Starship Asterisk*

Intertnet. If the earth has become less dense, then yes it would affect the gravity at the surface of the earth. It would be slightly less. But it would not affect how the earth's gravity pulls on the moon or any such other force, only the force on the surface of the earth. But I would be at a loss ...

That's pretty good Jimmy.

Interesting tangents this conversation has turned into . . .

Well, the moon is larger than all the oceans of the world volume by a factor of 17.

The moon's volume is 2.19 x 10^10 km^3
All the oceans in the world make up 1.3 x 10^9 km^3.

So if it did grab some of the pacific, the area of the pacific is definitely not the majority of the mass of the moon.

You could start by asking just how much the earth is expanding per year in this theory. Assuming exponential growth, I calculated it out to an increase in circumference of 37 cm per year. In 10 years, it should have increased 3.7 meters. If this theory is true, then this increase in size should be n...

Like Betelguese and Rigel, Deneb has to be massively bright in order to be one of our brightest stars here. Betelguese is 400 plus or minus 100 ly away, Rigel is 800 +- 200 ly, and deneb is 3000 +- 1000 or so. In contrast, Sirius, the brightest star, is 8.6 light years away. So deneb, in order to be...

Right, you would just be on a different elliptical than them. It would appear to go further towards the earth, and then back again. But it would always be in sight.

Jupiter moves quite slowly: pretty close to Antares for the whole of 2007. The precise position of Jupiter among the background stars suggests the APOD was taken around the beginning of August, at the end of the retrograde motion. Good. But being 42 degrees north, I really only see Scorpius during ...

I would like to point out something interesting about this picture. Antares is usually the brightest object in scorpius. to our naked eye, it is a red pulsating star, positioned right about the heart of the scorpion. It took me a few moments to find, but Antares is actually the bright Yellow Star in...

That's a better question that you give yourself credit for. First off, that star as we are viewing it now, we see light that was created 12.7 billion years ago, and the object was 12.7 billion light years away. Funny enough, I have no idea just how far it is away at this exact moment. And so the qua...

Yeah, that would be Antares, Heart of the Scorpion!

For the telescope that requires very cold temperatures, such as the infared telescope, it would be better to be a bit further away from the space station and its heat radiation. But it wouldn't need to be too far. It might be able to be a full mile away easily. Who knows.

Relooking at the picture, it shows two dust rings. The outer one might be fine, if as you said, with much less defined borders. But I would venture a guess that the inner one would not be able to exist in such a stable orbit.

If you get out far enough on the orbit, the two stars act as one point mass. And if the dust pattern is as far out as the picture shows, it could very well be similar to a circular dust ring. It might have eddys, but would be generally circular. It would not be circular, however, if the other pair o...

Looks like a single missing pixel to me.

You can barely take a picture on a clear night away from town with just a normal point and shoot camera and expect the stars to show up. Much less even if there are large bright objects in the foreground. You won't see any if there is a lit lamp in the picture.

I thought antarctica just had more land mass than greenland.

I think it is typical.

I think the diffraction streaks arise from the amount of light or brightness of the object. The closer it is, the brighter it is (on average ) and the larger the diffraction spikes.

The comet shape looks to be the same color and consistancy as the rest of the nebula, I would venture to say it is part of it.

And if I had to make a guess, I think the boomerang shape is also part of it. But I'm not quite sure how that would work.

maybe. Unless the clouds got in the way. I know our clouds and jet stream move the hot areas of the troposphere around. its not uniform by any means. Maybe the other layers of the atmosphere are. There is probably some wondrous mixing going on.

As far as I know, a light ray or wave can have any amplitude and frequency. The problem is that if we get an amplitude too large or small, we have no equipment to measure it anymore. Same is true with the frequency. Any light wave can also be called a light ray. Gamma rays refer to a specific group ...

Green dominance would probably not directly affect the plant evolution, I believe. Notice how plants are green? That is because they reflect green light and absorb the rest. They use Red, Yellow, Cyan and Blue to make their sugar and not the green color. Although it is a good thing that our eyes can...

Actually, i meant I liked the word 'codswallop'. The picture is nice too.

Codswallop? I like it.