... 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? ...

... Astronomers have found a planet the size of Earth just outside of our Solar System, orbiting around our nearest star! ... More than 800 planets have now been found outside our Solar System, we call them 'exo-planets . ... While the newly discovered exo-planet is similar to the Earth in size, it is much closer to its star than our planet. ... A year on the exo-planet would be just three days long (this is how long it takes the planet to complete one orbit of its star). ...

... Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG, +44 (0)28 3752 2928 . Asteroid 2010 SO16 and the Earth follow similar orbits around . the Sun. ... out a horseshoe shape in space, taking 175 years to go from . ... Asteroid 2010 SO16 takes 175 years to make the trip from one end of the horseshoe to the other. ... Currently, three other horseshoe companions of the Earth are known to exist but, unlike 2010 SO16, these linger for a few thousand years at most before moving on to different orbits. ...

... 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. ...

... 2005 August 8 . Mars to Appear Normal This August . ... Regardless of numerous urban legends circulating, Mars will appear relatively normal in August. October is the best month to see Mars this year. ... As Earth catches up to Mars in their respective orbits around the Sun, Mars will keep rising earlier in the night. On 2005 October 30, Earth will have caught up to Mars and the planets will be the nearest to each other in their orbits -- this time around. ... About APOD | ...

... Credit: Greg Bacon ( STScI ), NASA Explanation: The last decade saw the profound discovery of many worlds beyond our solar system, but none analogs of our home planet Earth . Exploiting precise observational techniques, astronomers inferred the presence of well over two dozen extrasolar planets , most nearly as massive as gas giant Jupiter or more, in close orbits around sun-like stars. ... Publications with keywords: extrasolar planet - planet - Saturn - planetary system . ... Crescent Saturn . ...

My research efforts have focused on three areas which are: . More than 200 extrasolar planets have been discovered around relatively nearby stars, primarily through the Doppler line shifts owing to the reflex motions of their host stars, and more recently through transits of some planets across the face of the host stars. ... Gravitational microlensing provides a novel technique to look for planets around lens stars, and this is the only technique currently capable of detecting Earth-mass planets. ...

... When the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew by the planet Uranus in January 1986, astronomers were treated to their first close-up glimpse of the satellites that orbit the seventh planet. ... But by far the most intriguing of those 15 satellites was a jigsaw-puzzle world called Miranda . ... How dark was it at Miranda? One of the Voyager scientists put it this way: Taking pictures in the Uranus system is like trying to do photography in a ballpark at night when the only light comes from a single candle. ...

Naiad . Neptune III - 1989N6 . Naiad, the last satellite discovered, is about 54 kilometers (33 miles) in diameter and orbits Neptune every 7 hours and 6 minutes about 23,200 kilometers (14,400 miles) above the clouds. ... Naiad circles the planet in the same direction as Neptune rotates, and remains close to Neptune's equatorial plane. ... Discovered by . ... Mean density (gm/cm^3) . Mean distance from Neptune (km) . ... Rotational period (days) . Orbital period (days) . ...

... 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 apparent path of the Sun across the sky. ... Like the planets, the Sun, too, moves around the zodiac, making one complete circuit each year. ... In one year, as the Earth completes a full circuit around the Sun (drawing above), the Earth-Sun line and its continuation past Earth sweep the entire plane. ... Since the Sun and Earth are in the plane of the ecliptic, the line is automatically in that plane too; if the moon is also on the same line, it must be in the plane of the ecliptic as well. ...

A team of U.S. and German astrophysicists have made the first ever detection of X-rays coming from a comet. ... Following the initial detection, the team reported repeated X-ray emissions from the comet over the next 24 hours. ... One preliminary theory is that X-ray emission from the Sun was absorbed by a cloud of gaseous water molecules surrounding the nucleus of the comet, and then were re-emitted by the molecules in a process physicists call "fluorescence." ... Comets . ...

The basic problems of the Laboratory are connected with researches of dynamics of minor planets and comets. ... THE ORBIT IMPROVEMENT of minor planets from optical and radar observations, . the utilization of minor planet observations for THE DETERMINATION OF ORIENTATION OF STAR CATALOGUES and DETERMINATION OF MASSES OF MINOR PLANETS BY DYNAMICAL METHOD, . THE ESTIMATION OF COLLISION PROBABILITY of minor planets with other bodies and with each other, . ...

... The study of extra solar planets will be one of the most important areas of research in astronomy in this century. ... The first planets outside the solar system were found in 1992 around the millisecond pulsar PSR B1257+12 by Alex Wolszczan at the Arecibo Observatory . ... Three space missions based on this principle (MOST, COROT and Kepler ) have already been launched or approved, and have the last one at least has the potential to find Earth-sized planets. ... SIM ( NASA ) is one of such missions...

The lost world: Pluto and Haron. Pluto . ... Mass . ... The period of rotation . ... Pluto is the ninth from the Sun big planet of the solar system. ... The careful processing of the snapshots with the images of the star sky parts, where the new planet was thought to be found was not successful at that time (later on when Pluto had been discovered the snapshots of 1991 were processed again and there were the four very weak and invisible earlier imeges of the planet seen). ...

... Search . ... Astrophysics Group . Research . ... Research and Instrumentation . ... While this seems an extraordinary endeavour, in light of what we have learnt about Solar System planets, only a handful of key ingredients are required to start characterising an exoplanet. ... The NGTS project is a partnership between the University of Cambridge, Queen?s University Belfast, University of Warwick, University of Leicester, Observatoire de Geneve, DLR (Berlin) and Universidad Catolica de Chile. ...

This artistтАЩs impression shows the formation of a gas giant planet in the ring of dust around the young star HD 100546. This system is also suspected to contain another large planet orbiting closer to the star. ... This protoplanet is surrounded by a thick cloud of material so that, seen from this position, its star almost invisible and red in color because of the scattering of light from the dust. ESO/L. Cal†зada ...

This service is intended as an aid to visually observing close-approaching asteroids. ... By clicking on the column headers for "Object Name", "Maximum Brightness", and "Maximum Angular Speed", you can sort the list by those fields. ... When This is the predicted time when the asteroid will be closest to the Earth. ... This field shows red if an asteroid comes as close as the moon. ... PHA (Potentially Hazardous Asteroid) This does NOT mean that this is going to hit 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. ...

... A rough estimation is that in the United States there is one planetarium per 100,000 population, ranging in size from the Hayden Planetarium's 20-meter dome seating 430 people, to three-meter inflatable portable domes where children sit on the floor. ... Together dblo associates make a huge impact in the architecture, interior design and development arena in London. ... With the holidays around the corner what better way to spoil your family than with your very own private home cinema. ...