... 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. ...

... Comet Animation . ... Comet structures are diverse and very dynamic, but they all develop a surrounding cloud of diffuse material, called a coma, that usually grows in size and brightness as the comet approaches the Sun. ... As comets approach the Sun they develop enormous tails of luminous material that extend for millions of kilometers from the head, away from the Sun. ... The evaporated molecules boil off and carry small solid particles with them, forming the comet's coma of gas and dust. ...

... 28.11.2006 . ... Spiral galaxy NGC 1313, however, appears to be alone. ... Pictured above , NGC 1313 spans about 50,000 light years and lies only about 15 million light years away toward the constellation of Reticulum . Continued numerical modeling of galaxies like NGC 1313 might shed some light on its unusual nature. ... Publications with keywords: spiral galaxy - starburst galaxy . Publications with words: spiral galaxy - starburst galaxy . ... Spiral Galaxy M83: The Southern Pinwheel . ...

... Magnetic Storms . ... Cosmic Rays . ... Energetic Particles . ... Solar fast Particles . We cannot observe the way the distant universe accelerates cosmic rays or produces energetic photons, but acceleration processes also occur on our Sun , though on a much more moderate scale. ... That is why such events are often missed by cosmic ray detectors near the equator, where the lowest energies are excluded by the Earth's magnetic field. ... Should we be concerned about solar energetic radiation? ...

We cannot observe the way the distant universe accelerates cosmic rays or produces energetic photons, but acceleration processes also occur on our Sun , though on a much more moderate scale. ... That is why such events are often missed by cosmic ray detectors near the equator, where the lowest energies are excluded by the Earth's magnetic field. The best detectors for observing solar particles are therefore those sensitive to the lowest energies of the cosmic radiation. ...

... 2010 March 30 . Unusual Starburst Galaxy NGC 1313 . ... Brightly lit with new and blue massive stars, star formation appears so rampant in NGC 1313 that it has been labeled a starburst galaxy . ... Pictured above , NGC 1313 spans about 50,000 light years and lies only about 15 million light years away toward the constellation of the Reticle ( Reticulum ). Continued numerical modeling of galaxies like NGC 1313 might shed some light on its unusual nature. ... About APOD | ...

This month's Geminid meteor shower is expected to peak around the late evening of Tuesday 13th/early hours of Wednesday 14th. The shower is usually one of the best of the annual meteor showers, with many relatively bright, slow- to medium-speed fireballs. ... These meteors are believed to originate from the near-Earth asteroid, Phaethon, discovered by a NASA satellite in 1983. ... FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: John McFarland at the Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh, BT61 9DG. ...

... Jitter is usually very small in magnitude and random in effect, and is not expected to lead to systematic throughput changes. ... However, such a change should lead to an obvious decline in the strength of the comparison lines at one end of the spectrum relative to the other and not an overall decline in counts. No such effect is seen (the counts decline evenly from one end of the spectrum to the other). ... The value changes steadily, but not by enough to account for the changes in counts seen. ...

... 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 red colors in this image show the galaxy M66 as it appears at the submillimeter wavelength of 850 microns, while the white background shows the galaxy as it appears in visible light. Regions of cold dust that appear as dark streaks in the white image glow brightly in the red image. ...

2009-05-20 O.Hainaut There are many steps between the data coming out of a camera on a professional telescope and the final image that appears in magazines or on our web sites. ... preliminary: from the telescope to Photoshop. cleaning: remove the artifacts remaining in the image . ... In each filter, several images are acquired. ... Fig 1: a raw image (click for full scale) . ... At this stage, the images are still in FITS, the astronomical format, with one FITS file per filter. ... The final image. ...

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 vis