphere that might freeze and fall to the surface as the planet moves away from the Sun. ... This is the first image-based surface map of the solar system's most remote planet, Pluto. ... This is the first surface map of Charon, the moon of the solar system's most remote planet, Pluto....

... 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. ...