Starship Asterisk*

Red/Blue shifting is a very small thing. You can't see it with your eyes.

The normal way is to split the light with a prisim and see how the spectral absorption lines are shifted.

See http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap070624.html

gadieid wrote:

[u]APOD[/u] wrote:A common misconception is that the Sun is most distant during the winter,

It is not a misconception. It is absloutly true provided that you are in the southern hemisphere!

In 12000 years from now, as the Earth precesses, It will be absolutely false down under.

frozen wrote:Does the sun being closest in the summer & farthest in the winter in the southern hemisphere, result in warmer summers & colder winters overall than in northern hemisphere?

I remember seeing the answer to that question. The position adds an additional 2*C to the average temperature swing.

When I downloaded the APOD fo 6/12/07 and viewed it full size, I noticed a white spot in the upper left corner. This portion of the picture did not show up on the web page view of the picture. The spot appears in an L shaped opening between the plume trails. Can you identify this object? The captio...

I would guess that is was a flash from an Iridium satelite

fvanland, try going the direction I suggested: 50MB or smaller.

You'll also wait for the cache to empty down to the new size (weeks) or force a purge.

I suggest you switch to firefox.

That page has a lot of links and each one must be looked up in the cache to determine which color to display them in. Check your IE Internet Options/Internet files/General/Settings How much disk space are you using for the cache. The default on my laptop was 640MB. I use Firefox and its default is 5...

He's refering to http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060314.html

I actually see three land masses in the high res version . left and right near the shadow and a small portion at the top of the image. Rotating a global map I identify the right land mass as the western most point of africa. the left land mass is the western side of the south tip of africa. And the ...

about 1,1000,000,000 years

I assume you meant 1.1 Billion which is what I remember being the start of the collision

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap051224.html

We are spotting new extra-solar planets frequently now. In a few decades the 'scopes will be able to see an earth size planet with resolution like the picture.

Since the rings are totally outside the atmosphere of Saturn, the planet's mass can be treated mathematically as a point.

How would body rotation have any effect on the rings?

The moons however can affect the rings.

I remember reading elsewhere another comparison.
If saturn was the size of a (beach?) ball then the rings would be much thiner than a piece of paper.

In the picture we are facing West at the sunset

The caption says Does the Sun always rise in the same direction

and/or I could be an idiot

I wouldn't go that far

A previous APOD on light echos stated that it can appear to enlarge FASTER than the speed of light. If the matter was a perfect sphere centered on the pulsar, the echo would appear instantaniously - infinite speed. If the mater was a plane the speed would be initially infinite as the light intersect...

Star Wars and Star Trek are just too cool to be wrong!

Especially since Star Trek like Force Fields are now a reality!

This is from memory The Earth is 9 light minutes from the sun and takes a year to orbit the sun. Mercury is less than 1/3 of that and takes something like 88 days. Pluto is several light-hours out and takes 270 years. The stars orbiting around the sm black hole are 17 light-hours out but take just 6...

how do I get rid of those black bricks under icons

control panel/display/desktop/color allow you to change the color but unfortunately not the transparency.

When the moon hits your eye, like a big pizza pie, get off the refer my friend.

Googling gravity assist provides How does gravity assist work with interplanetary satellites and Cassini-Huygens: Operations-Gravity Assists

It wouldn't because speed is not conserved only total momentum. We slingshot probs around planets to get a speed increase to reach the outer planets. The large mass gets a minuscule change in direction/speed while the smaller mass gets a large change in both direction/speed. That neutron star must h...

Stellar collision - Google Search returned Scientists witness massive explosion due to stellar collision

And what is the green, red, and white donut in the upper left corner

That would be the Hubble 4000 and later models