Starship Asterisk*

Something you all seemed to have missed . . . Not only was this very picture featured on APOD 2004 Aug 3 - with the very same captions - but if you look closely (newest picture is best) at the bottom centre of the image , between the tracks there appears to be a size 10 Astronauts boot print! Any c...

Hey, if we have to don space suits and live under domes anyway, I vote for the moon hey Noel, this triggered a synapse ... When we leave earth we are removing mass ... I wonder how much mass moving it would take to change our orbit?... Probably a lot! Supposedly we gain about half a million tons pe...

The caption is mainly focussed on the shadow of the robot whereas the landscape appears to be a lanscape of frozen ice. Is that really ice or is it just an artifact of the photograph? It's light colored rock with the sun shining directly on it. It actually appears a little brighter than it would to...

CO2 doesn't freeze at the temperatures currently experienced near the poles of Mars. It could be CO2 permafrost, but presumably it's possible to estimate the sublimation rates based on the photos and determine if the sublimation is slow enough to be CO2.

Ahhh...I get it. Yes, as BMAONE23 noted, one of the main solar arrays was relocated. It was originally launched before the truss was added to provide power beyond what the small arrays on the Russian modules could generate, so the US Unity and Destiny modules would have plenty of juice. Then the tru...

Wow...I didn't hear this before. Is the splashing confirmed by NASA anywhere?

The is a camera on the robotic arm. It is not a microscope, but it can focuse pretty close. However, it can not operate underneath the lander, or at least the operators will not risk moving it around under the lander.

For instance, why has the orientation of the main limbs changed from being at right angles to being in line? John I'm not sure I understand your question, but I think it's a simple matter of not understanding the orientation. Look at this rendering of the station as it will appear when finished to ...

It is a fantastic image. I was hoping to get a desktop sized copy, too. Alas...the original authors retain copyrights beyond that granted for the purposes of APOD. However, Anthony Ayiomamitis' site says he's very open about granting usage rights to his image, so contacting him might prove worthwhil...

That would rock!

It wouldn't be much brighter than the Milky Way, however. We'd still need long exposures to capture the brilliant details like we see in the iconic galaxy pictures.

Very nice bit of etymology Henk. Thank you. Regarding star collisions, consider this. The sun has a radius of 1.4 million kilometers. The distance to the nearest star is 9.5 trillion kilometers. That's 7 million times as far. Envision a target where the sun is the bullseye and the outer ring is the ...

I agree. Additionally, supernova aren't overwhelmingly bright in the visible/infrared light portion of the spectrum, so I'm sure it's unlikely that we'd see one so easily compared to the billions of stars in the parent galaxy. I was under the impression that supernovae often outshone their host gal...

If Dennis was looking at this one: http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/3162/galaxyincomaclusterje6.jpg then that may be a merger happening, judging by the shape of soft glow, which may be distorted arms or distorted lenticular disk. I agree. Additionally, supernova aren't overwhelmingly bright in th...

Arramon, I think I watched the same program. Discovery channel? Yes, the jets cut off about 1 meter above the ground. I don't think the jets they showed in the program up close were actually burning though. I think that was just an inert liquid being pumped through injectors to test the pulsed modul...

From the caption: The Kibo laboratory segment being deployed during space shuttle Discovery's trip to the ISS can be pressurized The Kibo PM (pressurized module) not just can be pressurized, it's never been depressurized. Interesting to see it sitting on Destiny like that. I've never seen any well o...

IR actually, not UV. The press release says blue is 3.6 micron, green is 8 micron, and red is 24 micron. This is 3-5 octaves below visible light. Oops, my mistake. Wave lengths comparable to every days weather satelite images (3.9 (fog, stratus), 6.2 (water vapour) and 10.8 (cloud top) μm) Looks li...

Seems to me looking at a galaxy off in the distance face-on is pretty different from looking at one from the inside, from off to the side. How far does galactic material rotate in 100,000 years? What we can see from here, now, of the other side of our galaxy is many millenia out of date, while the ...

You're right...dust doesn't glow. Minor nitpick. For the purposes of the OP's question, this is correct: we are seeing dust because it reflects (or in other pictures blocks) starlight. However, technically anything warm glows as it radiates energy. Typically, this is far below the wavelength of vis...

It's too clean! Of course, until someone actually heads north about 100,000 light years and takes a picture, we won't really be able to say exactly what it looks like, but none of the other galaxies are ever this clean looking. Any volunteers? I'll let you borrow my camera, but you'll have to pay fo...

HERE is a link to the Spitzer Web Page with the entire mosaic. HUGE IMAGES There's more viewing options here, including a Google maps-style viewer with zoom and panning: http://www.spitzer.caltech.edu/Media/releases/ssc2008-11/moreinfo.shtml It's NOT the whole galaxy, Andy! Only about 8 degrees wor...

I don't think it's a sundog. It's a long straight pillar, and it's definitely blue-hued. It's not a sun pillar, either, as it is offset from the sun. I think it's a fixed, vertically oriented spotlight a couple miles away, perhaps just for the purpose of creating that glow (maybe something promotion...

I believe the spiking is caused by the lens in the camera or telescope. 30 years ago, your explanation was the only one. Nowadays, when processing raw digital images with some form of the Bayer algoritm , recently i saw similar spikes without a telescope. When i used the same lens on another camera...

And there seems to have been slight horizontal movement of the craft at touchdown. In the far blast exposure there seems to be a very small amount of soil disturbed by the pad and rolling down ending atop all else. So the engines must have been shut down just prior to touchdown. And while two thrus...

It seems most likely that this is permafrost that was exposed by the thrusters blasting loose sand away during landing. The loose sand covering is not necessarily uniform in depth (we know there's ripples in the soil, we see it in the polygons), nor is the soil necessarily all exactly the same tempe...

Interesting points about the AFM. Presumably they've thought of these things. I believe the AFM is mounted on the rover body, and samples are held in front of it on a collector plate built into the robotic arm, but certainly the robotic arm would be more prone to vibration than the rest of the lande...

For some reason, Odyssey didn't relay the commands it received to Phoenix. Normally radio communications are done through the orbiters instead of direct from the surface, because they have more frequent line-of-sight to earth and are also capable of higher data rates. It does not appear to be a prob...