Starship Asterisk*

Thanks for the link to the Wikipedia item, geckzilla. But even the image in the Wiki item seems to contradict your statement that diffraction spikes are not a good indicator of distance. The (apparently) more nearby sources of light have spikes, whereas the seemingly more distant ones don't. Not int...

in any case, I still find it quite likely that they are a small pair of relatively nearby stars, moving quickly through space and changing their position in relation to their Seyfert Sextet background. Ann Thank you, Ann (and others), for all the interesting analysis of this image. Regarding the di...

You're welcome, Smitty. I hope the discussion of stars isn't too distracting from pictures of cats. Well . . . now that you mention it, Anthony, I was beginning to wonder whether perhaps I'd accidentally logged on to Facebook rather than an APOD discussion forum. I've noticed that these discussions...

Other beautiful double and multiple stars visible through a small telescope during this season include Gamma Andromedae at the northeastern end of Andromeda's brighter leg, Castor in Gemini, and Sigma Orionis in the eastern end of Orion's belt. Thank you for the tips on other pretty binaries, Antho...

Chris, yes, now that you mention it, Albireo it is! Thank you for refreshing my memory. What a beautiful pair, even in a small telescope!

Thanks, geckzilla. The slight specular spikes on the pair suggests that they're nearer us, perhaps within our Milky Way? I recall seeing a beautiful yellow-purple pair of binary stars somewhere in the night sky, but don't recall offhand exactly where. Lyra perhaps?

Can't help being curious about the bright pair (perhaps a binary star pair?) to the right and slightly above center in the image. The leftmost member of the pair appears to have a slightly yellowish tint, whereas the other has a bluer tint. I'm assuming this pair is unrelated to Seyfert's Sextet, bu...

Mea culpa! In a futile, lame defense of my own indefensible position on this, I'd have appreciated having the link appear where the eye-brow-raising statement was made, but that's just a nit pic. Case closed so far as I'm concerned.

Thank you, neufer; that's helpful! My original point was simply that this link (or one like it) should have been included in the APOD which sparked all this dialogue. But better late than never. And yes, I know, we can all go out and do our own research to answer such questions, but, again, some spo...

Just as a general comment to the APOD powers that be, if you make a statement which is virtually certain to raise eyebrows (e.g., "Neptune . . . emits more light than it receives from the sun") it would be considerate to provide a link to some generally accepted explanation.

Thank you for this helpful information. I continue to believe that intentionally running the risk of seeding extraterrestrial bodies with life forms from Earth is a very bad idea! I hope those in charge of future missions will reconsider.

Can anyone explain the rationale for attempting intentionally to send tardigrades to Phobos? At first glance, this sounds to me like a very bad idea! Had it succeeded, then if/when we find extraterrestrial life how will we know from whence it came? Maybe there already are (native) tardigrades on Pho...

And what about the amazingly dense and seemingly homogeneous background field of what I assume must be stars and/or galaxies? Is that part of any named star field or other named celestial wonder? Are we looking toward the center of the Milky Way? Not all sky images appear to have this sort of dense ...

So, neufer, I gather that what you're suggesting is that events which occurred on the far side of the pillars (relative to Earth) are visible in infrared wavelengths, which penetrate the pillars, but not in visible light, which does not. Correct? That does make some sense. Also an interesting bit of...

The discussion section of this apod puzzles me; it says: "The pillars of creation were imaged again in 2007 by the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope in infrared light, leading to the conjecture that the pillars may already have been destroyed by a local supernova, but light from that event has y...

And let's hope that if we ever do need to use this technology somebody double checks to see that the correct conversion between metric and English units has been made. Those awkward "oooops" moments are so embarrassing, not to mention potentially lethal.

Just keep posting any found mistakes here (but please don't call anyone names in the process) and they usually get fixed before the next day. Except in this case it still has not been fixed, more than a day later. It still says "up and to the left" on the main apod website. Not an earthsh...

Realistically (this is supposed to be about reality, right?), how much advance warning would we need to implement such a scheme? Getting the tractor into the vicinity of the asteroid would not happen instantaneously, even assuming we had a supply of such tractors on the shelf and ready to go. Moreov...

P.S. The caption of today's APOD appears to have been corrected now! The caption has not been corrected on my version of today's apod (and I just now reloaded it to be sure). Strangely, the caption is correct on the version which appears at the top of the discussion page. Fully concur, however, wit...

I'm confused! The description at the image of NGC 3628 which appears at the top of this discussion section says (correctly I believe) that the long tail is going down. But the write-up which appears on the main apod website says the tail is going up. What gives? Why the different descriptions?

While I have always been interested in NASA and Space Science, APOD keeps that interest fresh and expanding. Well said. This question is very much like your earlier question which asked whether APOD has increased our interest in science. Frankly, I think it's a poorly worded question . . . somewhat...

An oddly difficult question. I have always had a great interest in Science. APOD hasn't increased that, but rather fed my hunger. Even so, I understand the spirit of the question and that would require a different answer. APOD has been one of my favourites since the earliest days, along with spacew...

Happy Birthday, APOD! Thank you for helping to keep us mentally young, inquisitive, and challenged to understand this amazing universe in which we find ourselves.

I typically find the APOD text quite helpful. Occasionally I wish the text would comment on more of the interesting artifacts visible in a given image; an example is the recent GALEX: The Andromeda Galaxy, in which there were interesting blue and orange "fuzzies" which were not remarked on...

A quick note of thanks to Ann for her helpful comments about some of the artifacts in today's apod. Was surprised not to find comments about some of these artifacts in the main apod comment section, especially about the prominent blue and orange features at 7 and 4 o'clock, respectively. We're accus...