Starship Asterisk*

Chris said: There is news all the time about UV astronomy. GALEX, HST, and Swift all regularly return UV images Chris, thanks for pointing out that the Swift telescope does ultraviolet astronomy on top of it X-ray and gamma ray mission. I had somehow missed its UV work, and I enjoyed exploring the S...

In a thread on another forum, there was an infrared image of the Pleiades. I complained about that image, partly because I thought it looked confusing and non-beautiful, but mostly because of the very strong focus on infrared astronomy these days, so that everything should be imaged in the infrared....

Which would you rather have, a detailed map that shows you every little street and back alley in an unknown city or a map that only shows you the busiest thoroughfares and main streets? Visible light doesn't show you "every little street and back alley." It can't -- it's blind to everythi...

I said: All right. I, too, realize that the WISE image contains temperature information that is lacking in Andreo's image. Chris replied: Not at all. Both images reveal temperature information- the IR image simply provides data for lower temperature material. Exactly. So the WISE image contains temp...

Geke said: I agree with Biddie67: the picture is grand, but the description is largely lost on me as a beginner-stargazer. I can't even be sure I've found that Dark River. I quite agree with you that the description is confusing. Take a look at the picture again. You can see a large multicolored pat...

split from http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=19999&start=25#p127488 As for what the WISE image of the Pleiades tells us about the nebulosity around this cluster, compare it with Rogelio Bernal Andreo's image of the Pleiades and the California Nebula. I personally feel that I lea...

Unsurprisingly, I strongly dislike the WISE image of the Pleiades because it takes one of the loveliest and truly bluest naked-eye objects in the sky and turns it into something messy-looking and non-blue. Phil Plait said: One of my favorite things in astronomy is seeing a familiar object in an unfa...

According to the APOD Robot, we can see the Cat's Paw Nebula in Rogelio Bernal Andreo's image. That is not the case. The red nebula that you can see at the bottom right corner of the non-enlarged image is M17, the Omega Nebula. In the largest-sized image, you can also see M16, the Eagle Nebula.

Ann

This is an amazing image. Can you imagine how much work went into producing it? No, I can't either, but if it was easy to do something like this we would surely see many more images like this one. The fact that we don't is testimony to the herculean effort it took to make this image. It's a little c...

Do we really have anything as bright in the Milky Way as the super star clusters of NGC 4038? Yes, we do. The Milky Way itself is about the same brightness as these clusters, as are most of the globular clusters we see around our own galaxy. From those galaxies, the local globulars will look pretty...

Owlice, they are called mammatus clouds, literally "breast clouds"!

I, too, wish I had seen many of the clouds posted here, particularly that red-rimmed UFO-look-a-like lenticular cloud!

Ann

If the night sky were different, people would still find patterns and visual relationships between stars, so there would still be asterisms and constellations. The heavens don't impose those on us; we create them out of our own need to find patterns and connect the dots. Yes, of course people would...

Well, this is a golden oldie, but it is a lovely picture all the same and it looks great here. In another thread , Chris said: We may well merge with Andromeda, which is about the same size as the Milky Way, or slightly larger, in a few billion years. That's the soonest this could happen, and by tha...

I certainly realize that the Milky Way and Andromeda may not merge during their first close encounter. That isn't what I was trying to say, either.

My understanding is that the Milky Way and Andromeda will keep dancing around each other, their orbits shrinking, until they eventually merge.

Ann

I love the blue and green flashes! Thanks, Juan José Manzano! The very young Moon is fascinating, too. Somehow this brings home the idea of how dark the Moon really is. In Wei Loon Chin's image, the thin crescent of the Moon is not a one-dimensional line but a fully two-dimensional feature, having w...

I couldn't hold myself to associate the gorgeous image of the NGC 6188 the very moment I saw the APOD of 2010 July 16 to the Michelangelo's Creation of Adam at the Sistine Chapel. Then, I created this morphing , just for fun since I'm an atheist. The APOD was without form and void so lems1802 creat...

Chris said: There's a reasonable chance that the Milky Way and Andromeda (which are similarly sized) will merge, but it isn't certain. So it isn't certain that the Milky Way and Andromeda will merge. In the same post, however, Chris also said: Given the complexity of orbits in the Local Group, a fut...

Cesar, I love that image of a "black hole" in the Moon (or Homer Simpson's donut in orbit around the Earth)!!!!

Ann

I think it is quite possible that the quasar would look blue, and certainly the galaxy would look red. Remember that this is an SDSS picture, a Sloan Digital Sky Survey image. On the SDSS homepage, you can read this about the color of quasars at different redshifts: http://www.sdss.org/gallery/gal_z...

The distortions of the larger galaxy don't seem to match either the position, location and apparent lack of distortions in the smaller galaxy. The smaller galaxy seems to be in a strange perpendicular-like position over the center of the larger galaxy - as if it were dropping into the center of the...

moonstruck wrote:So then, what if a larger galaxy than the Milky Way comes and gobbles us up? Just kiddin', but just saying....

What if? It's going to happen, didn't you know?



The Andromeda Galaxy is coming!!!

Ann

I like the image of Stephan's Quintet and the Deer Lick Group. My understanding is that NGC7320, the interloper member (or non-member) of Stephan's Quintet, is at about the same distance from us as the large galaxy NGC 7331. The other members of Stephan's Quintet are at more or less the same distanc...

Ummm, fascinating. And as usual, I always wonder what color these things are. I realize, of course, that the light from both the quasar and the galaxy has to be strongly redshifted, so that we con't see the "true color" of these objectgs. Nevertheless, I wonder what the redshifted colors a...

I also like the eclipse picture, which is unusual for me. Normally I'm bored out of my skull by eclipse pictures. But I really like the ejected blob of pink gas set against the dark green color of the corona. The pink blob looks like the sort of thing that a little girl might want for a toy! I also ...

My favorite is Jordi Gallego's image of NGC 6559 and its surroundings. This is an incredibly beautiful and richly colorful part of our galaxy, and Jordi Gallego makes its beauty full justice. The image is very sharp and clear, and the colors are just incredibly rich and lovely. Note how the darkest ...