Starship Asterisk*

Thank you to the crew for this, it's great!

Happy holidays and a great 2014!

PS: I live outside the US and we have letter, A4 and all kinds of paper sizes here too...

Thinking about left and right in different hemispheres can get you dizzy. Both the Moon and Venus set while moving to the left in the south hemisphere. But the Moon apparently moves to the right with respect to the background stars. So Venus seems to move from right to left if you take the Moon as a...

This is very interesting! Is it correct to assume that a nova is like type Ia supernova but without enough force to make the star explode? If that's right then I wonder how close this nova was to actually being a supernova, is there a way to know? I also wonder how many binary systems are out there ...

This image makes me wonder about the definition of a double planet. From our point of view and our definition the Moon is a satellite but seen from the distance I wonder if an hypotethical astronomer wouldn't come out with a different definition and think about our system as a double planet. The Moo...

So it is. Maybe you have to be in Patagonia during winter to spot an aurora in Argentina and it's not a popular place to be during winter. I don't think the Aurora oval ever touches continental Argentina at all. Maybe only under really exceptional magnetic activity but it would be extremely rare, a...

I've never seen Noctilucent clouds or the Aurora. Living in the South hemisphere does have some drawbacks :D Don't feel bad about it luigi. I live in Connecticut and haven't seen an aurora in about 50 years, and don't think I've ever seen any noctilucent clouds. I do however catch sight of a meteor...

I've never seen Noctilucent clouds or the Aurora. Living in the South hemisphere does have some drawbacks :D Noctilucent clouds are somewhat more infrequent in the southern hemisphere, but your real problem is that you live too near the equator. I you moved further south, you'd certainly see plenty...

I've never seen Noctilucent clouds or the Aurora. Living in the South hemisphere does have some drawbacks

I have a question about the reflection of the moonlight in the water. In the photo, the moon reflects in the water in the foreground. Then the reflection stops in the distance. And then, near the horizon line, there is a second white reflection in the water. Why is that ? Why does it stops (does it...

Thank you for the messages! :D I'm curious if this is close to the brightest a Lunar Halo can ever be, because of the full Moon and perigee times. The colors of the halo were easy to see with the naked eye and that's not common for lunar halos. It lasted almost all night. The sky inside the halo is ...

Can anyone help me with the position of the Gegenshein please? I previously thought it would be produced towards the North in the South hemisphere, here it is to the west... how do you calculate the position of the Gegenschein in the sky? "Gegenschein is a faint brightening of the night sky in...

Can anyone help me with the position of the Gegenshein please? I previously thought it would be produced towards the North in the South hemisphere, here it is to the west... how do you calculate the position of the Gegenschein in the sky? "Gegenschein is a faint brightening of the night sky in...

I like this panoramic view of the southern skies! Can anyone help me with the position of the Gegenshein please? I previously thought it would be produced towards the North in the South hemisphere, here it is to the west... how do you calculate the position of the Gegenschein in the sky? Ann: The wh...

Stand up applause.

Love the choice of music and I'm marveled by the research and hard work done for such a beautiful final result.

This made my day much much much better.

Luigi, since you've been so graceful to pop in here and comment and answer questions, that I feel I must say that I wasn't sufficiently enthusiastic the first time I commented on your image. I think your picture is downright magical. I've never seen the Large Magellanic Cloud so "integrated&qu...

I would be grateful if someone could please clarify something. Is the bright star at the top of the Coalsack Nebula part of the Southern Cross (Crux) or not, as information that I have found about the Southern Cross is confusing me? Unfortunately the very useful annotated version of the image in Lu...

Got it! Thank you, Luigi. My friends Marta and Alejandra come from Tandil - I hadn't realised it was still the province of BA . Argentina really is vast. Margarita Tandil is beautiful, the rocks in Tandil are part of the Tandilia system and are among the oldest rock formations on earth, about 2000 ...

Thank you for the info, Luigi. I have a small map of the Buenos Aires area of Argentina and have been trying to work out where you took the photograph - I had been assuming that you were facing West, which confused me. I am still trying to guess where you were standing. I have a neighbour who is fr...

Thank you again for the nice comments I'm really happy that you liked the image and I'm also happy to share the south hemisphere skies with my fellow North Hemisphere sky-watchers. I used calsky to predict the ISS pass, it's very easy to see with the naked eye, you will see it dimming in brightness ...

I would love to know what our galaxy looks like from one of the Magellanic clouds, must be quite a sight I should think. I found this tidbit in wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Magellanic_Cloud#View_from_the_LMC From a viewpoint in the LMC, the Milky Way would be a spectacular sight. T...

Hi all, the photographer speaking (writing) Thank you for the comments and thank you to the editors for liking my photo, it's a great honor to me. Nice image. Someday I'll have to travel south of the equator for a view of the sky there. One question though, Is the Hard Line at the bottom of the imag...

Great APOD.
It takes some time to realize we are seeing another planet, the rocks, the soil they look so familiar. It's fantastic to have eyes in another planet, a humbling experience.

May I ask, what is "comma", to which you also refer in your post above? I have not come across this term before in relation to photography; tried to find out about it online, but have so far drawn a blank. Thanks. The optical aberration is called coma , which is probably why you didn't fi...

Thanks for providing your exposure information for your great picture Luigi, and congratulations for having it selected as an APOD. In my ignorance, I had to look up the "Polarie tracker" you mentioned, as I had never heard of this before and did not know what it was. I subsequently found...

Ann wrote:It's a fine picture, Luigi. Well done!

Ann

Thank you Ann!