... 2001 September 11 . Spiral Galaxy NGC 3310 Across the Visible . ... Explanation: The party is still going on in spiral galaxy NGC 3310. Roughly 100 million years ago, NGC 3310 likely collided with a smaller galaxy causing the large spiral galaxy to light up with a tremendous burst of star formation . ... NGC 3310 spans about 50,000 light years , lies about 50 million light years away, and is visible with a small telescope towards the constellation of Ursa Major . ... About APOD | ...

... September 5, 1998 . The Pulsar Powered Crab . Credit: J. Hester and P. Scowen ( ASU ), NASA . ... Using a stunning series of visible light images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) , astronomers have discovered spectacular pulsar powered motions within the Crab nebula. Highlights of this HST Crab "movie" show wisps of material moving away from the pulsar at half the speed of light, a scintillating halo, and an intense knot of emission dancing, sprite-like, above the pulsar's pole. ...

... APOD: 2002 September 18- A Sagittarius Starscape . ... Next huge filaments of dark interstellar dust run across the image and block the light from millions of more stars yet further across our Galaxy . The bright red region on the left is the Omega Nebula , an emission nebula of mostly hot hydrogen gas also known as M17 . A small bright grouping of stars near the image center is the open cluster M18 , while the long bright streak of stars just right of center is M24 . ... September 2002 . ...

... Take a few moments to take in all of the wonderful details captured in this new photo of some baby stars in a glowing cloud of gas. ... Here, the gas cloud hasn t been photographed because there are dark clouds called Bok Globules blocking the view. ... This invisibility cloak, though, has a weakness: It fails when astronomers look at the Bok Globules using a special type of telescope that detects infrared light. ... And infrared light can also travel through the dust inside Bok Globules. ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Armagh Planetarium . ... Stars . ... Space Flight . ... Monthly Sky Notes . ... NGC 6357's inner star forming region glows with the emission of ionized hydrogen gas. Image credit: ESO/VVV Survey/D. Minniti. ... Located around 8000 light years away in the constellation of Scorpius , NGC 6357 (sometimes called the Lobster Nebula ) is a typical stellar nursery, filled with vast clouds of gas and tendrils of dark dust. ... Subscribe to Astronotes . ...

... Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG, +44 (0)28 3752 2928 . ... Armagh Observatory reports that, if skies are clear on the night of 27/28 September, skywatchers will witness a rare total eclipse of the Moon during the early hours of Monday 28th. ... As the eclipse progresses from penumbral to partial phase, and then towards totality, it is interesting to observe how the dark shadow of the Earth slowly encroaches on the Full Moon until the Moon is nearly completely obscured. ...

... self-absorption - the absorption of light shining on an object by a process similar to that which produced the light originally; if a cloud emits less light than it absorbs from other clouds behind it, this net loss of light, termed self-absorption , causes the foreground cloud to appear darker than the background field (the term is from spectroscopy, where small absorption dips sometimes occur in larger emission lines, making the latter look as if it is absorbing part of itself) . ... HISA Main ...

... Operating at a wavelength of 10 ?m, it produces a 135њx135њ image with a resolution of 0.9њ. ... The clouds move from the west-southwest. ... At the same time as the IR images, visible light images were taken with an Apple Computer QuickTake electronic camera. ... At 1540 MDT, the large central cloud is visible in both images. At 1544 MDT, a distinctive cloud is apparent near the center in the visible image and right of center in the IR. The performance of the SDSS cloud scanner is excellent. ...

... 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....