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Gippsland Lakes

The Gippsland Lakes are a network of lakes, marshes and lagoons in east Gippsland, Victoria, Australia. They cover an area of about 354 square kilometres. The largest of the lakes are Lake Wellington, Lake King and Lake Victoria. Water enters the ...

Lake Hindmarsh

Lake Hindmarsh, in western Victoria, Australia, is the state’s largest natural freshwater lake. The nearest towns are Jeparit to the south and Rainbow to the north. It is a large shallow lake which is often dry. The lake filled after floods in 20 ...

Kakadu National Park

Kakadu National Park is in the Northern Territory of Australia, 171 km southeast of Darwin. It is the second largest national park in the world. It covers an area of 1.980.400 ha. It is about 200 kilometres from north to south, and more than 100 ...

Lake Albacutya

Lake Albacutya is a freshwater lake in western Victoria, Australia. It is listed as a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention. When full Lake Albacutya covers 5.500 ha, is 8 m deep and holds around 230 GL.

Ramsar Convention

The Ramsar Convention is an international treaty to protect wetlands. It is meant to stop the loss of wetland areas now and in the future. It recognizes that wetlands are an important ecosystem. It also recognizes that wetlands have economic, cul ...

Sturt National Park

Sturt National Park is a national park in north west New South Wales, 1059 km northwest of Sydney. The park is named after the explorer, Charles Sturt, who travelled through the area in 1845. The park was created in the 1970s from six large sheep ...

The Wash

The Wash is the square-mouthed estuary on the northwest margin of East Anglia on the east coast of England, "where Norfolk meets Lincolnshire". It is among the largest estuaries in the United Kingdom. It is listed as a Ramsar site as being an imp ...

Al-Masjid al-Nabawi

Al-Masjid an-Nabawī is a mosque established and originally built by the Prophet of Islam Muhammad. It is in the city of Medina in Saudi Arabia. Al-Masjid an-Nabawi was the third mosque built in the history of Islam and is now one of the largest m ...

Umayyad Mosque

The Grand Mosque of Damascus, also known as the Umayyad Mosque, is one of the largest and oldest mosques in the world.It is in one of the holiest sites in the old city of Damascus. It is also very important because of its architecture. The mosque ...

Tom Gehrels

Tom Gehrels, was an American astronomer, Professor Planetary Sciences, and Astronomer at the University of Arizona, Tucson. With co-workers, he discovered over 4.000 asteroids, including Apollo asteroids, Amor asteroids, as well as dozens of Troj ...

Trojan asteroid

Trojan objects orbit 60° ahead or behind a more massive object. Both are in orbit around an even more massive central object. The best known example are the asteroids that orbit ahead or behind Jupiter around the Sun. Trojan objects do not orbit ...

624 Hektor

624 Hektor is the biggest of the Jovian Trojan asteroids. It was found in 1907 by August Kopff. Hektor is a D-type asteroid, dark and reddish in colour. It lies in Jupiters leading Lagrangian point, L 4, called the Greek node after one of the two ...

617 Patroclus

617 Patroclus is a binary minor planet made up of two similarly-sized objects orbiting their common centre of gravity. It is a Trojan, sharing an orbit with Jupiter. It was found in 1907 by August Kopff, and was the second Trojan asteroid to be f ...

Dwarf galaxy

A dwarf galaxy is a small galaxy composed of up to several billion stars. This is a small number compared to our own Milky Ways 200–400 billion stars. The Large Magellanic Cloud, containing over 30 billion stars, is sometimes classified as a dwar ...

I Zw 36

I Zwicky 36 is a blue compact dwarf galaxy, meaning that it is small for a galaxy, that its stars are close together and that it gives off blue light. The stars in I Zwicky 36 are young for stars, no older than three million years.

I Zwicky 18

The I Zwicky 18 is an irregular dwarf galaxy. It is 45 million years light from Earth in the constellation of the Ursa Major. It was identified by first time in the 1930s by the astronomer Fritz Zwicky.

Magellanic Clouds

The Magellanic Clouds are two irregular, dwarf galaxies. They do not have a regular shape, and only have a few billion stars. The Magellanic Clouds can only be seen from the southern hemisphere. They orbit the Milky Way galaxy. They, along with t ...

NGC 1569

NGC 1569 is a dwarf irregular galaxy in Camelopardalis. This faint galaxy is well studied by professional astronomers, who are interested in the history of star formation in the galaxy. The galaxy is relatively nearby, so the Hubble Space Telesco ...

Elliptical galaxy

An elliptical galaxy is a galaxy having an ellipsoidal shape, and a smooth, nearly featureless brightness profile. They are one of the three main types of galaxy originally described by Edwin Hubble in 1936. The others are spiral and lenticular g ...

IC 1101

IC 1101 is the largest known galaxy. It is a supergiant elliptical galaxy at the center of the Abell 2029 galaxy cluster. It, along with its cluster is 1.07 billion light years away in the constellation of Virgo.

Messier 32

Messier 32 is a dwarf "early-type" galaxy about 2.65 million light-years from Earth. It is seen in the constellation Andromeda. M32 is a satellite galaxy of the large Andromeda Galaxy M31. It was discovered by Guillaume Le Gentil in 1749. M32 mea ...

Messier 49

Messier 49 is an elliptical galaxy about 49 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. This galaxy was discovered by French astronomer Charles Messier in 1771. Messier 49 is 4.1° west-southwest of the star Epsilon Virginis. Messier 4 ...

Messier 87

Messier 87 is a supergiant elliptical galaxy. It was discovered in 1781 by the French astronomer Charles Messier, who catalogued it as a nebulous feature. The second brightest galaxy within the northern Virgo Cluster, it is about 16.4 million par ...

Sag DEG

Sag DEG is a small loop-shaped satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. It is known by other names, such as the Sagittarius dwarf elliptical galaxy or the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy. It consists of four globular clusters. The main cluster havi ...

Cartwheel galaxy

The Cartwheel galaxy is a lenticular galaxy about 500 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor. It is about 150.000 light years across, slightly larger than the Milky Way. It has a mass of about 2.9–4.8 × 10 9 solar masses, and rota ...

Messier 84

Messier 84 is a lenticular galaxy in the constellation of Virgo. M84 is in the heavily populated inner core of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. Radio observations and Hubble Space Telescope images of M84 have revealed two jets of matter shooting ou ...

NGC 4526

NGC 4526 is a lenticular galaxy in the Virgo constellation. In a telescope, it looks like a lentil-shaped structure with spiral arms. It is one of the brightest lenticular galaxies. It is thought that a supermassive black hole is in the center of ...

Andromeda galaxy

The Andromeda galaxy is the nearest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way, our galaxy. Andromeda is sometimes called M31 or NGC 224 by astronomers. It is about 2.6 million light years away from us. Andromeda is the largest galaxy of the Local Group, whi ...

IC 10

IC 10 is an irregular galaxy in the constellation Cassiopeia. It was discovered in 1887. Edwin Hubble suspected it might belong to the Local Group of galaxies, but this was uncertain for decades. The radial velocity of IC 10 was measured in 1962. ...

List of most luminous stars

This list of most luminous stars is of Milky Way and Magellanic Cloud objects. A few stars in other local group galaxies can be seen in enough detail to work out their the luminosities. The list is more or less complete for stars down to 2.000.00 ...

Milky Way

The Milky Way is our home galaxy. It contains over 200 billion stars, including our Sun. The Milky Way has a diameter of about 170.000 or 200.000 light years, and is a barred spiral galaxy. The idea that the Milky Way is made of stars goes back t ...

Milky Way–Andromeda collision

The collision between the Milky Way and Andromeda will happen about four billion years in the future. The Andromeda galaxy is approaching the Milky Way at about 110 kilometres per second 68 mi/as shown by its blueshift. Until 2012, it was not kno ...

Orion Arm

The Orion Arm, or Orion–Cygnus Arm, is a minor spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy. It is of interest because the Solar System is inside it. The spiral arm is some 3.500 light-years across and approximately 10.000 light-years in length. The Orion ...

List of satellites of the Milky Way

List of satellites of Milky Way: Small Magellanic Cloud - 190.000 ly satellite of Milky Way Canis Major dwarf galaxy - 25.000 ly satellite of Milky Way Fornax dwarf - 427.000 ly satellite of Milky Way Large Magellanic Cloud - 160.000 ly satellite ...

Triangulum galaxy

The Triangulum galaxy is a spiral galaxy approximately 3 million light years from Earth in the constellation Triangulum. The Triangulum galaxy is the third-largest member of the Local Group of galaxies, which includes the Milky Way galaxy, the An ...

Spiral galaxy

A spiral galaxy is a kind of galaxy that looks like a flat, slowly rotating disk with a bulge in the centre, and spiral patterns extending outward from the bulge. It contains stars, gas, dust, dark matter and a supermassive black hole at its cent ...

Black Eye galaxy

The Black Eye Galaxy was discovered in 1779. It is a fairly close galaxy, just over 24 million light years away. It has a spectacular dark band of absorbing dust in front of its bright nucleus. This is why it is called the "Black Eye" or "Evil Ey ...

Messier 100

Messier 100 is an example of a so-called grand design spiral galaxy. It is visible in the southern part of constellation Coma Berenices. Messier 100 is one of the brightest and largest galaxies in the Virgo cluster, about 55 million light-years a ...

Messier 81

Messier 81 is a spiral galaxy. It is in the constellation Ursa Major. It is large. It is about 12 million light-years from Earth. It has an active galactic nucleus. For these reasons Messier 81 has been well studied by professional astronomers. T ...

NGC 6946

NGC 6946, also known as the Fireworks galaxy, Arp 29, and Caldwell 12, is a spiral galaxy in the constellation of Cepheus and Cygnus. It is about 22.5 million light-years away from Earth. It was discovered by William Herschel in September 9, 1798 ...

Whirlpool galaxy

The Whirlpool galaxy, is also known as Messier 51a, M51a, or NGC 5194. It is a large galaxy with well-defined spiral arms, with a smaller companion galaxy. They have been through a collision, and are still interacting. The Whirlpool was the first ...

Starburst galaxy

A starburst galaxy is a galaxy with a very high rate of star formation. The rate of star formation is so large that the galaxy will quickly use all of its gas reservoir. So, the starburst nature of a galaxy is a short phase in a galaxys evolution ...

Baby boom galaxy

The Baby boom galaxy is a starburst galaxy 12.2 billion light years away. It was discovered by NASAs Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology. The galaxy is the new record holder for the brightest starburst galaxy in the v ...

Centaurus A

Centaurus A or NGC 5128 is a prominent galaxy in the constellation of Centaurus. It was discovered in 1826 by Scottish astronomer James Dunlop at his home in New South Wales, Australia. NGC 5128 is either a Hubble type lenticular galaxy or a elli ...

Messier 82

Messier 82 is the nearby starburst galaxy about 12 million light years away in the constellation Ursa Major. It is five times brighter than the whole Milky Way and one hundred times brighter than our galaxys center. In 2005, the Hubble Space Tele ...

Galilean moons

The Galilean moons are the four satellites of Jupiter found by Galileo Galilei: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. They are by far the biggest of the many moons of Jupiter.

List of Jupiters moons

There are 79 known moons of Jupiter. Jupiter has the second largest number of moons with reasonably stable orbits of any planet in the Solar System. The most massive of the moons are the four Galilean moons, which were independently discovered in ...

Adrastea (moon)

Adrastea or Jupiter XV, is the second closest moon to Jupiter. It was found by David C. Jewitt and G. Edward Danielson in Voyager 2 probe photographs taken in 1979 and received the designation S/1979 J 1. In 1983, it was named after the mythologi ...

Amalthea (moon)

Amalthea is the third closest moon to Jupiter. It was found on September 9, 1892, by Edward Emerson Barnard and named after Amalthea, a nymph in Greek mythology. It is also known as Jupiter V. On Amalthea, Jupiter would be an amazing sight in its ...

Ananke (moon)

Ananke is a retrograde non-spherical moon of Jupiter. It was found by Seth Barnes Nicholson at Mount Wilson Observatory in 1951 and is named after the mythological Ananke, the mother of Adrastea by Jupiter. The adjectival form of the name is Anan ...