Starship Asterisk*

"Ice Age", Milky Way portrait from Tibet by Alvin Wu https://mymodernmet.com/milky-way-photographer-year-2022/ https://mymodernmet.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/2022-Milky-Way-Photographer-Year-AlvinWu.jpg Alvin Wu wrote: “This is a blue ice lake, Pumoungcuo, at an altitude of 5.070 m...

Well, in the Just So story, the Baby Elephant got his trunk when the crocodile pulled on his nose, but the Elephant's Trunk Nebula got its trunk because the stellar wind and torrent of ultraviolet photons from a hot O-type binary star are bearing down on it! https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/print-183...

Since I am the self-appointed Color Commentator, I note that the only spot of color in this image is the (rather pale) bluish color of the Earth. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2411/earthset-snap01.png I note that the sunlit face of the Moon is not very much darker than the sunlit face of the Eart...

The Bok globules look like a pair of fetus on long umbilical cords in a very large womb! https://www.cordbloodbank.com/wp-content/uploads/NewEnglandCordBloodBank-seotool-70066-HowTheUmbilical-blogbanner1.jpg https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2411/BokMan_Loro_960.jpg Of course, you have to wonder what...

Geck! Can you drop by a moment, tell us how you’re doing? Unfortunately, Judy Schmidt has changed the channel and now posts primarily on Astrodon. The platform is independent, which I think is good, but unfortunately there is no mouse-over function there. Personally, I find it a bit lonely there an...

Well, who knew that iconic edge-on galaxy NFC 4565 is located so close to a proto-star in Perseus and can be seen right through the dust accompanying this starbirth? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Needle_Galaxy_4565.jpeg/1280px-Needle_Galaxy_4565.jpeg APOD 17 November 2024...

"Reasons Why Pluto Is a Dwarf Planet Pluto orbits the Sun and meets the second criterion, which is a nearly round shape. However, it has difficulty with the other criteria for planethood. It resides in the Kuiper Belt, a region of small icy bodies, signifying that it has not cleared its neighb...

The great thing about today's APOD is that it actually shows us some surface details on Pluto below the little planet's layered atmosphere. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2411/PIA20727PlutoNight1024c.jpg A gorgeous high-resolution image really shows surface details of Pluto below the hazy atmosphe...

This is the eleventh astrophotography project by the ShaRA team. The team targeted the Small Magellanic Cloud and the massive globular cluster 47 Tucanae, using a remote Nikon 100mm f/2 lens located in Chile and integrating for over 15 hours with RGB and H-alpha/OIII filters. Special care was taken...

Yes yes yes! I saw this image in the Recent Submissions forum a few days ago and thought it was gorgeous! https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2411/IC348_B3_1024.jpg It is above all the colors of this image that make me cheer. They are so lovely!!! 💙 💗 And this is what nebula images used to look like be...

I completely agree with you, Ann. The red rays only exist in mid-infrared (MIRI). The matter is clear in near-infrared (NIRCAM) images. What a beauty. I would book that trip immediately :wink: https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54137866836_148cd50ecb_b.jpg bigger: https://live.staticflickr.com/655...

NGC 1365 is a very interesting and impressive galaxy, and JWST's MIRI image sheds new light on it. ... Let's take a closer look at the core as seen by MIRI: APOD 13 November 2024 detail annotated.png https://asterisk.apod.com/download/file.php?id=50574&mode=view Let's look at the objects in the...

Finally, I want to remind everyone that I am a complete amateur. I love galaxies, and I love to try to understand why they are the way they are, and I love to compare them with other galaxies. I really do my best to try to understand what is going on, as long as I can understand it in a non-mathema...

NGC 1365 is a very interesting and impressive galaxy, and JWST's MIRI image sheds new light on it. https://cdn.esawebb.org/archives/images/screen/weic2306e.jpg A striking aspect of the inner core is the "eye shape" that is created by the dust lanes above and below the core. The central rou...

I'm posting two images I like to look at side by side, the top one is the center of M100 (provided by AVAO on this site) and the other is the Circinus galaxy, both show lots of activity, with starburst rings around a nucleus itself active, and also because, well, I simply find they look good togeth...

Can't thank you enough! You bring joy to this forum and always helpful! It's crazy that Proxima Centauri is such a small star. I wonder if all those red M-stars since the early days have calmed down enough that it gives chance for life to develop on any planets they might contain. And the the night...

ThanX Ann Your exciting comparisons are always a highlight in this forum. The idea of ​​the comparison with the "Eye of Horus" is also very cool. But what always irritates me about overlapping galaxies is the fact that the bright and blue stars of the foreground galaxy dissolve into nothi...

Webb and Hubble examine spooky galaxy pair space.com | Original release 2024 October 31 https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/54119354060_f4ce1ac234_b.jpg [...] This pair of galaxies is currently in the process of colliding and merging into one, a process that will take around a billion years. The Ja...

You're off by 1000 or so. 😊 Oops! Yes, it looks like it! Thanks, Johnny! :ssmile: Ann Crazy! So by it's sheer size Andromeda still has a lot of stars compared to our galaxy. That's mind boggling! You can be fooled that seeing that picture you would think it's a ellipctical galaxy and not a spiral g...

[...] I have to ask you about the star RZ Cas , the bright-looking bluish star near bottom right in the APOD. The star itself is a very modest quite nearby A-type star, and the nebulosity next to it has nothing to do with the bright-looking star. Yes, but the nebulosity itself sure looks interestin...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_241108.jpg Helping Hand in Cassiopeia Explanation: Drifting near the plane of our Milky Way galaxy these dusty molecular clouds seem to extend a helping hand on a cosmic scale. Part of a local complex of star-forming interstellar clouds they include LDN 1358, 1...

So, how many stars are there in M32? According to Hubblesite, there are roughly 400 million stars within a diameter of only 1,000 light-years in M32! That 's 400,000,000 ,000 stars. Therefore, if only one out of 400,000 stars is a red giant, there will still be 100,000 1000 red giants within a volu...

That sounds really sad! I didn't know our Milky Way was that inactive. I wonder if the Andromeda galaxy also is a dead galaxy just like ours. Neither Andromeda nor the Milky Way are "dead" galaxies, because both are indeed forming new stars. Our galaxy is forming about one new star per ye...

And, for the understandable lack of a Hubble portrait of this extended group... And why is the lack of a Hubble image understandable? Is it just because Hubble's FOV is too small to take it all in? Most or all of these objects have been imaged by the HST. It's just the wide field that encompasses a...

Yes, the NGC 474/NGC 470/NGC 467 group of galaxies form an amazing skyscape indeed! 😮 😀 🤩 🥳 And, for the understandable lack of a Hubble portrait of this extended group, George Williams, today's photographer, has done a fine job indeed portraying these galaxies! https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2411...