Space in Images - 2014 - 04 - Cassini captures familiar forms on Titan’s dunes. 'Brighter than a full moon': The biggest star of 2013... could be the comet of the century - Science - News. Comet Ison could draw millions out into the dark to witness what could be the brightest comet seen in many generations – brighter even than the full Moon.
It was found as a blur on an electronic image of the night sky taken through a telescope at the Kislovodsk Observatory in Russia as part of a project to survey the sky looking for comets and asteroids – chunks of rock and ice that litter space. Astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok were expecting to use the International Scientific Optical Network's (Ison) 40cm telescope on the night of 20 September but clouds halted their plans. It was a frustrating night but about half an hour prior to the beginning of morning twilight, they noticed the sky was clearing and got the telescope and camera up and running to obtain some survey images in the constellations of Gemini and Cancer.
When the images were obtained Nevski loaded them into a computer program designed to detect asteroids and comets moving between images. ISS036-E-005647_lrg.jpg (JPEG Image, 3824×2549 pixels) - Scaled (40. Hubble Heritage Gallery of Images. Antennae_1680.jpg (JPEG Image, 1680×1050 pixels) - Scaled (93%) Radio telescopes capture best-ever snapshot of black hole jets. An international team, including NASA-funded researchers, using radio telescopes located throughout the Southern Hemisphere has produced the most detailed image of particle jets erupting from a supermassive black hole in a nearby galaxy.
"These jets arise as infalling matter approaches the black hole, but we don't yet know the details of how they form and maintain themselves," said Cornelia Mueller, the study's lead author and a doctoral student at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. The new image shows a region less than 4.2 light-years across -- less than the distance between our sun and the nearest star. Radio-emitting features as small as 15 light-days can be seen, making this the highest-resolution view of galactic jets ever made. 6a00d8341bf67c53ef015391ee99b6970b-pi (JPEG Image, 1024×1024 pixels) - Scaled (81%) 30 January 09.