... 22c. Flight (1) . ... 24a.The Rotating Earth . ... Assuming our rocket and spaceship are provided--how should they be aimed, and how long would the flight take? As an approximation assume that the orbits of Earth and Mars are both circles in the same plane, centered on the Sun. ... That is an ellipse with perihelion P (point closest to the Sun) at the orbit of Earth and aphelion A (point most distant from the Sun) at the orbit of Mars (drawing). ... The length PA of that ellipse is, in AU, . ...

... 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. ...

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 . ...

... 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? ...

... Analysis of in-orbit data closely follow the CSL data analysis. Stars with known astrometric positions are matched with their image centroids. ... The measured position, the expected position and the offset between the measured and expected positions are calculated and written into a file. ... select catalogued positions for different observations/pointings (e.g. positions of objects in photometric sequence) . ... The new distortion map was generated from in-flight observations of the G153 field. ...

... Retrograde Mars . ... 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. About every two years, however, the Earth passes Mars as they orbit around the Sun. ... Sunspots and Solar Eclipse . ... A New Moon joined giant sunspot group AR 2192 to dim the bright solar disk during Thursday's much anticipated partial solar eclipse. ... AR 2192: Giant on the Sun . ... Comet Siding Spring Passes Mars . ...

... 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. ...

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. ...

... Tonight's Sky . ... The Magazine . ... Observing . ... Magazine . ... The double star 54 Leonis, spiral galaxy NGC 3198, and emission nebula NGC 3199 . ... Astronomy for Kids . ... Sky Events . ... Observing springtime deep-sky objects with a large telescope . ... How close does Pluto's orbit come to Neptune? ... Get instant access to subscriber content on Astronomy.com! ... Receive news, sky-event information, observing tips, and more from Astronomy's weekly email newsletter. ... Astronomy Magazine...

... These trajectories have an initial flight from the Earth to a large distance (of about 1.5 million km), the following passive flight to the Moon's orbit, an approach to the Moon with a decrease of an energy of a particle (spacecraft) selenocentric motion to a negative value and the temporary capture in an elliptic orbit of the Moon's satellite. ... Several trajectories of this type are determined. ... Ivashkin V. V. On optimal trajectories of space flight to the Moon in the Earth--Moon--Sun system. ...

... The force F of gravity between two objects of mass m and M, whose centres are a distance r apart, is given by Newton's famous equation: [pic], where G = 6.67(10-11 N m2 kg-2, and F is measured in Newtons. So, the force in orbit Fo is weaker than the force on the Earth's surface F0 by the ratio: [pic] where the radius of the Earth is 6,400 km, and the orbit is 1000 km above the Earth's surface. ... Energy Considerations Another way to see all this is to consider the energy of an object in orbit. ...

Phoebe . Saturn IX . Phoebe [FEE-bee] is the last of the known satellites of Saturn, at a distance of 12.952 million kilometers (8 million miles). Phoebe orbits Saturn in a retrograde direction (opposite to the direction of the other satellites' orbits) in a plane much closer to the ecliptic than to Saturn's equatorial plane. ... Scientists believe that Phoebe may be a captured asteroid with a composition unmodified since the time it was formed in the outer Solar System . ...

... 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. ...

Has the LMC Had Close Encounters With Other Satellite Galaxies? ... integrate backwards in a Galactic potential (NFW) · Monte Carlo by drawing velocities from distributions given by uncertainties LMC ­ SMC: LMC - SMC · Carina, Draco , Fornax, and Ursa Minor never get closer to the LMC than ~60 kpc · Carina, Draco , Fornax, and Ursa Minor never get closer to the LMC than ~60 kpc · Sculptor was ~33 kpc away ~ 0.1 Gyr ago LMC - Scl · Carina, ...

... 09jun15: rfi measured in screen room . 12jun15: rfi measures in turret room. opening closing lo cabinet doors with anritsu on,off . The anritsu mg3692c is a 10MHz to 20Ghz synthesizer that was purchased to replace the hp83712 20GHz synthesizer used as the upstairs first lo. ... the spectra on page 2 show a 2.5 MHz probe. the transform of the spectra shows peaks at multiples of .4 usec (1/2.5 mhz) . ... We see a 2.5 MHz comb (with 20kHz sidelobes) coming from the lcd screen of the anritsu . ...

... Solar System . ... European astronomers have discovered a planet with about the mass of the Earth orbiting a star in the Alpha Centauri system тАФ the nearest to Earth. ... Alpha Centauri is one of the brightest stars in the southern skies and is the nearest stellar system to our Solar System тАФ only 4.3 light-years away. ... The European team detected the planet by picking up the tiny wobbles in the motion of the star Alpha Centauri B created by the gravitational pull of the orbiting planet [2] . ...

... 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 deflection of light induced by the Sun gravity field and measured with geodetic VLBI (1) Titov O., (2)Girdiuk A. (1) Geoscience Australia, Australia; (2) Institute of Applied Astronomy RAS, Russia The Sun's gravitational field deflects positions of close objects in accordance with the formulae of general relativity. ... The geodetic VLBI technique is capable to measure the deflection of the light from distant radio sources anytime and around the whole sky. ...

Note: you can click on a picture to see it enlarged ...you float into the ODS (Orbite Docking System) from Shuttle's airlock through tunnel extension ( also serves as EVA airlock ). The tunnel leads further to the Shuttle's back where Spacelab is placed. ... You move upwards.....and see a closed hatch. It's time to open it! Yet another closed hatch - but it's not the Shuttle's, it belongs to the Russian space station Mir. Open it - and you are in the Mir's docking module . ...

... STIS . ... In a space environment, CCD detectors accumulate radiation damage, which over time leads to increasing dark current, more hot pixels, and reduced charge transfer efficiency. After twelve years on orbit, the effects of such radiation damage on the STIS CCD have become substantial. ... Since in a CCD, charge must be transferred many times before reaching the readout register, even a small decrease in CTE can have a large effect on the measured count rate near the center of the detector. ...