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The Milky Way Galaxy

The Birth of Our Sun

The Earth and Sky

Our Solar System

The Milky Way Galaxy

The Endless Universe

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African Continent
as seen from space

The impact of humanity on the Earth better seen than from space, and never is it more noticeable than at night. Scientists use satellite photographs of artificial lights to chart the spread of urbanizing, but such photographs also tell another story, that of energy wastage, bathing urban skies in a permanent twilight. that obscures our view of the wider Universe we inhabit. Light pollution, as it is termed, is a growing concern to environmentalists as well as astronomers. The photograph at the right, taken from the Space Shuttle, offers a closer view of the bright lights on the northeastern seaboard of the United States, looking obliquely from the north.

A Meteorite that struck in prehistoric times.

This meteorite struck near Hoba West, Namibia, in prehistoric times. Found in 1920, it weighs 60 tonnes, one of the largest objects to survive its impact.3. Found in the Atacama Desert, Chile, in the early19th century, this stony-iron meteorite was forged during the evolution of the Solar System. Larger meteorites, whether or not they are comets remnants, have had a steady, and often drastic, influence on the evolution of the planets -the Earth included. Some that enter the Earth's atmosphere never make it to the surface. Between1975 and 1992, American satellites recorded 136 explosions in the upper atmosphere, all probably small would-be meteorites.

Flare of the Sun (Solar Flare)

This prominence from Sunspots can measure as much as 50,000 kilometers (31,000 miles) across, July 1999 was particularly large. They are convenient indicators of the Sun's overall level of activity from the Sun. Erupting prominences, can affect and, therefore, of the influence the Sun will exert upon the Earth. For example, communications, navigation systems, radio signals from the Sun can be directly related to sunspots. In fact a graph even power grids, while also producing showing sunspot activity for a given period looks almost identical to a graph auroras visible in the night skies. that shows solar radio emission for the same period. Radio signals can tell us of the existence of an otherwise obscured sunspot, and the sunspot itself mayflower into a prominence or a flare that will disturb Earth's region of space. Both prominences and flares appear as violent displays of luminous solar debris and generally may be seen as clouds of ionized matter standing out from the Sun's limb or as characteristic markings on the disc itself. But there is a difference. Prominences linger much longer on the solar surface than flares. And prominences are seen as cascades of debris that may move downward along magnetic lines to the solar surface, sometimes in the form of arches that can span many tens of thousands of miles. Thus the material that forms a prominence is largely confined to the solar atmosphere. On the other hand , flares characteristically leap out from a single point of disturbance and form plasma blast. If it is in the path of this plasma tongue, the Earth will soon experience a magnetic storm with its attendant radio interference and aurora displays. It was also observed that aurora often followed a flare-up of explosions on the Sun's surface.

	Magnificent galaxies of stars are dotted like islands through the sea of space.
	Most prominent of the gas clouds is the Tarantula Nebula, at upper left, so named because of its spidery loops.
	Starry Clouds of Magellan, the Large Magellan Cloud, resolves into a swell of starlight festooned with pink gas clouds.
	Most large galaxies have gaping Central Black Holes at their centers with mass between 100,000 and several billion times that of the Sun.
	The Andromeda Galaxy, Over ten times farther off than the Magellan Clouds lies the great spiral in Andromeda: simultaneously the nearest large galaxy to us and the most distant object within reach of the human eye.
	Swirling: A vortex of stars, gas and dusty sediments, M83 is an impressive spiral galaxy whose two main arms straighten at the center to create a bar.
	Going with the flow: Gas flows along bars into the heart of barred spirals, where it makes new stars and enlarges the galaxy's central bulge.
	Measuring the Universe: Unreachable though stars and galaxies may be, we can still find how far away they are.
	The penetrating glare of a supernova beams from the outskirts of the edge on spiral galaxy NGC 4526, rivaling the brilliance of the galaxy's entire nucleus.
	Galactic collisions and mergers Galactic encounters are the most spectacular traffic accidents in the Universe.
	Luminous tails of stars and gas stretch 100,000 light years into intergalactic space from two intertwined spirals nicknamed the Mice.
	Quasars are remote powerhouses which baffled astronomers for a generation following their discovery in the early 1960s.
	Looking deep into the Universe Remote galaxies glow with ancient starlight in view which reaches out through some 12 billion light years to the edge of the visible Universe.
	The birth and- fate of the Universe For the first 380,000 years of its existence, the Universe was filled with an inferno of matter and energy disgorged by the Big Bang. As the Universe expanded the temperature of this incandescent broth steadily dropped.
	When the Universe stop expanding then it will start to collapse.