View The Remains of a Broken Comet

In 1995, Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 did something unexpected: it broke into 3 parts. At that time the comet was over 150 million miles away from the Earth. This is the approximate distance from the Sun to Mars.
This May the comet will be only 6 million miles away from the Earth or about [...]

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Spring 2006 Public Astronomy Nights

Click on the link for additional information including a map.)”:http://www.stcloudstate.edu/campusmap/building.asp?bldgAbbr=WSB and outside about 1/2 a block west of the Wick Science Building.The Astronomy Public Nights program is a chance to learn about and observe objects in the night sky.

…the date and time of the show you are interested in. We will contact you to confirm your reservation.If you don’t call or email for a reservation you won’t get a seat because this event fills up fast.Come to the Astronomy Public Nights at St.

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What Solar Activity?

The Sun has gone through its up and down 11 year cycle of sunspots. We are now at a minimum in the cycle. If you have noticed in the lower right hand column, the image of the Sun is blank, no sunspots. This trend is expected to continue this entire year.
Late 2007, [...]

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Supernova in Galaxy Messier 100

(Click on image for full-size version.)A pair of photos showing Supernova 2006X in M100 (Credit: ESO)Supernova type 1a explosions are formed when a white dwarf star gathers additional mass from a companion star within a binary system…. Our Sun will not form a supernova because our star is not massive enough and we are not in a binary star system (thank goodness!).Astronomers have studied this type of supernova and have found that the amount of light, and the resulting light curve, is very consistent between these types of supernovae.

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Pluto’s new moons confirmed

Well, not that there was much doubt about the true existence of them, but the NASA and Alan Stern’s group have announced that new Hubble Space telescope photographs of Pluto shot last week (February 15) have now confirmed the existence of two additional moons.

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