... More on 51 Peg: . The discovery of a Jupiter--mass planet in orbit around the solar--type star 51Peg has been reported by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz (Geneva Observatory) on October 6th at the 9th Cambridge workshop on "cool stars, stellar systems, and the sun" held at Florence (Italy). ... Recall that the measurements of radial velocity only yield v sin i which in turn gives us M sin i. For most values of i, sin i will be greater than 0.5 and this gives a mass estimate of 0.5 Jupiter masses. ...

... Bad Astronomy . ... Bitesize Astronomy . ... The Nine Planets . ... It isn't the first extrasolar planetary system to be discovered; the first planet outside our own solar system orbiting a normal Sunlike star was discovered in 1995. ... Still, this is the first solar system ever found besides our own to definitely have more than one planet. This is an important discovery: most people all along have been assuming that multiple planet systems exist, but we had never actually seen one. ...

Astronomy Picture of the Day . Mercury: Closest Planet to the Sun . ... Credit Copyright: NASA , Mariner 10 Explanation: This picture was compiled from images taken by the NASA spacecraft Mariner 10 which flew by the planet three times in 1974. ... Mercury rotates so slowly that one day there - "day" meaning the normal time it takes from sunset to sunset - lasts 176 days on Earth . ... U. Based on Astronomy Picture Of the Day . Publications with keywords: Mercury . ... MESSENGER s First Day . ...

NASA Press Release Text - June 24, 1996 GALILEO READY FOR CLOSE FLYBY OF JUPITER'S BIGGEST MOON Now residing in orbit around Jupiter, NASA's Galileo spacecraft is primed for its first close flyby of Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, at 2:29 a.m. EDT on June 27, 1996. ... In the days just before and after the Ganymede flyby, Galileo's other studies will include a search for auroral activity on Jupiter's nightside and observations of other Jovian moons: Io, Europa and Callisto. ...

... 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. ...

Venus under the clouds. ... Venus is the second from the Sun and the nearest to the Earth planet of solar system. ... As for Venus, it has the densest atmosphere, the smallest rotation around the axis and the least eccentricity of the orbit Venus is the only planet whose own rotation is opposite it’s rotation around the Sun. ... The radiolocation survey of Venus by the soviet station "Venera - 15" and "Venera - 16" brought out in 1984 in the planets satellite`s orbit shoued the tarces of long walls. ...

... The discovery of giant Jupiter-type planets in a close proximity to 51 Peg, Boo, and And has prompted the question of where the planets could be formed in the circumstellar disks of solar-type stars. ... Planet formation, at distance of ~0.05 AU from the star, requires that the temperature of the circumstellar protoplanetary disk is low enough for the condensation of rocky materials, and the surface density is sufficiently high. ...

Astropark Home . Solar System . ... The first part of the Astropark that most people see represents our own Solar System. The Sun and the nine main planets are laid out here, so that you can compare their distances and sizes. ... The Sun - the closest star to Earth, represented by a giant archway at the same scale as the planets beyond. ... They move in orbits around the Sun, also marked out in the Astropark. ... Comets - ghostly and occasional visitors to the inner Solar System. ... Sun . ...

I was wondering what conditions should be met to have the "darkest" sky .. ... Upon the above publication of the Southern Galactic hemisphere, TunГ Tezel started seeking opportunities to create the Northern counterpart image. ... So, the initial quest of having the darkest possible sky have delivered us these two all-sky images of the two galactic hemispheres as seen from Planet Earth. Zoomable and 'full-screenable' fisheye view of the "darkest sky" Southern Galactic Hemisphere image. ...

... ATNF Home . About ATNF . ... About ATNF overview . ... Australia Telescope Steering Committee . ... Australia Telescope User Committee . ... Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory . ... Parkes radio telescope . Australia Telescope Compact Array . Mopra radio telescope . ... Australia Telescope Online Archive (ATOA) . ... ATCA | ... Australia Telescope 20GHz Survey . ... Visiting Parkes radio telescope . Visiting Australia Telescope Compact Array . ... Parkes radio telescope webcam . ...

... STScI-PRC99-27 A CLOSER ENCOUNTER WITH MARS Taking advantage of Mars's closest approach to Earth in eight years, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have taken the space-based observatory's sharpest views yet of the Red Planet. ... In these views the north polar cap is tilted toward the Earth and is visible prominently at the top of each picture. ... Dark sand dunes that surround the polar cap merge into a large, dark region called Acidalia. ...

With this knowledge of orbits, we are ready to plan a trip to Mars. ... The spacecraft will already have the 107,000 kilometers per hour (66,500 miles per hour) speed of Earth, whereas Mars moves at only 86,900 kilometers per hour (53,900 miles per hour). ... A speed of about 42,000 kilometers per hour will be enough to escape the Earth's gravity and, when added to the Earth's orbital speed around the Sun, put the spacecraft on a Hohmann transfer orbit to the Red Planet. ... 1,570,000 . ... Earth . ...

... Spacecraft . ... To space by cannon? Finally, the deep space explorers --spacecraft which break away from the Earth's gravity . ... The "Luna" series of the USSR conducted 7 soft landing of unmanned probes, two of them with wheeled robotic "Lunokhods," and two of those missions returned samples to Earth. Others spacecraft have visited the major planets of the Solar system. ... The Mariner series have explored Venus and Mars--and Mariner 10 even reached Mercury, for three separate encounters! ...

... With enough velocity, a spacecraft can break loose from the Earth's gravity and enter an orbit around the Sun, like that of a planet. If it then orbits the Sun with the same period as the Earth--one year--it may keep a fixed position relative to Earth. ... If the distance is just right--about 4 times the distance to the Moon or 1/100 the distance to the Sun--the spacecraft, too, will need just one year to go around the Sun, and will keep its position between the Sun and the Earth. ...

... Five years ago, the giant radio telescopes in outback West Australia detected radio signals, apparently coming from a planet orbiting the obscure star HD666123, in the constellation Carina. ... The "Dot" HD666123 The radio signals are coming from the dot of light marked in the above (negative) telescope image, which was taken at a wavelength of 500nm. ... The "Planet" 360 AU HD666123 You've been tracking the dot, from which the radio waves are coming, for four days now. and it appears to be moving. ...

The stability of planetary systems after stellar mass loss : Prospects for White Dwarf planets and pollution Alexander James Mustill1*, Dimitri Veras2, Eva Villaver3, Amy Bonsor4, Boris GДnsicke2, Mark Wyatt 1 2 5 Lund Observatory ... 1TL, United Kingdom 5 Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, Madingley Road, CB3 9ET, UK *alex@astro.lu.se Stars lose mass as they evolve to become white dwarfs ( WDs ), and this mass loss can induce ...

The exoplanet Corot-7b is so close to its Sun-like host star that it must experience extreme conditions. This planet has a mass five times that of Earth s and is in fact the closest known exoplanet to its host star, which also makes it the fastest. The probable temperature on its day-face is above 2000 degrees, but 200 on its night face. Theoretical models suggest that the planet may have lava or boiling oceans on its surface. ... ESO/L. Calcada ...

In ancient times the solar system was thought to be the whole Universe, so the study of planetary motions was cosmology. ... The planets other than the Moon and Sun generally move West to East through the stars, but occasionally stop and move in the opposite direction ( retrograde motion). In order to explain the retrograde motion of the planets, the geocentric model of the Solar System shown above puts the planets on small circles called epicycles . ...

... This year's eclipse is unique in duration. ... Although, at the present time, there are 6 solar observatories belonging to leading space agencies in orbit around the Earth, the eclipse of 22 July, 2009, will only be seen by two of them: the Russian CORONAS-PHOTON satellite equipped with TESIS telescopes and Japan's HINODE satellite fitted with an XRT space telescope. ... TESIS will be the first of the two devices (and the very first on Earth) to witness the solar eclipse. ...

Observational Stellar Astronomy . Articles | ... We are made of star stuff" . ... TEMPERATURE OF A STAR: . ... The temperature of a star can be found out easily by simple observations. ... STAR . ... SPECTRAL CLASS: . All the stars in this universe are divided in to spectral classes based on their spectral lines. ... The spectral class of a star and the temperature of a star are related. So the spectral class can be found for a star since we know its temperature. ... www.astronomy.net . ...