Starship Asterisk*

I am acutely aware that 9,999 people out of 10,000 will stare in amazement at today's picture of the Dolphin Nebula and not give a hoot about the appearance of the ionizing star. Or maybe we are talking about 99,999,999 out of 100,000,000 people. Just one of all these people will be unhappy. https:...

There is a Hubble image of a portion of Pandora's Cluster, and I decided to compare it with the same part of the cluster as imaged by Webb. Pandoras Cluster Hubble annotated.png Pandora's Cluster by Hubble. Pandoras Cluster Webb annotated.png Pandora's Cluster by Webb. These are the objects I have a...

Don't know, but two characteristics of W-R stars are a fast rotation rate and a high metallicity (proportion of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium). Perhaps those properties have something to do with it. I'm on very shaky ground here, but I think Johnny is right. I think rotation may indeed ...

The Dolphin Head nebula looks so much like a dolphin head that there really is no need to overdo the colour to make it look still more like a dolphin head! Which often astrographers tend to do I find, in blue-greens, but not in this case, it's just the right amount in my view! A fascinating aspect ...

I am acutely aware that 9,999 people out of 10,000 will stare in amazement at today's picture of the Dolphin Nebula and not give a hoot about the appearance of the ionizing star. Or maybe we are talking about 99,999,999 out of 100,000,000 people. Just one of all these people will be unhappy. https:/...

I was following link for "Wolf-Rayet stars" and wondered - 1) Where do "Sharpless 2-308" and "R136a1" fit into largest known stars (e.g. compared to Antares to VY Canis Majoris range) ? and 2) I came across this paragraph - "Consequently, R136a1, and stars like it...

The " obscuring dust lanes " page got hung up and never displayed the larger image when I clicked on the pic on the linked page, but this page has the same image: https://esahubble.org/images/potw1228a/ And the "screen size" one is still impressively detailed. I'll ask Ann about...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_240606.jpg NGC 4565: Galaxy on Edge Explanation: Magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 4565 is viewed edge-on from planet Earth. Also known as the Needle Galaxy for its narrow profile, bright NGC 4565 is a stop on many telescopic tours of the northern sky, in the faint...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_240606.jpg NGC 4565: Galaxy on Edge Explanation: Magnificent spiral galaxy NGC 4565 is viewed edge-on from planet Earth. Also known as the Needle Galaxy for its narrow profile, bright NGC 4565 is a stop on many telescopic tours of the northern sky, in the faint...

NGC 4565 is one of the truly classic galaxies for owners of a telescope, since it presents such a gorgeous thin bright pencil line in the sky. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2406/278_lorand_fenyes_ngc4565_1024.jpg NGC 4565 manuelj g.png NGC 4565 shines in this image by manuelj.g. The orientation o...

APOD Robot wrote:

What if you saw your shadow on Mars and it wasn't human? Then you might be the Perseverance rover exploring Mars.

Ann

It looks spectacular but, what could this have been like? https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gran_Cometa_de_1744 Fantastic! The Great Comet of 1744 looked like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/Ch%C3%A9seaux%27s_Comet_of_1744_%28The_World_of_Comets%29.jpg/1280px-Ch%C3%A9sea...

The best part of this APOD is the link to a crow having fun repeatedly sliding down a snowy roof. If that doesn't prove animals are conscious and sentient (are those even different things?), nothing does! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9mrTdYhOHg Amazing!!! The crow is even using a plastic lid as...

I love this picture! It looks like something tore the night sky and is letting light in. I like it too! :D https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2406/Comet12P_Ligustri_960.jpg Another beautiful picture of seemingly two-tailed Pons-Brooks was recently posted in the Recent Submissions thread (for May) by ...

For this galaxy though, the desc links to this paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.13526 How very interesting, Johnny! Could this be the dwarf galaxy? APOD 3 June 2024 annotated dwarf galaxy.png If that is the dwarf galaxy, then that would explain all the gray fluff in the lower left corner of the APO...

Halton Arp, in his book Seeing Red thinks the “tidal tail” Ann highlights could be ejection debris. Fringe science, rejected by virtually all cosmologists. For this galaxy though, the desc links to this paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.13526 We present new neutral hydrogen (HI) observations of the ...

I don't think there are any tidal tails here. We're just seeing the foreground galactic cirrus. I must say I don't like this image, other than the interesting wide view capturing the foreground dust. I've seen quite a lot of images lately that end up with these bizarre orange colors. Maybe the prob...

Wow, there is so much floof in the lower left part of the picture, and there are so many background galaxies there! APOD 3 June 2024 annotated.png https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2405/NGC2403-LRGB+Ha+Oiii-v25-f1024.jpg The tidal tail kings of the nearby cosmos are, of course, the Antennae Galaxies!...

The Moon clearly shows us its best side! Its "softer" side too, which the early Earth kept warm… (while the other side was left in the cold, forced to grow a thicker crust) The moon rotates - currently once a month. The far side gets the same amount of sun as the near side. 4.5 billion ye...

You have to wonder why the Moon's far side is so different from its near side. Does it have anything to do with the fact that the Moon is tidally locked, and always shows the same face to the Earth? Then again, the Earth itself also looks very different in different places.We don't often think of th...

Massive stars form from particularly large disks. It seems likely, at least to me, that large disks are more prone than smaller ones to fragmenting, thus creating massive stars that are born as binaries. Thanks Ann. But what causes this fragmentations? Gravity from a nearby star, or a black hole? O...

Just in case this question was missed earlier (and if it wasn't but just inspired no comments, that's fine!) - are Wolf-Rayet stars the brightest of stars intrinsincally? Supposedly THE brightest star currently known is a Wolf-Rayet (R136a 1), but is it also the case with any Wolf-Rayet compared to...

Can't help myself, I've got to show you planetary nebula Abell 78: Inner part of Abell 78 ESA Hubble and NASA M Guerrero Judy Schmidt.png https://cdn.esahubble.org/archives/images/thumb700x/potw2111a.jpg ESA/Hubble wrote: After exhausting the nuclear fuel in their cores, stars with a mass of around ...

I have to show you this new JWST picture of the Ring Nebula: https://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2023/08/webb_captures_detailed_beauty_of_ring_nebula_nircam_and_miri_images/25047396-4-eng-GB/Webb_captures_detailed_beauty_of_Ring_Nebula_NIRCam_and_MIRI_images_article.jpg ...

But why they occur in binary systems? And why their companion is most likely a compact object? Given that something like 85% of high mass stars are part of binary systems, maybe the question to ask is why only 50% of WR stars are binaries? OK, so I ask: Why 85% of high mass stars are part of binary...