[NASA]
June 16 , 2008: Sometimes you just can’t believe your eyes. This week is one of those times.
On Wednesday night, June 18th, step outside at sunset and look around. You’ll see a giant form rising in the east. At first glance it looks like the full Moon.
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Source: NASA
Moon Illusion - Is the Moon [...]

Galaxy Spiral Arm Stability and Dynamics
Simple Newtonian gravitation is sufficient to explain the entire behavior of Galaxy Spiral Arms. The well-known Keplerian effect certainly dominates, but a Spiral Arm also has internal mutual gravitation, which has surprisingly strong effects!
The stability of galaxy spiral arms has long troubled the Astrophysics community. It has been assumed that [...]

Full moons are said to be behind many strange things, but here’s one you didn’t know about: At full moon, our favorite satellite is whipped by Earth’s magnetotail, causing lunar dust storms and discharges of static electricity.
This new finding, announced this week by NASA, is important to future lunar explorers: Astronauts may find themselves “crackling [...]

by Space Viz
Are we alone in the Universe? Who is out there? Scientists around the world are trying to receive extraterrestrial signals. What do they hope for? What have they found? Where is the evolution of human beings headed?
The Cosmic Radio Dial
290 miles northeast of San Francisco, California, something other worldly is going on.
An array [...]

Space.com
During the next week, a wayward U.S. spy satellite will make passes across North America and western Europe soon after sunset and should be easily visible to the unaided eye.
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However, Russia thinks that the rogue U.S. satellite contains nuclear material
MOSCOW, February 15 (RIA Novosti) - Russia’s Defense Ministry is closely monitoring a [...]

After Comet 17P/Holmes shocked astronomers on Oct. 24, 2007, with a spectacular eruption, a second naked-eye comet, 8P/Tuttle may become visible on January 2nd just after the 2008 New Year celebrations. Given that the naked-eye comets are unusual enough, I’d encourage everyone to go out and look. The comet has an orbital period of 13.6 [...]

The Japanese lunar explorer “KAGUYA” (SELENE) has sent back the first high-definition photos ever taken of the Moon. Visit the website of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) to find spectacular images. The image shooting was carried out by the onboard high definition television (HDTV) of the KAGUYA.
World’s First Image Taking of the Moon by [...]

Marylanders won’t see it until the skies clear - maybe Sunday. But backyard stargazers elsewhere are buzzing about Comet 71P/Holmes, which suddenly brightened by a factor of a million this week, becoming visible to the naked eye, even in urban areas.
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Source: baltimoresun.com
Tags: comet holmes, sky, telescope, astrophysics

Meteor Attack and the Earth Was No [...]

PASADENA, Calif. - Astronomers have unmasked hundreds of black holes hiding deep inside dusty galaxies billions of light-years away.
The massive, growing black holes, discovered by NASA’s Spitzer and Chandra space telescopes, represent a large fraction of a long-sought missing population.
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Source: NASA
Tags: black holes, universe, NASA, galaxies, astronomy

The Largest Black Holes in the Universe
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The hunt for ET is revving up to warp speed, thanks largely to an infusion of cash from Seattle’s most famous science-fiction fan.
Today, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen will join scientists from SETI — the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence — to unveil the first major telescope devoted full time to answering the question: Is anyone out [...]

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) performed the separation operation of one of the onboard baby satellites, the Relay Satellite (Rstar,) of the “KAGUYA” (SELENE,) and the Rstar was released at 9:36 a.m. on October 9 (Japan Standard Time, JST). The KAGUYA is a lunar explorer launched by the H-IIA Launch Vehicle No. 13 (H-IIA [...]

Dark energy, the mysterious repulsive force that is causing the universe to expand at ever greater rates, is surely the biggest mystery in cosmology these days.
Its discovery in 1998 from measurements of supernovae came as a huge shock to the astronomical community, and scientists are still scrambling to come up with a satisfactory way to [...]