Starship Asterisk*

I guess I'm prepared to give zooites - or at least some zooites - more credit; if they say it's quite unusual, with respect to the (tens of) thousands of galaxies they've looked at, I can but agree. Subsequent posts in the forum thread bear this out: no zooite has come along and said, in effect, &q...

Nereid wrote: I'm glad that you like galaxies (and by not responding to what I wrote about the Ashes of Worlds thread, I guess you aren't much interested in white dwarfs). I'm afraid that's it, pretty much. :( Well, OK. Horses for courses, and all that. Two things trigger my interest in astronomy. ...

This page has been viewed quite a few times (well, relatively speaking); I wonder what the others who read the posts here thought? Since you asked... I looked at the first pic and thought, "It's a galaxy." Full stop. If we had a better picture we'd be able to say more than that about it, ...

I don't doubt that it's a galaxy Ann! :D And yes, the various blobs close and not-so-close could be related satellite or dwarf galaxies, and they could be responsible for the odd appearance of this object. A higher resolution image would surely make its nature much more clear! So would, I suspect, l...

Thanks Ann (awfully quiet here, isn't it?). Being disturbed - by another galaxy that's now hidden (e.g. behind the core of this one) or long gone (e.g. has moved so far away that's it's not visible in the immediate vicinity) or dark (e.g. a galaxy composed almost entirely of dark matter) - is certai...

No doubt many people who hang out here know of the Galaxy Zoo citizen science project. Probably many have also signed up, and spent a pleasant hour or two classifying galaxies. But did you know that there's a forum associated with Galaxy Zoo ? It was on this forum that the object which became known ...

Per their website, four volumes of the Open Astronomy Journal have been published so far, one each for the years 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. The first volume contains two "General Articles"; the second, 16 such papers; the third, nine; and the fourth also nine. There are altogether four &q...

IIRC, at least one of the microlensing searches (MACHO) uses/used the achromatic nature of gravitational lensing/deflection to select candidate events: they looked for stars which showed the same rise in brightness in their red band as in the blue (within their estimated uncertainties). While false ...

The Open Astronomy Journal , published as part of Bentham OPEN . From the website: Aims & Scope The Open Astronomy Journal is an Open Access online journal, which publishes research articles, reviews, letters and guest edited single topic issues in all areas of astronomy and astrophysics. The O...

Another thing to keep in mind is that gravitational lensing is achromatic; the observed effect is exactly the same, whether you're observing it in the red part of the visual waveband or the blue ... or in UV, or IR, or x-rays, or radio! So, for example, the apparent position of a quasar - one that's...

Very cool!

Well done.

There are an awful lot of steps to be investigated, and hypotheses tested, between the published Longo work and conclusions like those thrown around so easily in the articles referenced! :P Perhaps the most basic is this: what does the apparent 'handedness' of a spiral galaxy tell you about its angu...

Okay after watching the lecture and the other posts, I'll go with the concept that the singularity that resulted in our universe was the result of a black hole in another universe. Go with whatever you like, but keep in mind there's not the slightest shred of scientific evidence to support that vie...

Thank you all for your replies about the possible separations of atomic ions and electrons. You sort of connected most of the strings of knowledge for me about this subject. You're most welcome. In any case, a series of experiments done at the University of Washington - the Eot-Wash experiments - p...

When I read the more serious and detailed reports, much of the jargon is confusing. There may be a good textbook that could clarify some of my confusion if the jargon is really standardized. Some of the limitations as I understand them are: the alignment of the structure w.r.t. to the earth's obser...

Hello Nereid, I will investigate SAO/NASA ADS. Thanks for the tip. You're most welcome. :ssmile: I am strictly an amateur astrophysicist. My interest in these objects is an investigation of how they expel matter over the period when they are creating various shells of metals in their cores. I have ...

Does anyone know of any spectra of this SNe that are available, on the internet?

I wish to add a twist to the original question. Let's assume a Kuiper Belt object the size of Pluto was orbiting at 50 AU just outside the constracting disk of material. This assumption is dis-regarding whether such objects would have been produced at this time. The material continues to contract t...

I reviewed the Helix Nebula. Astronomers are focused on the knots and assymetry of the rings - only using spectral lines that are most easily imaged to obtain kinematic models. I need studies that possibly include lower ionization energies which would be found on the outer regions of planetary nebu...

We know globular clusters are very old, so the process of evaporation must take a while. Have astronomers speculated on possible variables that might affect the length of time it takes for a cluster to evaporate? Overall mass? Relative velocities of stars within the cluster? In addition to what Chr...

It is as certain as anything can be that this is not the cause of gravity. The forces are completely different ones. If electrical charges were somehow involved, you'd expect the mass of a charged object to change, wouldn't you? Or if you have some other definition of mass, the weight would change ...

That was a pretty neat video of the reflection, Nereid. It brought to mind a song the Supremes sang about 'reflections'. From what i could make out from the video, It would seem that the supernovae and the reflection are about equal distance from here, and that we are getting the reflection from an...

Thank you all for your replies about the possible separations of atomic ions and electrons. You sort of connected most of the strings of knowledge for me about this subject. You're most welcome. I have always wondered whether a conglomeration of particles that we call a mass always has some minute,...

When a supernova very energetically creates and emitts plasma do the positive ions and electrons ever get randomly separately by large distances possibly creating pockets of ions and electrons that cannot easily recombine ? There are physical processes which result in some ions being separated from...

An old-ish post, but still ... My question is: If were seeing galaxies as they looked in the past. Could it be possible that were seeing our own galaxy too? We could see our own galaxy-in-the-past, if there were some sort of giant mirror in the sky, reflecting the light from stars in the Milky Way b...