Starship Asterisk*

To say two celestial objects are 180 degrees apart, is only valid when the point of observation [or, reference point] is cited. Any two objects are always 180 apart, since they lie in a straight line. That's true. But what I said was "180° apart in the sky", which I think should be reason...

If the universe is infinite it cannot grow, infinity +1 still equals the same number. Do you see why infinity is a hard limit to grasp? Your use of ∞ is trying to state that 2∞≻∞, that is incorrect, a false statement. Sorry, but you don't understand infinity. It isn't a number . You can't apply mat...

I can understand [now] that there are 2 kinds of opposition. The problem, as I see it, is that folks only say "opposition" without specifying which they mean. No, there really aren't two kinds of opposition. It should always be obvious from the context whether you are discussing oppositio...

Gosh this is beginning to take on the appearance that space is all in the imagination of mathematicians. Calculations of wobbles and strobes that indicate something is there. It seems to take trick photography, artist renditions, and graphic designers to convince us. ... I am truly let down, crushe...

Infinity is a conceptual limit, it does not exist passed our imaginations. I disagree. As a language construct, it is generally vague and ill-defined. But mathematically, it is rigorous, and there is no reason to think that in its mathematical senses it doesn't act as a proxy for something that exi...

If the universe and/or time were infinite, it would allow the mathematical statement "1/infinity" to be real value. The result would be any possible event would have to have taken place because the probability of any event would be equivalent to infinity/infinity = 1 or 100%, even if/when...

I have agreed earlier that the coma light is sunlight. Very nice picture. Are you saying the bright light in the HST coming from the core is sunlight too? That bright? Yes. The core, or pseudonucleus, is part of the coma as well. It consists of the same dust, just in higher concentration because of...

Is it really far fetched to think a very large thing like Jupiter could influence the orbit of a 2.2 mile wide piece of rock like Holmes? Holmes is orbiting in a region of the Solar System where orbits are not very stable. It probably began as a long period comet that was perturbed into a short per...

However, lending it some credibility by virtue of your knowledge, in the reference it states that dust etc keeps us from seeing the light from the galactic center. Dust completely blocks out the light of billions of suns. More correctly, thousands of light years of dust is able to block out virtual...

Chris, the lens flare around the moon is white and red and large, but I doubt that the white flare is because this is a low quality lens. That isn't the kind of flare I'm talking about. I'm referring to internal reflections between elements that produce secondary images of bright sources. They are ...

Would you like to share an example of one of your flares with us that you think demonstrates this effect. And don't forget, the flare needs to point 'away' from the light source with its brightest point furthest from the moon. Getting the same kind of flare means using the same kind of lens. Why no...

Undoubtedly, that lens open as it is on F4 is flaring quite badly from the moonlight, you can see the huge flare halo and its numerous flare spikes radiating out from the moons light source. But they are all WHITE - as they should be for a white source. However, this single spike is green and almos...

It seems to me that these are dichotomous. A solar system (or a single galaxy by itself) represents the stable "end state" (if there really is such a thing) of a process of gravitational interactions among the constituents. A group of continually colliding galaxies cannot be considered a ...

Are these galaxies all part of a "galactic group" or whatever the correct terminology is, i.e., with relatively small relative motion to one another, or are they just meeting at the same place at the same time just by happenstance? They are a true grouping, i.e. they are gravitationally b...

Are you talking about the inflection point at about 1000 arcseconds on the newest measurement or the one at about 500 arcseconds? The outer one, at 1000 arcsec. This is a little above the noise floor of the image. Each profile was taken the same way, perpendicular to the tail/spreading pseudonucleu...

In terms of Electric Theory, they would hypothesize that Holmes, in its northernmost venturing in its orbit, would possibly be encountering a different area of the solar e-field, and that is the reason Holmes became active. The idea that the Sun's weak electric field has any significant influence o...

badsocref, the simulation is amazing. I really appreciated it. Although, my question has not been explained, can anyone? Do the publishers of APOD just take the stars out? No. The image is exposed to show the Earth and the lunar surface, which are many, many times brighter than the stars. The stars...

I didn't realize Holmes, (and I appreciate your calling it Holmes and not Comet Holmes) only orbited the Sun between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, so it therefore does not qualify to be called a Comet, like all the media is calling it. It is a comet by any accepted definition. Comets are just sma...

How does one define the "edge" from which one determines the size of the coma? Is the "edge" of the coma where light transmissivity falls below some value for some frequency, or is it where the particle density falls below some # per m**3 or what? Is this also the standard defin...

Today's APOD still has the size of Holmes's coma wrong. As of Nov 21, the diameter of the dust coma is 3 million kilometers. On the date of the image, Nov 14, the diameter was 2.1 million kilometers. If you include the region of gas outside the dusty coma, those diameters are even larger. My profil...

One possibility is that the photos were not taken on the stated date. They might have been taken years before. But in Alaska early on the morning of 4 October 2007, the Moon was just past its last quarter; this is consistent with its culminating sometime in the wee hours before sunrise. Note that t...

Is the 'dust' of Holmes' coma 'finely divided' dust? I'm not sure what you mean by that, but the dust is certainly very fine. I'm planning on trying to estimate the size of the dust using the basic equations defining comet dust ejection velocities, but haven't had time yet for this. Has there been ...

Could your word 'gas' also be a euphemism for 'plasma'. If Holmes is outgassing plasma, the Sun's electric field in the solar system, which accelerates the solar wind, would also be accelerating Holmes' outgassed plasma. This would easily explain why the coma is increasing its size at an increasing...

Reports about the comet tend to run a little late, but today's APOD is substantially off in its estimate of coma size. As of November 17, the dust coma is 2.5 million kilometers in diameter, not 1.4 million. That makes it 80% larger than the Sun. I've been measuring the growth since the first day of...

1.) Launch tugs to deorbit old satellites (spendy...might be able to piggy back the tug with the replacement satellite). Most geostationary satellites are operational. It is part of their mission design that when they reach the end of their service life, they are boosted into a slightly higher orbi...