Starship Asterisk*

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap071007.html

How did they count the 2 million galaxies in the image? Did they count in a small square and extrapolate to the rest of the image?

The blurb for today's (9/20) APOD says Deneb is a supergiant. So does the web site the highlighted link goes to. I always thought that the term "supergiant" referred to the next to last stage of a massive star's life, e.g., "red supergiant" or "blue supergiant". Is Dene...

Maybe we have just located the Center of the Universe ? I have always imagined that if Big Bang occurred, then all matter would depart the center in a spherical shape and thus leave a void behind so that in fact the Universe would be a hollow sphere ! ..................and that we are located in so...

Here is another APOD picture of Mira, taken by the Chandra x-ray telescope.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060722.html

Clicking on one of the highlighted links will give you more information about Mira.

(1) I was wondering about the mechanism that causes the variability. On Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mira_variable ), it says the variability is caused by repeated contraction and expansion of the star. Mira's variability, from nearly invisible to magnitude 3.5, seems to be extraordinar...

Given that the tail started forming at it's current start position (hypothetical) I calculate that the star has been leaving this trail for around 30,000 yrs based on it's current speed. Anyone confirm or correct this? Mira is a known double star and is also part of a Binary system If you click on ...

LOL! I plead ignorance. I think that was sort of the point of my question. (And thanks, Don!) How are those starry clouds made visible via photography? Sort of a question--and I'd love an answer if there's one that is simple enough to explain here--and sort of expressing my awe. Good luck, Lee! It ...

So, to get back on topic... :D I realy am very interested in getting into astronomy and specificaly into astro-photography. It's been an interest of mine most of my life (most of the 40 years of it), but I've just recently decided to persue it as a personal hobby. Any tips on hardware/software or a...

I do not see a reference to time in Mary's post. Her reference to light-years seems to me to be the same as saying "I am miles behind you" or "You are miles ahead of me". I don't really see a problem with that. In any case, both of our responses are pretty far off-topic to the q...

Hello All What is your opinion on this link? http://www.viewzone.com/milkyway.html "This first full-sky map of Sagittarius shows its extensive interaction with the Milky Way," Majewski said. "Both stars and star clusters now in the outer parts of the Milky Way have been 'stolen' from...

http://www.light-science.com/alpher.html Ralph Asher Alpher authored his Ph.D. dissertation on the Big Bang theory in 1948. His mathematical formula brought into being the scientific theory of the origin of the universe. His paper said the universe occurred 14 billion years ago with a superhot expl...

Mary Nell wrote: I'm light years behind you

Really? Where are in the sky are you located now?

Mary, a light year is an unit of distance, not time. It drives me crazy when people use it for time. A light year is the distance light travels in one year, approximately 6 trillion (million million) miles.

I'm not certain exactly when the nebula came into being but if it's parent star exploded 10000 years ago, we have been able to view it for the last 9300 years. It will continue to expand, at most likely it's current rate, and in another 9300 years it will likely be twice its current size and half a...

I don't think there's any case of a black hole being seen as a silhouette. They are just too small, even if one did happen to pass right in front of a star (which itself is unlikely). Black holes are detected indirectly, by the radiation emitted by gas and dust falling into them. Such radiation can...

Black holes are transparent,arent they..?how can u detect them..?if there was a black hole..some of the pictures might be black due to the gravitational force that sucks all the matter around the black hole.. Hmmm..cant see it though..@@ If by transparent, you mean being able to see the background ...

I doubt that is a black hole because what you called the corona of the star is just the overexposed image of the bright star spilling over to adjacent pixels. So the black hole couldn't be seen there. All stars except one (that I know of) can be seen only as points even through the largest telescope...

The explanation pointed out two other bubbles in addition to the large bubble in the Spitzer image. I espied a semi-circle of stars at approxmiately 12 o'clock position above the tight cluster of stars. Is it another bubble or just a coincident arrangement of stars?

Can we see the same sight by naked eyes from any dark, high altitude location or only a fainter, less glorious version?

Nah, you are all wrong. It is what is left of a nest of giant paper wasps, the pesky kind that you find under the eaves or porch of your house. Someone on Saturn knocked it off with a baseball bat (see the indentation that looks like a crater) and sent it into space.

Harry, instead of putting in only few lines of statements, why don't you give us an in-depth explanation of why your conjectures and hypotheses are correct? Please don't say you are working on it because if you know what you are talking about, you would have thought about your beliefs for a long tim...

It has been awhile since we saw the latest HST photo of Supernova 1987A in LMC. I wonder how far the blast wave has travelled by now. The last time I saw, it had lit up the inner ring.

http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsde ... 09/image/q

When we speak of vacuum in space, we are talking about relative to Earth's atmosphere, but you are correct that there is no such thing as pure vacuum up there. Space is filled with anything from sub-atomic matters to gas and dust molecules to meteorites to planets to stars. The comet's tail is creat...

Yes, galaxies do have a magnetic field, albeit a weak and disordered one compared to Earth's. Earth's magnetic field strength is about 5.0x10-5 Tesla. Our Galaxy's is about 5.0x10-10 Tesla, 100,000 times weaker. What you see in the picture is not, however, due to the galactic magnetic field. The exp...

Harry, It sounds like black holes are your favorite things! :D From your posts in several threads, you seem to think that black holes and their jets if they have any are the answer to almost everything! As Qev and others stated, the jets don't have enough matter and spread to trigger new star format...

I'd say the probability of stars colliding during a collision of two galaxies is very low due to the vast distances between stars. For example, the distance between our sun and Alpha Centauri is 4.4 light years, or about 26,000,000,000,000 miles. Compared that with the sun's diameter of 880,000 mile...