Starship Asterisk*

geckzilla wrote:Are you talking about the faint, figure 8 structure coming out of the star? Maybe you should circle what you are talking about, if not.

Yeah, that's what I'm wondering about.

This is a beautiful APOD. When I viewed it at full size, I noticed this object. It's right at the top of the image, close to the middle. Does anyone have an explanation for what it might be?

Thanks for the great answer, Chris!

My favorite is the Carina Nebula. A cropped version of my favorite version appeared on April 25, 2007 and on other days I think, but here's the full version: http://heritage.stsci.edu/2007/16/index.html I especially like the Herbig-Haro object on the right side, about three quarters through the imag...

The image contains a number of defects or optical effects of some kind. Mostly they seem to be several grouping of black dots spread out at seemingly random places. And in one case, above and to the right of NGC 3621, 6 white dots circling a 7th dot. Does anybody have an idea how these are caused? ...

If it's a lens flare, can anyone provide an explanation for why the lens flare takes this strange shape, or at least provide any examples of similar lens flares?

I really liked this one. Andromeda is an absolutely beautiful galaxy, and it was nice to be able to compare it in visible and ultraviolet. You can see so many details in UV! Here's something that I found on the UV image that didn't appear in the visible. The image I cropped below includes the bright...