Starship Asterisk*

The nebulosity of NGC 6188 is caused almost exlusively by the intense radiation of O-type binary star HD 150136, consisting of, remarkably, one O6 and one O3 type star, O3 stars being the hottest of all normal stars (excluding newborn white dwarfs, neutron stars etc). I think HD 150136 is a fantasti...

Hi owlice: My English is very bad, yet I dare to small contribution to the idea. :lol: :D Although separated by more than 10 "arc, in fact the same area deformed by a unknown mass, which lies between our satellite and us. A mass with enough force to atrer and deflect the light from the headlig...

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3164/2555662701_e5115ff02f_o.jpg A previously-speculated but little-known NASA mission has been successfully completed. Two probes were sent to the moon to do further experiments on the lunar surface, some of which necessitated lighting up the fields of experimentatio...

Interesting. Some years ago a charismatic Swedish lecturer, Hans-Uno Bengtsson, said in a lecture that I listened to, that our universe has emerged out of a black hole. He certainly didn't say, however, that our universe was a black hole. http://media.ne.se/neimage/1812026.jpg Hans-Uno Bengtsson, Pr...

What part of NGC 2467 are we seeing in the Hubble image? Are we seeing Hafner 18, for example?

Ann

I love the image where Dione and Tethys "moon" Cassini! And the caption is so funny, too!



Ann

If iron makes up 32% of the Earth, does that mean that it makes up 32% of the mass of the Earth, or 32% of the volume of the Earth, or 32% of the molecules of the Earth?

And I'd really like to know how much of the mass of the Earth that comes from iron.

Ann

Hmmmm, I like the enhanced color image of Rhea. Normally I hate false color, but when it comes to enhanced color I can't help that I like it. And hey, I just discovered that I have become the color commentator here at Starship Asterisk! I like that, too! :mrgreen: (But I miss the Inadvertant Bot Sir...

Is it really true, though, that the Earth is mostly made of rock? I thought it was mostly made of iron and nickel. Perhaps iron and nickel make up most of the Earth's mass, but rock makes up most of the Earth's volume?

Ann

Yes, congratulations, Rob! This is a very fine picture. I think you yourself said about it that you particularly liked the background blackness of space, which is made up of hundreds of images of small galaxies seen against the blackness of space... the realism of this is very attractive, isn't it? ...

Great galaxy picture, Bystander!

And today's APOD is nice enough because there are two apparent centers of the star trails. Ordinarily, though, I'm not a fan of star trail pictures. It frankly drives me nuts that I can't identify the stars!

Ann

Unfortunately I have no idea what the white circle might be. Has anyone else got any ideas?

Ann

Owlice, I think that it may be that little thing that is the actual Bean Nebula.

Ann

Helio George wrote: Is the Sun a girl star? :wink: :mrgreen: Would you believe that the Sun is a feminine entity in Swedish? Nowadays almost everybody in Sweden calls the Sun an "it", but traditionally Swedes have called it a "she". (Where is the Sun? She is high in the sky."...

Swainy, I don't know how long you have been interested in the fate of the universe, whether it is going to expand forever or if it's going to collapse. When I first heard this question explained to me, in the 1970s, I was absolutely horrified at the prospect that the universe might collapse. After t...

I wonder if the black hole and its jets look like the bright red little "comet" at the upper left of this picture? (I'll post it both as a picture and as a link, in case the picture gets smaller as it is posted.) http://www.portalnet.org/fotoblog/NGC7793.jpg http://www.portalnet.org/fotobl...

Rolf, I'm so impressed with your individually, and I absolutely love your montage. So many of your images are so very beautiful, and as a color freak I just adore a lot of them. (All the planets, for example, Proxima Centauri and Acrux, the planetary nebula, Eta Carina and the Keyhole Nebula and the...

I like several of the images here. The solar eclipse image is beautifully detailed, and it contains some fascinating information about the planetary nebula that the Sun will become in the future. You can see that there is going to be a thick torus around the Sun's equator, but gasses will be streami...

That's a wonderful photo, and I loved hearing the story behind it!

Ann

Thank you very much for your answers. Thanks, in particular, to henning and George. I've chased down a few more sunset pictures that I find revealing. This one is interesting: http://s3.hubimg.com/u/1205550_f520.jpg It is a relatively cloud-free picture, so we can concentrate on the color of the sky...

Thanks, Henning, that makes a lot better sense. Interesting, by the way, what you said about green being a primary color to our eyes and how that has helped our ancestors to find food and water. Not so long ago, I read that most mammals have only two color receptors in their retinas, one receptor fo...

Yes, that's a delightful image and a great explanation, too!

Ann

I couldn't help googling for "green sunset", and I found several pictures. Some of them look absolutely improbable. When was the last time you saw a sunset look like this? http://th01.deviantart.com/fs8/300W/i/2006/164/c/1/Green_sunset_by_katemirov.jpg And why is it that sunsets don't look...

Thanks a lot for your answer, Henning. It clarifies a lot, but not everything, at least not to me. You said: However, green light requires that you remove some of the short wavelengths and some of the long ones but leave more of the middle wavelengths through. And the peak needs to be fairly accurat...

I recently asked a question which wasn't an honest question at all, namely, what color the Sun is. I felt I already knew the answer, and I really just wanted people to admit that I am right - that the Sun is white, that is. Well, now I have another question which is an honest question, because I don...