Starship Asterisk*

I think its incredible how we can take a side on view of the milky way, the perspective we get from this planet, and project a top view of it. How do we REALLY know if there are two or four arms? It looks the same from the side. But we have all these little intricate models, and its pretty exciting ...

Yup, I'm entirely sure the correlation is coincidental. . . All measurements are manmade anyway.

Irregular galaxies may not "necessarily" result from mergers. That is simply the process that produces most of them. It's possible that there are other causes as well. The LMC, for instance, which is an irregular galaxy showing a subtle barred structure, is probably a spiral that has been...

The galaxies are classified by shape according to our wikipedia friend here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_mor ... sification

Spirals, Ellipticals, are grouped together. All others are remnants of mergers, and irregular.

And for most reactions, you need TWO unstable components. Most of why explosions exist on earth is because of some hydrocarbon react with the oxygen (20% of atmosphere). If there were two naturally explosive compounds near each other, I'm sure the lightning would take care of them rather quickly.

Those arcs are the objects being telescoped around the galaxy. Its those bent lines. The image behind could possibly be seen from all sides around the galaxy doing the lensing. But for some reason, we only get part of an arc.

I can see the two pictures that were posted in this forum. And yes they are similar, in that they both show the same thing: an aurora. But to translate one image to another just to post it on APOD would be pointless. The photoshop work required would be quite a bit to change the aurora shape, the la...

There is so much iron in it that it reminds me of what might be a core remnant of a gas giant that has had ALL it's atmosphere stripped by solar winds. Whoa! What a thought. Never had any thought that that might exist. Except do we know what minerals are in the center of our four gas giants? I thin...

Hah! Sure. Does the equal day refer to the time between the peeking of the sun over the horizon or from the full sun appearing? And besides, I'm not so sure I get a full 180 degree view of the horizon here in the rolling hills of Iowa

And somewhere in between at somewhen inbetween

What do you mean points?

Lattitude & Longitude?

Oh you're probably right. But I wouldn't consider that new crushed form to be oxygen and hydrogen dissasociating either. Smashed into its own obliterating compactness maybe.

funny enough, pressure would cause hydrogen & oxygen to form into water, not water to disassociate

The less pressure, the more molecules you will have.

Le Chatlier's Princpiple (I believe, might have to look it up to confirm it)

I thought the dust trail looked like the 'finger of God' image from Michaelangelo.

I bet its a piece of dust, not Venus.

I've always loves the pleides. Every time they come around in the evening, the weather has started to cool here in Iowa. So I know winter is coming. The Pleides and Orion are my winter staples. I've heard that the Pleides, M45, Seven Sisters, is also known by the name Subaru. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa...

You can kinda of guess at the size of it based upon the curvature of the sun, it looks like the front picture may be 1/32 of the sun's circumference. The sun is wide, massive. See as the sun's radius is 700000 km, 2 * pi * r = 4.4 million kilometer circumference. Divide that by 32 = 150,000 km wide ...

I believe JPL has some information. Maybe they have more, but I didn't look any further.

http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=Holmes&orb=1

I don't think a minimum size of object means that you must have a maximum number of objects. Masswise, I think that there are only so many particles in the universe. Even though it goes beyond our perception of 14 billion years, I believe it exists. Whether that happens to be 10^50 particles or 10^1...

i'm not thinking there will be an antiphoton. a photon occurs with the annhilation of a particle and its' anti. They both dissapear and produce light. So its like the middle ground between the two anti-s. If a photon and an anti-photon hit each other and annhililated, what would the new form of the ...

was it strong winds during the picture or a pretty calm day? If the contrails are not from a plane, they must be from temperature differences. And judging that its so uniform, i would guess a calm day.

good idea case!

The galactic center is towards the constellations of sagittarius and scorpius. Up here in Iowa, at 42 degrees north, the galactic center is only visible to the south during the summer. In the southern hemisphere, it would be visible all year long. And by the way, I have a lovely panorama hanging on ...

Well, masses are measured using balances. The force of gravity upon the mass is compared to the force of gravity upon a second mass. If the gravity had changed, it should have absolutely zero effect upon the mass of the iridium-platinum kilogram standard. The balance would still be level because bot...

Assuming a perfectly spherical earth, The gravitational acceleration at the surface of the earth would be a=G M / R^2 G is a constant. And in this particular situation, we are keeping the (M)ass of the earth constant, and yet expanding the (R)adius of the earth. So M is a constant, but R is increasi...