* Astronomy

Astronomers using the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio telescope have tracked the motion of a violent region where the powerful winds of two giant Wolf-Rayet stars slam into each other. The collision regio...

Title: The New Eclipsing Cataclysmic Variable SDSS 154453+2553 Authors: Julie N. Skinner, John R. Thorstensen, Eve Armstrong, Steve Brady The cataclysmic variable SDSS154453+2553 was recently identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We obtained spectra and photometry at the MDM Observat...

A magnitude 17.0 Type Ia supernova, 2010lt, was discovered by K. Gray, P. Gray and D. Lane on the 31st December, 2010, in the galaxy UGC 03378 in the constellation Camelopardalis. The supernova is located 20" west and 10" north from the center of the galaxy. Position (2000): RA = 06 06 09.18...

Just a few decades ago many feared total annihilation, with the Soviet and American atomic superpowers hovering over the red button. The threat is now past, but some of the nuclear bunkers still exist today, giving tourists a living history tour....

In 1975, Jerome Pearson wrote a great paper on space elevators that became the basis for excellent work by Brad Edwards including his 2002 book with Eric Westling, The Space Elevator: A Revolutionary Earth-to-Space Transportation System. For decades elevator enthusiasts have had their hopes pi...

Orbital elements: 2011 AL5 Earth MOID = 0.1649 AU Epoch 2011 Feb. 8.0 TT = JDT 2455600.5 MPC M 351.42524 (2000.0) P Q n 0.31282149 Peri. 195.15868 -0.95745877 -0.28773044 a 2.1491744 Node 328.09274 +0.26889858 -0.86193067 e 0.4620813 Incl. 2.38529 +0.10471987 -0.41747660 P 3.15 H 22.4 G 0.15 U 9 MP...

2010 WW8 Earth Impact Risk SummaryTorino Scale (maximum) Palermo Scale (maximum) -6.67Palermo Scale (cumulative) -6.35Impact Probability (cumulative) 1.7e-06Number of Potential Impacts 179 Vimpact 12.21 km/sVinfinity 4.95 km/sH 27.3Diameter 0.012 kmMass 2.9e+06 kgEnergy 5.3e-02 MTa...

Orbital elements: 2011 AU4 Earth MOID = 0.0263 AU Epoch 2011 Feb. 8.0 TT = JDT 2455600.5 MPC M 94.54750 (2000.0) P Q n 0.89596419 Peri. 284.59301 +0.86650549 -0.49340776 a 1.0656362 Node 105.02101 +0.48280749 +0.78997312 e 0.1061907 Incl. 4.49005 +0.12674841 +0.36399349 P 1.10 H 25.8 G 0.15 U 8 MPE...

The Design of Extremely Large Telescopes In the late 1970s, astronomers had a problem: the scale of their telescopes no longer matched the size of their ambitions. To see deeper and deeper into our universe"s past, they needed a bigger telescope. To build a bigger telescope, they needed a larg...

A possible magnitude 15 supernova was discovered on the 5th January, 2011, in the spiral galaxy UGC6311 in the constellation Leo. The supernova is located 1" West and 14" South from the center of the galaxy. As yet the type is unknown. Position(2000): RA = 11 17 54.88, Dec = -02 05 45.2

The Great Gale of 1880 was an extremely deep area of low pressure (possibly deeper than 955 millibars (mb) or 28.20") that impacted the Northwest United States on January 9, 1880. Read more

The Robotic Lunar Lander Development Project is working in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory to create a new generation of robotic lunar landers. The project will design a lander that will help NASA achieve its science and exploration goals on the moon's surface. Th...

Orbital elements: C/2009 K3 (Beshore) T 2011 Jan. 9.266 TT MPC q 3.90156 (2000.0) P Q Peri. 251.413 -0.319181 +0.947694 Node 0.032 +0.933621 +0.314496 e 1.0 Incl. 146.680 -0.162711 -0.054484 From 20 observations 2009 May 26-28. [url=http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/mpec/K09/K09K62.html]MPEC

The 33 - 73 metre wide asteroid 2009 DA43 will make a close pass (35.6 Lunar Distances, 0.0916AU), travelling at 4.72 km/s, to the Earth-Moon system on the 17th January, 2010. See more The Lunar Distance (LD), the distanc...

217th meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle, WA. 9-13 January 2011 Read more