... These Frontier Fields will combine the power of HST with the natural gravitational telescopes of high-magnification clusters of galaxies. ... We are soliciting gravitational lensing maps for the last four Hubble Frontier Fields clusters (MACSJ0717.5+3745, MACSJ1149.5+2223, AbellS1063, and Abell 370) based upon the exceptionally deep HST FF imaging and other new ancillary data. ... For the full set of proposal instructions and requirements, see the FY16 Frontier Fields Lensing Map Call for Proposals....

... Feeding the Monster: Gas Caught in its Death Spiral into a Massive Black Hole . ... Stromlo Professor Mike Dopita have used the Hubble Space Telescope to discover how a massive Black Hole in a nearby galaxy feeds itself. ... Earlier Hubble Telescope data obtained by another team member, Professor Holland Ford of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, had found a disk of gas rushing around the Black Hole at a speed of 500 kilometers a second. ...

... Resembling a gigantic hubcap in space, a 3,700 light-year-diameter dust disk encircles a 300 million solar-mass black hole in the center of the elliptical galaxy NGC 7052. ... Because the front end of the disk eclipses more stars than the back, it appears darker. ... Despite its size, the disk is 100 times less massive than the black hole. ... The bright spot in the center of the disk is the combined light of stars that have crowded around the black hole due to its strong gravitational pull. ...

What happens to a star heavier than five solar masses? ... Stars about ten solar masses probably behave like our five solar mass star until they reach the end of core-helium burning. ... The Crab nebula was formed after a massive explosion ripped a star apart in 1054. ... Today, the glowing outer layers of the star are still rushing away from a tiny star in the centre. ... An incredible explosion rips through the outer layers of the star, releasing colossal amounts of energy in a supernova explosion. ...

... STScI-PRC95-45a CRUCIBLE OF CREATION: PANORAMIC HUBBLE MOSAIC ZOOMS IN ON MAELSTROM OF STAR BIRTH This spectacular color panorama of the center the Orion nebula is one of the largest pictures ever assembled from individual images taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. ... Though this 2.5 light-years wide view is still a small portion of the entire nebula, it includes almost all of the light from the bright glowing clouds of gas and a star cluster associated with the nebula. ...

Astronotes Armagh Planetarium's Stellar Blog! ... Armagh Planetarium . ... Stars . ... Space Flight . ... This image of the Tarantula Nebula comprises one of the largest mosaics ever assembled from Hubble photos and includes observations taken by HubbleтАЩs Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, combined with observations from the European Southern ObservatoryтАЩs MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope which trace the location of glowing hydrogen and oxygen. ... Subscribe to Astronotes . ...

... NICMOS image: C. Marcella Carollo ( JHU , Columbia U.), NASA , ESA Explanation: NGC 1365 is a giant barred spiral galaxy about 200,000 light-years in diameter and 60 million light-years distant in the southern constellation Fornax . ... Astronomers believe the gravity field of NGC 1365's bar plays a crucial role in the galaxy's evolution, funneling gas and dust into the central star-forming maelstrom and ultimately feeding material into its massive black hole . ... Spiral Galaxy NGC 5033 . ...

... Our Sun is part of a huge wheel-shaped collection of stars. ... Astronomers have long suspected it was a very massive black hole, and that every galaxy had such a central mass, created early in the history of the universe. ... However, unless that object happens to be headed directly at the black hole (a relatively small target) it will just swing around and fly away again, like a comet making a pass at the Sun. The velocity acquired in falling towards the black hole also helps it escape. ...

Blackholes Forum Message . Forums: . ... Black Holes And RedShift . ... Perhaps black holes really are the reproductive means of the universe.Could the black hole of a Quasar red-shift the electromagnetic energy trying to escape it? ... Perhaps black holes treat electromagnetic energy the same way. ... No one really knows enough about Quasars and black holes to say for sure but ask yourself this: Why would all the Quasars in the universe be moving away from the Milky Way? ... www.astronomy.net . ...

... If the mass of the collapsing star is more than three solar masses, however, no force can prevent it from collapsing completely to become a black hole. What is a black hole? Mini black holes . ... For Further Reading About Black Holes A black hole is a region of space in which the pull of gravity is so strong that nothing can escape. ... A black hole with a mass less than three solar masses would not form on its own; its gravity is too weak to cause it to completely collapse in on itself. ...

... ESO . ... Survey Telescopes . ... Near-infrared images of the active galaxy NGC 1097, obtained with the NACO adaptive optics instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope, disclose with unprecedented detail a complex central network of filamentary structure spiralling down to the centre of the galaxy. ... Our analysis of the VLT/NACO images of NGC 1097 shows that these filaments end up at the very centre of the galaxy ", says co-author Juha Reunanen from ESO. ... The Centre of the Active Galaxy NGC 1097 ...

... The expansion is measured as a number called the Hubble Constant . ... Our value is about 20% lower than the one got with the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994," said Dr Jim Lovell, leader of the team that made the measurement. The Hubble Constant is named after American astronomer Edwin Hubble, who in the 1920s found that other galaxies were moving away from ours. ... The Hubble Constant links the galaxy's distance with its speed." ... A short run-down on the Hubble Constant: . ...

Next: Binary Radiopulsars with Black Up: Black Holes in Binaries Previous: Black Holes in Binaries . Two different types of stellar BH formation exist: (1) direct core collapse   of a massive star and (2) AIC of a NS. A BH of the first type presumably will have a mass comparable to that of the collapsing star and can be born both from a single star and in a binary system. ... Next: Binary Radiopulsars with Black Up: Black Holes in Binaries Previous: Black Holes in Binaries Mike E. Prokhorov . ...

The Sun is our nearest star and the source of energy for life on Earth. ... For centuries astronomers wondered whether they were clouds floating in the Sun's atmosphere, but we now know that they really are huge regions of magnetic field, about as intense as the field at the poles of an iron magnet. ... Such abrupt events were named solar flares , and what made them especially interesting was that occasionally, after a prominent flare, a magnetic storm would erupt on Earth. ...

Within the Hubble Ultra Deep Field there are approximately 10,000 discrete objects. ... Most of these objects are very small and likely have masses in the range of 10 5 to 10 7 solar masses. Note the mass of the Milky Way galaxy is 10 12 solar masses. ... Finally, for you cosmologists/experts out there this ultra deep field is quite consistent with what was seen in the original Hubble Deep Field 5) don't necessarily have small angular diameters. ...

... Image Quality of the VLT . Total Optical Control . First light for the ESO VLT unit telescope 1 occurred during the workshop. ... The image shown (Figure 1 ) here was obtained with the VLT on May 16, 1998, in red light (R band), i.e. while the mirror was still uncoated. ... In this diagram (FIgure 2), the measured image quality of the VLT UT1 astronomical images is plotted versus the ``seeing", as measured by the Seeing Monitor, a small telescope also located on top of the Paranal Mountain. ...

... 2005 January 12 . Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300 . Credit: Hubble Heritage Team , ESA , NASA . Explanation: Big, beautiful, barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300 lies some 70 million light-years away on the banks of the constellation Eridanus . ... NGC 1300 spans over 100,000 light-years and the Hubble image reveals striking details of the galaxy's dominant central bar and majestic spiral arms. ... About APOD | ... NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers . NASA Official: Jay Norris. ...

The galactic center hosts a supermassive black hole in the region known as Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A*, with a mass of about 4 million times that of our Sun. A dense torus of molecular gas and dust surrounds the galactic center and occupies the innermost 15 light-years of our galaxy. ... Part of this gas is being heated by the strong ultraviolet radiation from massive stars that closely orbit the central black hole. ...

... Bad Astronomy . ... Bitesize Astronomy . ... The center of the elliptical galaxy M84 was observed using STIS to see if there was a giant black hole there (a wide view of the galaxy is seen on the left). ... Their huge gravity accelerates matter up to tremendous speeds, but only closer in to the actual black hole. The great resolution of Hubble combined with the spectrographic qualities of STIS allow it to look very close in to the center of the galaxy and look at the matter nearest the black hole. ...

... Recent Results . ... last 10 years in ADS) . in SAO press releases . ... observations database) . ... Last update: . ... Measurement of the dark halo shape in polar ring galaxies . Determining the mass of supermassive black hole in galaxy Mrk6 nucleus based on spectropolarimetric observations . The dust jets in the nucleus of comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 1 . ... New Polar Ring Galaxies . Traces of recent interactions in isolated Seyfert galaxies . ...