... 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. ...

Astronomy Picture of the Day . ... Credit: Tunc Tezel Explanation: Why would Mars appear to move backwards? Most of the time, the apparent motion of Mars in Earth's sky is in one direction, slow but steady in front of the far distant stars. ... During the most recent such pass in August, Mars loomed particularly large and bright . Also during this time, Mars appeared to move backwards in the sky, a phenomenon called retrograde motion . ... Publications with keywords: Mars - retrograde motion . ...

... i.e., the interaction of light (generally from the sun or moon) with stuff in the air: molecules, water: ice and drops; crud; smoke.. ... Ice crystals: halos, sun pillars: the whiteness and brightness of snow . ... What to look for: common halos; coloured and white structures; symmetry and asymmetry . ... How crystals float in the air; the specific orientations mean that some halos change shape and position as the sun changes altitude . ... What do halos look like and how do we recognise them? ...

... 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. ...

... February 4, 1998 . A Passing Spaceship Views Earth . Credit: NEAR Spacecraft Team , JHUAPL , NASA . Explanation: This is how Earth appeared to the passing spacecraft NEAR. The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft was launched from Florida, USA, planet Earth in 1996. After a quick flyby of asteroid Mathilde in June last year, NEAR passed the Earth two weeks ago on its way to asteroid 433 Eros. ... About APOD > . ... NASA Technical Rep.: ...

... Thin Line. I thought the time had passed when I could find beauty in the words I set the stage and the scenery, rehearsing every word Ch: But when I try to make it more, well, it was always less It's a thin line between pleasing yourself and pleasing somebody else So with my confidence on fire, I set to fixing up my role Separation of desires, it led me deeper down in the hole Ch (x2) Now I'm trying to get back to what I know that I should be Hoping to God that I was just a temporary absentee. ...

... Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG, +44 (0)28 3752 2928 . ... The Perseid meteor shower, which this year peaked around midnight on the evening of August 12th, will continue at a low rate until around August 24th. ... Video clips in AVI and mp4 formats of some of the brightest Perseid meteors detected by the ObservatoryтАЩs cameras together with an image illustrating the parallel tracks in space of the Perseid meteors detected at Armagh can be found here . ...

... Tonight's Sky . ... Observing . ... Sky this Month . ... Astronomy for Kids . ... Can you explain Mercury's retrograde motion? Do other planets appear to do this also? ... When astronomers talk about retrograde motion, generally they refer to the apparent motion outer planets make as Earth passes them while orbiting the Sun. ... Get instant access to subscriber content on Astronomy.com! ... Receive news, sky-event information, observing tips, and more from Astronomy's weekly email newsletter. ...

... STScI-PRC00-34 A BIRD'S EYE VIEW OF A GALAXY COLLISION What appears as a bird's head, leaning over to snatch up a tasty meal, is a striking example of a galaxy collision in NGC 6745. ... However, the situation is quite different for the interstellar media in the above two galaxies - material consisting largely of clouds of atomic and molecular gases and of tiny particles of matter and dust, strongly coupled to the gas. ... The hot blue stars in this image are evidence of this star formation. ...

... Whenever Flint finds a call to a subroutine, or the source of a subroutine, it attempts to determine whether a subroutine argument is either input or output (this is called an arguments intent). ... Note that Flint expects an argument's intent to be either input or output or input/output. ... Usually Flint determines argument intents by other means than just allowing information to bubble up from the lowest level to the higher level routines. ...

... The awsome spectacle of a brilliant comet, with its long ghostly tail streaming behind it, is a rare event. ... Only one other comet, Comet Halley, was seen so far from the Sun, giving scientists an opportunity to watch it as it slowly warmed up and sprouted a tail. ... Comets are the Rip Van Winkles of the solar system -- mini-worlds that have changed little during their 4.5-billion-year nap far from the Sun. ... Observing Comets . ... Once, comets inhabited the entire solar system. ...

... The WFPC2 CCDs have a small b ut significant charge transfer efficiency (CTE) problem which causes some signal to be lost when charge is transferred down the chip during readout. This has the effect of making objects at higher row numbers (more charge transfers) appear fainter than they would if they were at low row numbers. The effect depends on the temperature of the CCDs. ... It is also possible that proportional losses for fainter stars, at least with no background, may be larger. ...

... Bojan Nikolic web pages (r. 329) . ... The order in which libraries to link to are passed to the linker is important . ... Many libraries use the GNU Autoconf/Automake build toolchain. ... Run the ./configure script, which looks for the various programs and libraries that the package needs . ... The simplest way is to run ./configure and make note of any complaints about missing programs or libraries that it reports. ... Some notes on the GNU toolchain . ... Passing options to configure . ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Space Flight . ... Earth Satellites . ... Leonid meteors seen from 13 km altitude aboard an aircraft during the 1999 Leonids Multi-Instrument Aircraft Campaign (Leonid-MAC). Comet Tempel-Tuttle provides the cometary debris for the Leonid meteor shower. ... Every 17-19 November Earth crosses Tempel-TuttleтАЩs orbit and the Leonids become visible. With clear, dark skies observers may see 10 to 15 Leonid meteors every hour on those mornings. ...

Vega Stamps . International project VEGA was managed by Space Research Institute (IKI) . ... VEGA-1 and VEGA-2 spacecraft were developed by Babakin Space Center and fabricated by Lavochkin Association in Khimki, Moscow region. ... VEGA-1 and VEGA-2 have been the part of the international fleet to Halley's comet, that also included Giotto mission of European Space Agency (ESA) and Sakigake and Suisei by Institute of Space and Aeronautical Science (ISAS) of Japan. ... Vega 1 . ...

... The obtained results lead to the following conclusions: a) the heavy element enrichment had taken place in the Galaxy in a few bursts of its activity rether than in a continuons manner; b) these bursts occured during the callapse of the early Galaxy; c) the star formation had been inhibited in the time of the bursts; d) the metal enrichment did not proceed in the periods of star formation, between these bursts of activity. ...

To pass several arguments from the command line to the shell: cat first_5args # This script echoes the first five arguments # supplied to the script echo The first five command line echo arguments are $1 $2 $3 $4 $5 first_5args mines a pint john o.k. The first five command line arguments are mines a pint john o.k. This passes the arguments represented by parameters $1 through $5 to the shell script. ... This processes the three files given as arguments to the command printps . ...

... The 430 carriage house transmitter was used on two dates to measure the temperatures while the swarm a,b satellite flew through the beam: . tle computation used: . ... 2014.03.22 20:21:50 (utc) . ... compute power for each height sample dynamic spectra of overpass (.gif) . ... vertical scale (time hours utc) 1 second resolution (i averaged 100 ipps together after computing power) . ... I used the predict program (and some idl software) to plot the satellite pass around 8:00 utc on 26mar14 . ...

. The comet Gallea. The comet's core . Gallea is a historical comet. There were 30 approachings to the Sun from the 240 B.C. Returns every 75 - 76 years. In 1986 five space ships met the comet. "Vega-1", "Vega-2" (USSR), "Jotto", "Suisen" and "Sekigake (Japan). The "Vega" spaceships passed the comet's haed in 8000 km from the core, "Jotto" - 600 km. The solid core was registered (16*18 km). The next time this comet will appear in 2061 . Back .

... Ciel Espace, le magazine qui vous guide toujours plus loin . ... Ciel Espace, nouvelle formule, c'est . ... des pages consacr†йes †а la publication de vos photos Mais c'est aussi une vraie communaut†й avec laquelle partager votre passion et nourrir votre curiosit†й. Accueil Le monde entier regarde V†йnus passer devant le Soleil . ... Hier soir, †а New York, les curieux scrutaient le ciel dans l'espoir qu'une †йclaircie leur laisse entrevoir V†йnus devant le Soleil. ... Transit et Soleil de minuit . ...