Cyprus Astronomy Organisation

The first stars to form after the Big Bang would have been made entirely of elements made in the Big Bang itself which are the lightest and simplest like hydrogen, helium and lithium. The heavier and more complex elements which astronomers call "metals" were made in subsequent stars thermonuclear furnaces. The first stars seeded the universe with the heavier elements when they exploded as supernovae.

Atoms-for-Peace is the curious name given to a pair of interacting and merging galaxies that lie around 220 million light years away in the constellation of Aquarius. It is also known as NGC 7252 and Arp 226 and is just bright enough to be seen by amateur astronomers as a very faint small fuzzy blob shining around 12,2 mag.

High over the peak of a long dead volcano on the Martian equator, a feathery white cloud stretches across the sky. At first glance it looks like the plume of an eruption, but Mars is a world with a cold, dead heart.

Pegasus is a constellation recorded in ancient times by Ptolemy and is one of the 88 official constellations established by the International Astronomical Union. It is a constellation of the northern hemisphere of the celestial sphere and is bordered by eight constellations, namely: Andromeda, Jura, Swan, Alopex, Delphin, Hippopotamus, Aquarius and Pisces.

How long will Earth continue to have total solar eclipses?

Eclipses occur because the Moon and the Sun are coincidentally the same size in our sky, but will that always be the case? The observed size of an object in the sky depends on its actual diameter and its distance from us.

After a series of observations of many years, astronomers ranked the Stars in 7 groups (O - B - A - F - G - K - M) according to the type of spectrum of each Star. For each spectrum type class there are 10 subdivisions denoted by numbers from 0 to 9.