Starship Asterisk*

Don't worship the stars. Worship the one who made the stars and put them in their place. Great reference. Amos 5:8 Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the morning, and maketh the day dark with night: that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth...

I like the density wave example of the cars in a traffic jam. The cars from behind slow down because of the traffic, and the cars in front speed up to escape the jam. If this is the case, and these density wave spirals occur in galaxies because of the elliptical orbit of the stars around the center ...

There's no rule that says that the space station would have to be a perfect circle; as long as it was in perfect balance, it could turn and create gravity. A hexagon or octagon shape or similar structure would work. A hub with spokes and equal weight compartments on opposite ends would work. That w...

I want a photograph taken of me from 250 miles away!

Those space wasps would be huge!!!!! Worse than Jumanji.

I'll third that. Works fine for me.

You can stick with Mercury being a gas giant - I will vote against it. I think the orbits of the first four planets seem too close together to form gas giants. The gas giants in our solar system have swept away a huge portion of objects in their orbits - the next planet is no closer than 4AU any of ...

Ferrous wheel. HA

There was another discussion of a panoramic from the moon

Old Photo Discussion (Dec 10 2006)
http://asterisk.apod.com/vie ... f=9&t=9146

Different photo, but same situation

Its a panoramic, they won't all shine the same direction.

Technically. Thanksgiving is Thursday. Secondary schools typically have class on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Then take a break on Thursday, Friday. Private (not public) colleges can have breaks whenever they want, but publicly funded colleges tend to take all Thanksgiving week off. Michigan is a pub...

Thanksgiving week. American Holiday. School's out for a week.

I guess it is pretty standard that if you see the term: infrared or microwave or xray, then you know it is a false color image. But that is generally only noticed by audiences that are trained to see that sort of thing. To the random wanderer on the internet - The connected is not always made. It mi...

So let me make a prediction for Saturn: The hexagon shape leads to a small amplitude of the waves = fast speed of rotation. The rotational time I know is 10 hours: pretty fast! Especially considering the circumference of Saturn is 10 times our circumference. The earth had 5-6 peaks, and saturn curre...

I knew there was a good reason for the hexagon shape! It does correspond so well to our jet stream and other streams on the spinning earth.

So what variables affect its periodic pattern? Temperature? Planet rotation speed? Day length (summer or winter)?

Yes! I was excited to see it in the news last night, as well as on the radio this morning.

I don't think they're perfect vacuums. Even if they are better vacuums than most places on earth . . . If there is gas, it is no longer a perfect vacuum. Thus it will have a possibility to transmit energy by particle collisions : sound

Even if I do think this particular picture is justified, I won't say for 100% that all of the pictures that have ever been posted were astronomy related. But lets just enjoy them. Since you mentioned Epod, I tried to take a look, but it seems to be offline for the moment. And Egghead is just funny. ...

Astronomy has nothing to do with the Earth. The earth is not a planet. It does not rotate, and even if it did, the rotation would have nothing to do with egg-balancing or even the movement of the stars over the course of the night. ---- OR ----- The rotation of the Earth plays a major role in our un...

If you want to get technical, you switched longitude and latitude in #5 as well (when referring to declination and ascension). Every teacher misspeaks though, so it's not that big of deal. It doesn't stop me from listening in to the interesting topics.

I love it!

Something like that. . .

Lakshmi. . . Haha. So it seems our current model contains these as the different parts of our galaxy: A double bar in the center. A set of 3kpc arms around the center. A Major Arm originating from each end of the Bar = Perseus & Scutum A Minor Arm originating from each end of the Bar = Norma &am...

I was just wondering that same question, bystander. It had been four. Then it was two. Now its up to four again? Its evidently highly speculative. Maybe the ones on the far side are joined together into one massive arm, and the ones on this side are one massive arm. Then there are sub-arms. I'm will...

I'd never heard that really, Are they all visible to the naked eye?