Starship Asterisk*

BobStein-VisiBone wrote:

neufer wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote: I'm not saying it's great usage. Just that in this context it's obvious what it means.

Here Comet Machholz is seen approaching the Sun much closer than Mercury ever does (; or to be specific: "half as close").

Got it. The comet got half as close to the sun as Mercury. Obviously Earth is two and a half times as close.

neufer wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:

MarkBour wrote:
I'd say "half as close" is a phrase to be avoided.

I'm not saying it's great usage. Just that in this context it's obvious what it means.

Here Comet Machholz is seen approaching the Sun much closer than Mercury ever does (; or to be specific: "half as close").

Chris Peterson wrote:

MarkBour wrote:
I'd say "half as close" is a phrase to be avoided. What is the "measure of closeness" that is being halved?
It's sort of like saying "half as cold", when all we have is a measure of hot, not cold.

I'm not saying it's great usage. Just that in this context it's obvious what it means.

MarkBour wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:

rstevenson wrote: Well, that would depend on which English you're speaking, Canajun, Merican, Aussy, or Brit. “Half as close as Mercury” seems clear to me, though “half the distance of Mercury” would have been better. "Twice as close" is confusing because it describes a quantity that is one-half as large using the word "twice".

In the context of the caption, I'd say none of them are confusing, regardless of how "standard" we want to consider the constructions.

“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”
Bilbo Baggins, The Fellowship of the Ring, A Long-expected Party

I'd say "half as close" is a phrase to be avoided. What is the "measure of closeness" that is being halved?
It's sort of like saying "half as cold", when all we have is a measure of hot, not cold.

Chris Peterson wrote:

rstevenson wrote:

smitty wrote:Suspect it should have been "twice as close as Mercury," i.e., half the distance as Mercury. Words do matter, especially in science!

Well, that would depend on which English you're speaking, Canajun, Merican, Aussy, or Brit. “Half as close as Mercury” seems clear to me, though “half the distance of Mercury” would have been better. "Twice as close" is confusing because it describes a quantity that is one-half as large using the word "twice".

In the context of the caption, I'd say none of them are confusing, regardless of how "standard" we want to consider the constructions.

“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”
Bilbo Baggins, The Fellowship of the Ring, A Long-expected Party

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Angle_and_Spectrometric_Coronagraph wrote:
<<The Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) is one of a number of instruments aboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory satellite (SOHO). LASCO consists of three solar coronagraphs with nested fields of view:

• C1 - a Fabry–Pérot interferometer coronagraph imaging from 1.1 to 3 solar radii
  C2 - a white light coronagraph imaging from 1.5 to 6 solar radii (orange)
  C3 - a white light coronagraph imaging from 3.7 to 30 solar radii (blue)

These coronagraphs monitor the solar corona by using an optical system to create, in effect, an artificial solar eclipse. The white light coronagraphs C2 and C3 produce images of the corona over much of the visible spectrum, while the C1 interferometer produces images of the corona in a number of very narrow visible wavelength bands.

The LASCO instruments are not the newest.
They were built in the late 1980s, when a digital camera was something very special.

Sometimes disturbances do happen. There are two kinds that repeatedly occur:

• Blackouts and Whiteouts, in broken lines, circle-like shapes, or over the whole picture. They are caused by the electronics box. There has never been a firmware update, since it was judged as too sensitive changing the flight-software.
  
  Black and white pixels, occurring in patterns, without pattern or alone. Those "missing blocks" are telemetry dropouts, caused by radio interference or a disturbance in the data transfer to Goddard Space Flight Center.>>

Alex571 wrote:Halfway between the occulter and the left part of the image, is this another comet ?

Chris Peterson wrote:There are several other things in the image that look a bit like comets. I suspect all of them are cosmic ray hits on the detector.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arietids wrote:
<<The Arietids are a strong meteor shower that lasts from May 22 to July 2 each year, and peaks on June 7. The Arietids, along with the Zeta Perseids, are the most intense daylight meteor showers of the year. The source of the shower is unknown, but scientists suspect that they come from the asteroid 1566 Icarus, although the orbit also corresponds similarly to 96P/Machholz.

First discovered at Jodrell Bank Observatory in England during the summer of 1947, the showers are caused when the Earth passes through a dense portion of two interplanetary meteoroid streams, producing an average of 60 shooting stars each hour, that originate in the sky from the constellation Aries and the constellation Perseus. However, because both constellations are so close to the Sun when these showers reach their peak, the showers are difficult to view with the naked eye. Some of the early meteors are visible in the very early hours of the morning, usually an hour before dawn. The meteors strike Earth's atmosphere at speeds around 39 km/s.>>

rstevenson wrote:

smitty wrote:Suspect it should have been "twice as close as Mercury," i.e., half the distance as Mercury. Words do matter, especially in science!

Well, that would depend on which English you're speaking, Canajun, Merican, Aussy, or Brit. “Half as close as Mercury” seems clear to me, though “half the distance of Mercury” would have been better. "Twice as close" is confusing because it describes a quantity that is one-half as large using the word "twice".

Alex571 wrote:Halfway between the occulter and the left part of the image, is this another comet ?

rstevenson wrote:
“Half as close as Mercury” seems clear to me, though “half the distance of Mercury” would have been better.

smitty wrote:Suspect it should have been "twice as close as Mercury," i.e., half the distance as Mercury. Words do matter, especially in science!

smitty wrote:

Boomer12k wrote:

Abbawabba53@gmail.com wrote:
Does “half the distance of Mercury” mean the comet comes closer to the sun than Mercury or farther than Mercury?

Closer....me thinkest....

Suspect it should have been "twice as close as Mercury," i.e., half the distance as Mercury. Words do matter, especially in science!

Abbawabba53@gmail.com wrote:Does “half the distance of Mercury” mean the comet comes closer to the sun than Mercury or farther than Mercury?

APOD Robot wrote: ...
Neighboring stars dot the background.