Starship Asterisk*

The brightest star below-left of the Horsehead is HD 37903; Alnitak is just above the Flame Nebula, in this image.

Minor point about the discoverers of the faint arc: David Malin was chiefly the Anglo Australian Telescope's photographic scientist as well as contributing as a research astronomer; Brian Hadley was the chief photographer of the Royal Observatory Edinburgh's Photolabs unit, working with UK Schmidt t...

De-anaglyphed for cross-eyed viewing. _ de-anaglyph-Apollo-Rover.jpg Thanks, that's better! The original KIND of works to see in 3D, too bad most of the parallax is vertical. I wonder why? I suspect it's been done manually, without accounting for the difference in field rotation between the two ima...

Thank you, Ann. I thought I detected the Andromeda Galaxy in this lovely photo. But you have mapped out greatly more than that for this amateur. Even Triangulum. Thanks! do I get it right? https://asterisk.apod.com/download/file.php?id=40830&t=1 You do, Victor. The edge of space annotated.png I...

The caption states "the frame includes the site of the closest supernova in modern times, SN 1987A, left of center", but this is not so; the site is well beyond the upper edge of the image, as this comparison with an AAO image shows.

When the sun is that low, it can generally be shot safely without filtering. Heck, the Sun can be shot unfiltered at noon if it's done with a handheld camera (if you use a tripod, you could burn a hole in the shutter or damage the image sensor). Did y'all miss ozalba's joke? It's based on the fact ...

"The reason the Sun appears so large is that the image was taken from about a kilometer away through a telephoto lens." Wow! Did Jens use any sort of heat filter...?

I know there's been uncertainty about the LMC distance for some time, but a recent study indicates 163,000 LY (49.97 kpc): http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 11878.html

... The next supermoon , ... will occur on 2017 December 3 and be visible not only behind castles but all over the Earth. Well now, let's look at this: December 3 is close to the solstice, so the Moon will be high in the northern ecliptic. How high? Good old Stellarium tells us it will be beautiful...

What a fascinating image. I'm intrigued by the streamers of dust trailing from star clusters, especially in the region below centre. What's causing the inward movement of so much dust? Gravity, or something else?

....a faint impression of a hand print...the white meaty part in the center....a cat or dog impression jumping into our space....Oh....now you have ME SEEING THINGS AGAIN!!!! Dr. Feldman...Dr. Feldman!!!! :---[===] * Fery eenteresting... do you see a woman... your mother, perhaps? How long haff you...

Does anyone else see a hooded cobra, rising at upper left. Or Jar Jar Binks?

I've not seen this exact image, but here is a similar one (nicer too, IMHO, although the ocean floor is less well shown):

'White plume': the last time I responded to a question like this, regarding a mysterious light pattern seen through an aircraft window, the photographer reckoned it was the face of Zeus, emphatically not a reflection of something inside the cabin, lens flare, or anything so mundane as to be explaine...

It strikes me that we are not looking at a backlit cone-shaped 'floating mountain', but a backlit v-shaped 'arch'. There does appear to be a star at the apex of the arch, which would seem to be a candidate for the source of the light, but it could also be another star hidden from view, higher up. Fu...