... 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. ...

... 25.03.1997 . ... Credit: Angel Sanchez ( AAGC ) Explanation: A comet as bright as Comet Hale-Bopp is very rare indeed. ... However, since Comet Hale-Bopp is across the inner Solar System from us, it does not appear as bright as Comet West did in 1975. The Great Comet of 1996, Comet Hyakutake , was relatively dim but also appeared bright since it passed close to the Earth. ... Publications with keywords: century - Comet Hale-Bopp . Publications with words: century - Comet Hale-Bopp . ...

... 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. ...

... Armagh Observatory, College Hill, Armagh BT61 9DG, +44 (0)28 3752 2928 . See also images taken on November 22nd . Image taken by Andy McCrea who says, . To me the comet appears yellowish and it has gone from star-like to a . ... More images from Andy McCrea here . ... The true explanation is that a very faint comet, known as periodic comet Holmes, produced a massive outburst of material and became a million times brighter than it was just a day earlier. ... More images from Andy McCrea . ...

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 . ...

... Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2015 June 2 . Polaris and Comet Lovejoy . ... Explanation: One of these two bright sky objects is moving. On the right is the famous star Polaris. Although only the 45th brightest star in the sky, Polaris is famous for appearing stationary. ... About APOD | ... NASA Official: Phillip Newman Specific rights apply . ...

Supernovae 2010jl in UGC 5189A . This page is devoted to information on Supernova 2010jl in UGC 5189A . ... Astronomy Magazine's Supernova SN 2010jl . ... Bad Astronomy's SN 2010 JL in weird UGC 5189 . SpaceBanter.com 2010jl post . Blogbaker's 2010jl post . Joseph Brimacombe widefield color image . ... 2010/11/04.50 . ... 2010/11/05.203 . ... Joseph Brimacombe . 2010/11/05.467 . ... mirror . ... JM Llapasset . ... 2011/01/15.160 . ... Back to Bright Supernovae - 2010 . ...

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. ...

Comets necessarily obey the same physical laws as every other object. ... If one considers only two bodies -- either the Sun and a planet, or the Sun and a comet -- the smaller body appears to follow an elliptical path or orbit about the Sun, which is at one focus of the ellipse. ... Another quantity that is conserved is called angular momentum. ... Comets simply are bodies which in general have more angular momentum per unit mass than do planets and therefore move in more elongated orbits. ...

This figure shows, on the left, images of Encke on three successive days from November 6 to November 8; on the right, images of ISON are shown for three successive days from November 9 to November 11. ... Green circles indicate some of the brighter cataloged background stars in each image; yellow marks bracket the comets. The background stars are fixed in each image from top to bottom, so the motion of the comet relative to the stars is clear in each case. ...

Check out the new images (Jan 18-25) and (Jan 26-Feb 05) of the comet by Rob McNaught. ... Every few years a comet becomes bright enough to be easily seen with the naked eye but only every decade or so are these comparable with comets like Halley. ... Before Jan 13, the comet is not visible in the Australian sky after sunset. ... SOHO images . ... On Jan 12 at approximately 09:00 UT (8pm NSW time), comet C/2006 P1 McNaught appears at the 11 o'clock position in the images. ... STEREO images . ...

. [ Go back to Comet WWW site ] . Andrew A. Martis . martis @ sai.msu.ru .

... click image to view discuss) . ... taken at 16:51:07 local 1/200 s at f/5.6. ISO 400, 400 mm fl . Submitted by Joseph Kristl on 01/22/2007 11:09:10 . ... 16:53:39 local time 1/160 s, f/5.6, ISO 400, fl = 180 mm . ... 16:54:59 local 1/100 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400, fl = 400 mm . ... 16:54:59 local 1/100 s, f/5.6, ISO 400, fl = 400 mm . ... 17:00:22 local 1/60 s, f/5.6, ISO 400, fl = 400 mm . ... Copyright (c) Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston, Inc. ...

You Can Make Stellar Images Brighter . Articles | ... A few months ago I wrote an article titled "You Can’t Make Them Brighter". So why am I now writing that you can make them brighter. ... The image of a focused star is actually a small disk called the Airy disk, named after the 19 th century scientist Sir George Airy. ... For a given aperture, a smaller Airy disk means that the light is focused to a smaller disk and is therefore brighter. ... www.astronomy.net . About Astronomy Net | ...

... 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? ...

... Virginia Kilborn's program gfinder was run on 388 luthered and edge-masked HIPASS cubes , covering the whole southern sky, over all 1024 channels (i.e. -1281 to 12741 km/s), with an HI peak flux cutoff of 60 mJy/beam. ... The large number of candidates is mostly due to artifacts generated in areas of strong continuum flux, mostly the Galactic Plane, (causing a baseline ripple), the HI emission in our Galaxy, and lots of interference (1408 MHz birdie, GPS etc.) ... Number of galaxies: . ... galaxies ...

Results from 6m telescope observations of globular clusters in dwarf galaxies Sharina M. We consider properties of globular clusters in dwarf galaxies observed with the multi-slit unit of the SCORPIO spectrograph at the SAO 6m telescope. ... Studying GCs in dwarf galaxies at the faintest end of the galaxy luminosity function provides valuable information for a better understanding of galaxy evolution and evolutionary connection between globular clusters and nuclei of galaxies. ...

... The Pleiades star cluster, also known as the Seven Sisters and Messier 45, is a conspicuous object in the night sky with a prominent place in ancient mythology . ... The stars in the Pleiades are thought to have formed together around 100 million years ago, making them 1/50th the age of our sun, and they lie some 130 parsecs (425 light years ) away. ... Data for these stars are listed in a table below. ... Yes . ... WEBDA Pleiades cluster data . ... M45: The Pleiades Star Cluster (2007 November 18) ...

True Color Image Gallery: Galactic SNR | Magellanic Cloud SNR . ... Chandra Proposer's Guide pile up section ] During frame readout, the ACIS CCDs take 40 microsec to (parallel) transfer the charge by one pixel. As a result of this, each frame readout, each pixel is exposed for 40 microsec to a source (plus cosmic X-ray background) at each location along its column. ... Note also that the image does not just trail, it extends along the whole column. ... Chandra Supernova Remnant Catalog . ...

Next: Bibliography Up: On the metallicities of Previous: Observations and data reduction . The results of chemical abundance determination for the studied galaxies are presented in Table 2 . The comparison of the respective data for UM 133 and UM 382 with the abundance ratios from Izotov & Thuan ([ 1999 ]) shows that they well agree with the derived average values for the sample of low metallicity BCGs. ... The full range of the velocity curve is about 100 km s -1 . ... UM 133 . ... UM 283 . ...