Starship Asterisk*

[I must say, Neufer, before I’m dead and gone, that your exceptionally wonderful and talented efforts here are vastly appreciated !!! I admire your abilities to post text in color, include photos and data charts etc, to organize it in a logical and instructive way, and all your ingenious connecting ...

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101103.html http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=21875 Good Grief, Who wrote this description? They haven't a clue what's actually going on here. This is the same structural event as surrounds Supernova 1987a. Just compare them. The structures weren't 'ejected...

Yes, Thank You Chris Peterson, you are excellently knowledgeable in the observational disciplines of astronomy ! (however much we may differ on the theoretical astrophysics side) I was wondering if milli (as in m.a.s.) meant to multiply by 1000, it does ! As to the unevenness of the surface brightne...

In regards to what it is that the Casimir Effect is actually measuring, it is: The Entropic Floor of the local area, or of the universe if you prefer to call it that way. It is measuring the 'pressure' exerted on the outside of the plates, and the lack of pressure inbetween the plates, as it isn't p...

ROTFLMAO ! "provides evidence that the universe will expand forever" "in response to energy fluctuations in the vacuum of empty space" "evidence is accumulating that most of the energy density in the universe is in an unknown form dubbed dark energy" "but generated...

Bravo !! A Two Thumbs Up !! on the description accompanying the photo ! I appreciate the distance (700 LY est.) and the diameter of the object (2 LY dia. est.). Thanks very much for those, they always add substance to the photo. Now here's where I'd like to steer the direction of the discussion: &qu...

Absolutely beautiful photo !!! And my applause to Mainstream for continuing to launch and investigate with new and improved space based observational platforms !!! I do have some bones to pick about the interpretation of what we think we are seeing out there tho, but I'll keep my heretical views to ...

"Could it be that some sort of frequent pulse in the magnetic field causes the shape . ." I think you're on to the correct path of discovery 'CatchDude' ! The hexagon shape at Saturn's pole is due to some kind of harmonic within Saturn. Perhaps within the atmospheric density itself, or in ...

The APOD daily posting robot for each day's topic to be started for each day's APOD is a great idea ! (rather than waiting for someone to start it) As far as topic restrictions, you can't legislate morality, same problem here. We simply have our own ideas and want to talk about them. Less restrictio...

In looking out my window Sunday night Dec 13, a really large meteor streaked by, a minute later another ! Watching for 5 minutes prompted me to suspect we were having a meteor shower, and Dec 13 rang a bell, for which shower I didn't know. So it was the Geminids ! Thanks APOD ! What was unusual to m...

I believe that the well studied scientific discipline of fluid dynamics has a fairly good understanding of why a hexagonal shape will self generate when under rotational vector forces. I read some very good analysis on another discussion board a year ago. Surprising that mainstream astrophysics is s...

<< "The Ring Nebula lies about 4,000 light years away, and is roughly 500 times the diameter of our Solar System. In this picture by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1998, dust filaments and globules are visible far from the central star. This helps indicate that the Ring Nebula is not spherical, ...

If anybody asks me, and nobody did, I think ya'll have been posting too long. Hey, for a new perspective on things, and this one really blows my mind; We are 107 diameters of the Sun, from the Sun ! That seems a bit too close for comfort in some ways, considering how energetic and potentially volati...

Подумал я, если вы были риторическими или серьезный. LOL Как говорят в Шотландии, когда кто-то играет волынка плохо ", кто-то сжимая кошка снова". А во Франции, сокращенный вариант определения ноу-хау является: "Если он может продолжить работу, это ноу-хау". [as a translator of e...

Au contraire, I suspect Phobos was 'combed' by a giant space comb, akin to in the film "Spaceballs" when Darth Helmet ordered his men to 'comb the desert' in search for Princess Vespa, Fluke Starbucker, Barf and Lonestar ! (I'm afraid I must defer to Neufer and his amazing talents, to find...

Do I detect a first in this APOD? <<" . . . bright features identified as spokes that are thought to be groups of very small electrically charged ice particles." >> Mainstream admitting that there is 'electricity in space' ! But then they'll tell us, "Oh, we knew that all along."...

Hey Oren !

I'm not positive, but if supernovae are named like hurricanes, then SN2009js would mean: as j is #10 in the alphabet, and s is #19; then SN2009js is the 9x26+19 th supernova this year ? the 253rd.

<< I seem to detect a number of shapes within the molecular cloud that might imply spiral motion. Is there spiral motion, and if so, how does this effect the nebula shape. Thanks >> Correct. The apparent spiral shapes are exactly that, it's no illusion. We are looking lengthwise 'down the barrel' (l...

Poor Mainstream Science, they've really lost their way in thinking that hydrogen is being converted into helium deep within the Sun's core. Will the high priests of the BBT ever be able to unravel the religious mystery of how many neutrinos can dance on the head of a proton ? It's about that silly, ...

In relation to 'wind' forming or doing anything on Mars, it would have had to of been a very long time ago, as the Martian atmosphere is extremely thin. Atmosphere of Mars (from Wikipedia) Mars's thin atmosphere, visible on the horizon in this low-orbit photo. Mars lost its magnetosphere 4 billion y...

If we had a movie of the Crab Nebula, it would start out as a very large star, much like eta Carinae; http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080617.html Eta Carinae is thought to be 100-150 times more massive than our Sun. In the above APOD, eta Carinae the star, is in the middle, between the two big wh...

Fantastic photo !!! Makes me want to go to Mars and marvel at the beauty of the fractal patterns in the sand dunes, and maybe live there ! Mars has so many beautiful and awesome landscapes, tho they probably look best from above, from the surface I couldn't see it nearly so well. So curious that the...

<<Solar radiation causes the volatile materials within the comet to vaporize and stream out of the nucleus, carrying dust away with them. The streams of dust and gas thus released form a huge, extremely tenuous atmosphere around the comet called the coma.>> from Wikipedia Not to get into an argument...

"It is very, very faint; extremely tenuous," Verbiscer told Universe Today. "If you were standing inside the ring you wouldn't even know it. In a cubic kilometer of space there are only 10-20 particles. The particles are about the same size as fog particles , but they are very spread ...

"The new ring is canted 27 degrees from the main ring plane and is in a retrograde orbit around the giant gas planet. It is also quite large. As Anne Verbiscer from the University of Virginia commented: "This is one supersized ring. If you could see the ring, it would span the width of two...