... Stars are born in big clouds of gas and dust in the Universe. ... This amazing new picture shows a small part of a cloud in our own galaxy (called the Milky Way) in which stars are being formed. In the picture you can see bright arc shapes in the cloud, but what created them is a mystery. ... When all of their fuel is gone, these massive stars explode in what is called a supernova explosion the biggest firework display in the Universe! ...

... Earth, Clouds, Sky, Comet . ... Does a comet's dust tail always orbit behind it? ... Hale-Bopp and Andromeda . ... Which is closer: the comet or the galaxy? ... Presently, for denizens of the Earth's northern hemisphere, this bright comet is certainly a lovely and inspiring sight -- visible here crowning the sky above Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy on March 20. ... Undaunted by the artificial glow from one of the most famous urban skylines on Earth, comet Hale-Bopp shines above the city of New York, USA. ...

... 2012 December 6 . 47 Tuc Near the Small Magellanic Cloud . ... Explanation: Globular star cluster 47 Tucanae is a jewel of the southern sky. ... The second brightest globular cluster (after Omega Centauri ) as seen from planet Earth, it lies about 13,000 light-years away and can be spotted naked-eye near the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) in the constellation of the Toucan . ... Globular cluster 47 Tuc is also home to exotic x-ray binary star systems. ... About APOD | ...

... Positive Start of the data set. fragments present at the centre of the region and negative ones scattered around. Two major negative fragments locate at both east and west sides of the positive ones. At the west, positive fragments touch the negative ones. ... 01:45 The BP becomes A few negative fragments emerge near the stronger and positive ones at the east and move toward bigger. them. At the west, positive fragments keep moving toward the negative ones and cancellation continues. ...

We report on recent observations of molecular clouds in the tidal Magellanic Bridge; specifically, the Ы?kpc-long, tidally extended "tail" of the Small Magellanic Cloud. In particular, we identify an unusually high 12CO(3-2)/12CO(1-0) ratio of 2-3 to 1, toward one of the clouds, suggesting a warm and dense molecular material associated with imminent or current formation of stars. ...

... Tonight's Sky . ... The Magazine . ... Observing . ... The double star 54 Leonis, spiral galaxy NGC 3198, and emission nebula NGC 3199 . ... Astronomy for Kids . ... Observing springtime deep-sky objects with a large telescope . ... Bright planets meet at dusk . ... Astronomy magazine subscribers can read the full article for free. ... Get instant access to subscriber content on Astronomy.com! ... Receive news, sky-event information, observing tips, and more from Astronomy's weekly email newsletter....

... ATNF Home . About ATNF . ... About ATNF overview . ... Governance overview . Australia Telescope Steering Committee . ... Australia Telescope User Committee . ... Our people overview . ... Publications overview . ... Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory . ... Parkes radio telescope . ... Mopra radio telescope . ... Visiting Parkes radio telescope . ... Parkes radio telescope webcam . ... This is a colour-composite image of E0102-72.3 - a supernova remnant in the Small Magellanic Cloud. ...

... Bad Astronomy . ... Bitesize Astronomy . ... Keep Bad Astronomy close to your heart, and help make me filthy rich. ... It's semi-common knowledge that stars twinkle and planets don't. By semi-common, I mean that a lot of folks know that, but I also mean it isn't strictly true. Stars twinkle because we see them from the bottom of a sea of air. ... These small bundles of air act like little lenses, bending light as it passes through them. ... What we see is the light from the star flickering. ...

GALAXIES cenA .tiff 40 Bright Radio Galaxy M31.tiff Nikon Andromeda Galaxy (note HII regions in spiral arms) ngc6744.tiff 40 NGC 6744 a face-on spiral clouds_20d.tiff H'blad The Magellanic Clouds our nearest neighbours Lmc_7.tiff Nikon The Large Magellanic Clouds Lmc_zoom.tiff Nikon Detail of previous image smc_7.tiff Nikon The Small Magellanic Clouds smc-zoom.tiff Nikon Detail of previous image 30dor_40_BVR.tiff 40 The 30 Dor ... B [OIII] Halpha trifid.tiff 40" The Trifid Nebula. ...

... Planets . ... Earth Satellites . ... The newly discovered ?mega-Earth? ... Its sibling, the lava world Kepler-10b, is in the background (the two planets? proximity is grossly exaggerated) .€а Kepler-10c has a diameter of about 29 000 km, 2.3 times as large as Earth, and weighs 17 times as much. ... The first mega-earth to be discovered is Kepler-10c which orbits a star lying about 560 light years from the Sun in the constellation Draco. ... Astronomers Find a New Type of Planet: The ?Mega-Earth? ...

Supernova 2000cm in FGC 1384 This page is devoted to information on Supernova 2000cm in FGC 1384 Basic information on this SN, including the last reported brightness, on this Supernova can be found on the main page . Information on the original web pages for many of these images can be found on the Supernova links web page. ... Web pages dedicated to this SN. ... VSNET Light curve (requires JAVA). ... vsnet-alert 4944 ] SN 2000cm in FGC 1384 . ... Back to Bright Supernovae - 2000 . ...

... Baffled, you turn to the waiter. ... The waiter smiles. ... Some prefer small stars while others insist that the larger they are the better they are. ... Of course," he adds, sensing your concern, "you are the guest of Chez Stella. ... Immediately you hear the "tock... tock... tock" of the stopwatch, and you gaze deep into the distant star. ... You hadn't noticed before, but it is giving off vast symmetric clouds of what looks like smoke or dust hanging in the space around the beautiful star. ...

... The explosion of a star as a Supernova is certainly one of the most energetic events observable in the whole universe, and their radiation covers the whole band from radio to gamma-rays, accompanied with neutrino emission. ... Type Ia SNe are supposed to result from mass transfer inside a binary system consisting of a white dwarf star and an evolving giant star, which results in a termonuclear explosion. ... Core-collapse Supernovae . ... For comments please contact: gcresci@arcetri.astro.it . ...

. 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 SNR J0509.0-6843 Index . Chandra Supernova Remnant Catalog . Main Page | Galactic SNR | Magellanic Cloud SNR . True Color Image Gallery: Galactic SNR | Magellanic Cloud SNR .

Halo around the Moon. Halo arises when the light beams refracted on the high clouds icy chips ina form of a six side prism. As a result we see a small halo circle with a 22°-radius. The big circle is formed by the beams paased through the side edge and the base of prismochips. Its radius is equal to 46° (nearly). The big circle is observed rarely and is shining weaker but it is easier to observe it near the Sun, if comparing with the small halo invisible in the bright Sun light. ...

... Impact craters and associated concentric rings are about the only features to be found on Callisto. ... It has a bright central region that is 600 kilometers in diameter, and its rings extend to 3000 kilometers in diameter. ... This image shows the heavily cratered surface of Callisto. ... Also visible is a fresh, sharp-rimmed crater some 90 km (56 miles) across named Igaluk (center left third of picture), and a bright zone in the south polar area (bottom of image) which could be an impact scar. ...

... Deriving sines cosines . ... Let the sides of the triangle be named ( a,b,c ), each matching the name of the angle across from it. ... a / c = sin A -- "the sine (or sinus) of A" . ... This statement is usually written with the square written sin 2 A (not sinA 2 , which might be taken to mean the sine of an angle equal to A 2 ): . ... The length of side a then approaches that of c , while the length of b becomes very small: therefore as A approaches 90њ, sinA approaches 1 and cosA approaches zero. ...

... 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. ...

The Poor Man O poor man, O poor man come tell unto me true; How you maintain your family and how you carry them through; How you maintain your family when most of them are small, And nothing but your labour to maintain then all. ... Early in the morning, l'm always of good cheer, With a flail in my hand and a bottle of good beer; A flail in my hand and a bottle of good beer, I live as happy as those worth ten thousand a year. ...

... We also take care to characterise the flat fields, especially their colour dependence, to very high precision which enables high precision photometry even without autoguiding. ... The Blue Diamond Effect The blue diamond effect is caused by surface imperfections on the silicon chip introduced during manufacture, resulting in a repeated large scale pattern in the flat field at blue wavelengths. ... We can remove the blue diamond by using a colour appropriate flat field produced in the lab. ...