Starship Asterisk*

Chris Peterson, thank you for this excellent reply/clarification! Makes sense! Might have been good to have added a word about this to the original APOD discussion, but glad to have it now.

". . . this comet will likely not return to the inner Solar System." And the reason for this is . . . ? Would be nice to answer this obvious question! Why/how is this comet different from other comets that do return to the inner Solar System?

Thank you for the answer about the little white dots! Much appreciated!

What are all the little white dots?

World's largest Golden Dream cocktail, perhaps? https://www.thespruceeats.com/golden-dr ... ipe-759302 .

Cool, but would have been helpful to have some sort of arrow or pointer pointing to the exact location of the flashes.

johnnydeep wrote: "There may in fact be no "ground" on Jupiter, which may not have a core. And even if it does have a core, it is quite small compared to the height above it that that storm is moving, making a "ground speed" fairly meaningless." Picky, picky, picky! Oka...

Has anyone calculated the "ground speed" at which the storm is traversing the planet? Appears that it would be quite fast, relative to the typical ground speed of hurricanes on earth, for example. Fascinating!

Thanks again, Ann, for your helpful, informative replies to my original question about planets. I'm glad I asked . . . I learned much from your replies.

Ann, thank you for your excellent answer! Just the sort of helpful answer I was looking/hoping for.

So is it no longer possible to get a serious answer to a serious question here?

Is there evidence -- pro or con -- of any planets orbiting Betelgeuse? Thanks.

I see a "small" chicken with a yellow beak located just where the blue transitions into the yellow and orange. The chicken is facing toward 11 o'clock. Amazing what the power of suggestion can do.

Regarding SpaceCadet's question about life surviving on Mars, it might be helpful to explore what we know about the world of extremophiles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extremophile .

Anybody know whether other, similar holes have been found on Mars, and if so how many?

Have any other similar holes been found on Mars? If so, how many?

I have two questions for anyone who is more knowledgeable about technical details of the simulation: 1.) does the simulation appear accurately to represent the current state of the universe insofar as we're able to discern? 2.) If the answer to the first question is "yes," then what happen...

My earlier post here didn't generate a response, so I'm trying again (if at first you don't succeed, etc.). This APOD raises one request for clarification and a couple of questions: the text refers to an earth-based detection of methane on Mars in 2003, but the article to which this claim is linked ...

This APOD raises at least one request for clarification and a couple of questions: the text refers to an earth-based detection of methane on Mars in 2003, but the article to which this claim is linked is dated 2009 (please see https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3574 ). Since earth-based detection of methane ...

Question: if two galaxies -- each of which has a black hole at its center -- merge, what is current thinking about the fate of the black hole at the center of the smaller of the two galaxies? Where does it end up? And what havoc does it cause over the course of the merger?

While hating to rain on Elon Musk's parade, I have to say that one thing this Falcon Heavy "demonstration launch" truly demonstrates is just how out of touch billionaires such as Musk are with the real world in which they live. Rather than sending his car into space, Musk could have sold i...

Suspect it should have been "twice as close as Mercury," i.e., half the distance as Mercury. Words do matter, especially in science!

Can anyone offer an explanation for the amazingly uniform, almost leather-like nature of the terrain underlying the ice sheet? Thanks!

Thank you, Art Neuendorffer and Chris Peterson, for your helpful explanations! Mystery explained!

Maybe I'm just being dense here, but I'm confused/puzzled by the discussion for this APOD; if the orbital period of the comet is 5.4 years, why has it been sighted so infrequently (1858, 1907, and 1951)?