Starship Asterisk*

Back when APOD was still linking into DIGG, I unknowingly stirred up an unpleasant discussion between the people that support gravitational fields as a dominant enforcer of our universe's properties and those that prefer the electrical/magnetic fields as the more important enforcer. I don't want to ...

With total awe and admiration for those simple tracks winding across that dusty surface, I couldn't help but hear the melody from this old song floating through my mind: Cool Water All day I face the barren waste without the taste of water, Cool water. Old Dan and I with throats burned dry and souls...

KUDOS to Thierry Lagault - fantastic picture!!!

Mr. Peterson .... Thanks for the clue about the time settings in my profile -- I don't have blonde hair but sometimes my brain seems to behave like I do (( grin ))

P.S. Hey I just noticed that I was graduated to "Science Officer" - Lord help us - science might be going to take a tilt!!!

P.S. I just noticed - the time stamp in the above comment seems to be off. It's 8:50 AM CDT here where I am.

That lazy ol' sun - it don't do nuttin' but burn away ....

...... It is often desirable in images like those posted above to deliberately force the color scheme away from RGB, since a completely unnatural appearance actually makes it easier for people to see details that might otherwise not be noticed. It is interesting that an awareness of human recogniti...

....... The satellites original images are all acquired in black and white, so color must be assigned via computer to the black and white images. The three primary colors of light are red, green and blue, and each color is given a different band/image. Once the three images are combined, you will h...

Our skies do so many fantastic things with light!!

After much hemming-n-hawing and indecision, I finally cast a vote for the last picture - NGC3372. But I'm always at war with myself with deciding among items that appeals to the child in me (NGC 2841 - Spiral Galaxy in Ursa Major), the artist in me, as minimal as that might be (Trifid & Lagoon N...

The hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy may also be its shortest-lived world. The doomed planet is being eaten by its parent star, according to observations made by a new instrument on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The planet may only have another 10 ...

((url=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100520.html)) Explanation: In spiral galaxies, majestic winding arms of young stars, gas, and dust rotate in a flat disk around a bulging galactic nucleus. But elliptical galaxies seem to be simpler. Lacking gas and dust to form new stars, their randomly swarming o...

I am envious of that wonderfully clear night sky ....

Hadn't heard of this canyon before - it was obvious at first glance that the style of drawings is very different from other rock drawing styles that I've seen in pictures before.

P.S. I forgot to mention that I think that the photo is absolutely magnificent!!

I think that it will take longer to come down. At each point in altitude, the combined forces of gravity and drag will be the same on both the trip up and the trip down (unless the barametric pressures change inbetween the two trips). It seems that the big factor is the force used to toss the ball u...

OK youse guys - (that's neufer and chris peterson) - I guess that I'm disappointed that my alternate street light theory was blown to pieces ... I was envisioning that the whole Tarantula Nebula was close enough that its embedded stars would outshine all the other good members of our night skies - l...

WOW .... just imagine if that whole area DID fill our night sky (without hurting us), what a sight!! But then there would be so much light at night that our whole world would have evolved so differently - plus street lights probably wouldn't have been necessary.

Interesting question .... an ultra GPS system will have to be devised.

Can these CCOs be a source of -or- a concentration of dark energy/dark matter?

Case - yes! a really great link - I played with it for quite a while ....

P.S. forgot to add - today's APOD is not only beautiful but very interesting.

What a beautiful picture!! I've been sitting here, soaking it up .... The information behind the "mapping emission" link above was very interesting - the results from false/enhanced color processing are amazing. Also the picture of the early stage of a fetus is disquieting - so many little...

Question for Babak Tafreshi (if you are monitering this bb) - did you have to get special permission to be in the park at this time of night to get this photo? From some of your wonderful photos that I have seen, you travel to some exciting places to take your pictures. Could you tell us about how y...

Wonderful APOD - loved the 2nd picture over the first with the info sketched in! Also great incidental information on the Falls!!! Not only do we get to travel out in space with APOD but to wonderful places here on Earth ....

The dramatic impact of the Temple of Poseidon Moonrise was hard to resist and the fascination of the southern aurora and the serenity of the Turkish landscape are all wonderful pictures and I so wish that I could travel to these places to see them for myself. But the science and technology behind ES...

neufer - thanks for adding the great article!