Starship Asterisk*

Duh! All 3 of my above questions are succinctly answered in the Wikipedia entry on barchan dunes , linked to from within the text of the March 3/08 Martian dunes APOD . The answers are: 1) Yes, wind is from upper left to lower right of Martian dunes pic. 2) Dunes move in same direction as wind. 3) I...

Three possibly obvious questions, but just to be sure for understanding the image & the previous posts, particularly neufer's last: 1) Which way is the prevailing wind blowing? I assume it's from the upper left to the lower right of the picture, i.e. the long shallow slope faces the wind, the st...

Great picture of Barchan Sand Dunes. An included scale, or note in the text, would leave me more time to wonder about the processes. (I did find a scale (cm / pixel!) by searching deeper). Many thanks for so many great images. Seeking, or suggesting the need for an indication of, the scale of the M...

That sounds kind of akin to the little paperclip guy in MS Word popping up when you do something familiar and trying to give you friendly "advice" :lol: Exactly! That's what I have in mind, but without the complexity and annoyance of interruption by an animated helper. Instead, the proces...

why not just put the correct APOD and date in the subject box when starting a new thread. Also put the link in your thread so everyone knows what you are writing about. Simple enough! This would deal with posts about a particular APOD and initiated from that APOD's page by clicking the "Discus...

You could probably write a simple javascript button for inserting today's APOD link. Yeah, but it's not just today's APOD link we're talking about, but rather a take-charge automagical way to apply the right URL link to any typed reference to a past APOD which includes the specific date. My origina...

What you'd really need is constant text monitoring process applying suitably shaped fuzzy logic, or even a big Boolean sort of script, to recognize and automatically link variously worded references to specific APODs to the correct web page within a few seconds, prompting for confirmation (with a di...

I found another excellent concise explanation of these diffraction spikes: http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/kaspar/obs_mishaps/images/int_reflection2.html I also realized that there is one bit of useful information that these diffraction spikes convey: in shots of extragalactic phenomena, diffra...

Ideally, users would include the URL for any specific APOD referred to in their posts on this forum, especially when a specific APOD is the main subject of their posting. Unfortunately the practice is rare, despite the convenience to readers, increased likelihood of responses, and the ease with whic...

In many astronomical images, stars have those characteristic lines of light coming out of them, usually 4 major lines forming a cross centred on the star, though not always perfectly vertical. Sometimes additional smaller fainter lines emanate from the star between the big 4 lines. I'm sure everyone...