Starship Asterisk*

The thin nature of the rings is indeed enhanced by this equinox image. In the full-sized image, you can see three (or more) moons, mere specks compared to the large lunar APOD of a couple of days ago. The rings are indeed quite wispy, a fact usually hidden in Earth-source images. How something that ...

The term, 'life', does not necessarily imply bipedal humanoids with opposable thumbs and gifts of speech and the written word. Paramecia may be a bit of a stretch, perhaps amoebae or oxygen-breathing flora? The Endorians, for example, may communicate via psychic channels, thus finding us too silly t...

I'd keep the lander away from the snow. An undisturbed bit of charcoal may be safe from geysers. Can't tell if the holes are sleeping geysers or collisions. Depending upon where the geysers appear, this comet could start tumbling. Hope the harpoon is strong enough to account for the changes in accel...

What would a Monet painting look like if he wore corrective lenses for his near-sightedness? Ruben?

In one of the links, https://public.nrao.edu/news/pressreleases/supercluster-gbt, we find the term 'ginormous', perhaps as a contraction of giant and enormous? Newtonian gravity is accurate to one part in a million, just to give a perspective on when to use relativity formulae for curved space-time....

Beautiful panorama! Was the comment about the Yellowstone Caldera going badaboom necessary? There's even an hour video on yootoob describing the possible event and how active the Yellowstone region is. Southeast of Yosemite is Mammoth Mountain, in another active caldera region. There are dead-tree z...

Nevermind. There is no bright star marking the South Celestial Pole. I learned that today, thus answering my own question.

I noticed on the full-size image that the South Celestial Pole star remains a dot; in similar photographs, Polaris is off-center leaving a small streak. If the perceived motion of Polaris off center is the result of Earth's precession, why then doesn't the South Pole star wander as well?

Dr. Gendler never ceases to amaze me.
Is it serendipity that the axis of this nebula points in our direction, or would the same view be visible, say, from someplace out on the X-axis?. (Z-Axis from Earth to the center, X-axis horizontal, Y-axis vertical)

What happened to my rubber duckie? Waah. This is the testbed for changing the orbit of a doomsday comet/asteroid. Acquisition: check. Orbit, determine best landing, land: WIP. The doomsday mover would have a lander that could push the object out of its collision window. Now we know we can do this ea...

Spectacular image, hidden to Earth-based telescopes. People on the Moon, satellite orbiting Saturn, causes for awe for those over 40.

Thanks, Bystander, but I lost my JSTOR access the day I retired. Don't have "free" access to the Nature article, $35 to view.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v5 ... E-20140731

I don't have access to the full article, but it might be the case that four billion is a bit on the low end of the age guestimate.

Last time I tried talking to a sea bass, it didn't have much to say. I'd be surprised if there were no extraterrestrial life at all. Bacteria and other single-celled organisms like those found near deep sea vents, that are currently being mined for gold, are possible. Life forms with which we can co...

Sunlight reflecting off of the starboard top window?

Noctilucent clouds are lit by sunlight scattered by ice crystals. That's why you can see them only a short time after the sun sets. In the land of perpetual sunlight, whenever the sun sinks below a particular degree below the horizon, voila! To calculate the degrees below the horizon, draw a tangent...

How does water get up there? I recall that after the Space Shuttle drops the external solid fuel rockets, liquid hydrogen and oxygen take over. That leaves a water vapor trail. Does that water vapor then disperse to become condensed by meteor dust? 80 Km is a bit of a stretch for even the most power...

Are there any stars that belong to Andromeda visible in this image? The outer blue ring is all local stars? The galaxies above and below Andromeda, M32 and M110, are definitely too far away to resolve individual stars in this image. The imagination is staggered to think there are billions of individ...

The badaboom was recorded by Chinese astronomers with buck-nekkid eyeballs. They wrote that it was visible for about a month. http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2014/15year/15year_lg.jpg brings out the two jets in detail. The front jet appears to shoot out a couple of light years, then pour into a bow...

Ancient cave art proves it was warm enough to surf the Iceland beaches less than 4,600 years ago.

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Obquote:

QVACK!
QVACK!! QVACK!
-SETI

(Sorry, had to clear my brain of the Bard of Avon, or I'd be reciting that passage all day. -Shakespeare Ear Worm)

A trench-faced homunculus? I've heard a politician described as a pig-faced homunculus, but that was in response to a "Doctor Who" episode (091 - The Talons Of Weng-Chiang).

[Comment regarding the effects of drinking caffeinated tea deleted.] Glowing curtains waving in the sky. See that in person, you won't soon forget it!
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Obquote: "Thanks for the memories." -Bob Hope.

Bet I can: for ((i=0, i<10; i++)) ; do echo "Glowing gas globs"; done. Speaking of glowing gas globs, when the glowing gas globs get far enough away from the star so they no longer glow, thus joining the interstellar medium, that sort of diffuse stellar ejecta is insufficient to account fo...

It is so difficult to find good timber any more. The newer piles are a lot thinner than the original ones. The only second-growth forests I know of are in protected parks, towering over a hundred feet overhead with trunks you can't put your arms around. Perhaps if that kind of lumber were used at th...