Starship Asterisk*

Note the tinge of blue in parts of Saturn's limb. I take back what I said about the color of Saturn's limb. I looked at the APOD at work, and my computer there made it look blue. My home computer doesn't. In fact the colors don't overlap, and Saturn's left limb is red, with a blue arc just inside i...

What happens to planets and the elements they are made of when they are engulfed by stars becoming Red Giants? I found an article at Science Daily that talks about the far future of our Solar System. It gives some sense of what happens -- which, of course, depends on how close the planet is to its ...

Thanks Art.

Rob

https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/90000/90952/virginislands_oli_2017253.jpg Irma Turns Caribbean Islands Brown Earth Observatory Sept. 12, 2017 <<These natural-color images, captured by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the Landsat 8 satellite, show some of Irma’s effect on the ...

This photo is the first instance of seeing a yellow cone at the 12 o'clock position. It appears like a flashlight (torch) shining upwards and the source appears to be a single bright star. Is this an illusion? Has anyone else noticed this before? It sure looks interesting. There appears to be a bri...

... For all of July and August, we had temperatures in the high teens, with a maximum of 21°C, and rain nearly every day- around 20 cm for the two months. Perfect weather, so much better than recent summers that were warmer and drier. ... Perfect weather!? Nova Scotia could always use a couple of n...

... For all of July and August, we had temperatures in the high teens, with a maximum of 21°C, and rain nearly every day- around 20 cm for the two months. Perfect weather, so much better than recent summers that were warmer and drier. ... Perfect weather!? Nova Scotia could always use a couple of n...

Fascinating reading! My idea of a good time waster.
Thanks.
Rob

heehaw wrote:How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

Um, jus' a minute ... I know I've got an equation for that around here somewhere ... ... ...

Rob

And you, saturno2, are a poet.

Rob

... The Sun is indeed big. Its diameter is some 110 times the Earth diameter, so the projected, two-dimensional surface area of the Sun is ~38,000 times the projected, two-dimensional surface of the Earth, unless my shaky math is failing me. ... I went the pedantic route, using A=4πr 2 for the Sun,...

Chris Peterson wrote:... Yes, different motivations. But they are all operating with the same epistemological defect, a refusal to accept convincing photographic evidence if it conflicts with their existing biases.

Apropos of which...
Rob

Ann wrote:Yum for tomatoes! No for the squirrels!

Now don't be prejudiced. Squirrel tastes just fine.

Rob

So I pulled off my glasses again, and noticed there wasn't much apparent light reduction (nor would there be even when the sun was 70% eclipsed). It was no darker than if there'd been a passing cloud. But the effect was nothing like cloud diffusion. The light was somehow harsh and unpleasant. It re...

I'd say coincidence. But hey, maybe if it was possible to look at all technological civilizations that ever existed in the Universe, we'd find that they all have to have a satellite that closely matches their parent star in size to allow for fancy eclipses. Throw that in your Drake Equation and see...

Quite a few discussions here at the Asterisk devolve into definition games, as each of us has a sense of how we like to use certain words. That's how languages evolve, of course. In this case coincidence has two common meanings... 1. a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without appare...

The Moon formed about 4.5 billion years ago, not long after the Earth. It is gradually getting farther away from the Earth. (For an explanation of why this is happening, see the Tidal Evolution part of the Orbit of the Moon Wikipedia page.) Now, 4.5 billion years after the Moon formed, we happen to ...

Fun F**ts: ... A three-country poll conducted by Angus Reid Public Opinion in July 2010 found that Canadians swear more often than Americans and British when talking to friends. ... ... Functionally similar behavior can be observed in chimpanzees, ....>> From which I conclude that Canadians are mor...

keesscherer wrote:It is the same picture as the 12 aug 2015 APOD: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150812.html
I was not aware that APOD used the same image more than once. It is an awesome image though!

The Sunday APOD image is almost always a repeat; it has been so for many years.

Rob

Are the features exaggerated? Caption says the colors are enhanced, but what about the vertical relief? The mountains look much higher than they ought to given the scale. Craters look too deep. I was wondering that myself, and found this on the "featured two-minute time-lapse video" page ...

Catalina wrote:Anyone have a explanation for the very well-defined, tightly convoluted, squiggly lines going across the front of NGC 6559? They are like dust lanes I have never seen.

That looks a lot like my signature. (Really, it does!) But I was never there, honest.

Rob

A great image, but I don't understand the caption. The caption states that the person being photographed in front of the eclipsed sun died a week before the eclipse he was photographed in front of. What am I missing here? I'm going to take a wild leap into the unknown, and posit that the person in ...

Chris Peterson wrote:

rstevenson wrote:I'm curious about the dragging marks, from bottom-center up to the right, along with the sideways footsteps accompanying the marks.

Those are the marks left behind from dragging the body of one of the camera operators off the sound stage when he threatened to go public. ...

I knew it!

Rob

I'm curious about the dragging marks, from bottom-center up to the right, along with the sideways footsteps accompanying the marks. I'm guessing something like dragging a sample bag, but I'd love to know for sure. I imagine there's a log somewhere detailing the astronauts' tasks for that day. It wou...

That's faster than a Mars rotation, which corresponds to about 24 hours and 40 minutes. So on Mars, Phobos can be seen to rise above the western horizon 3 times a day. Still, Phobos is doomed . “Still”? Shouldn’t that be “therefore,” Phobos is doomed? adverb: still 2. nevertheless; all the same. &q...