Starship Asterisk*

Happy 4th of July, it's our independence day once again and freedom is back that's why we can freely see the pictures of these stars & galaxies. Speaking of M83 galaxy, we can see sun-like stars and exoplanets here if we focus our attention , and just like Milky Way life possibly evolving here....

It's so blue !!! 💙 😀 🤩 💙 Ann Yes, I love that coloring. It's positively sapphirine ! It reminds me of something I can't quite remember. Maybe something from The Little Prince, or some pleasant fairy tale. Or maybe this: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R4oAKKU_VtY/XuOYlIDNUJI/AAAAAAAAMjg/x4Icv9ureA8trrlL...

[...] Oh wow, that's an awesome awesome awesome image of the central star cluster of NGC 602, Jac! 😀 🤩 🥳 🐬 I'm so so so tempted to steal it from you and insert it into my own post, but I managed to restrain myself (just barely)! But I will upload it to my computer! Ann ThanX Ann I feel honored. All...

I can imagine the oyster, but I'm "seeing" the face of a baby (facing to the right, the left eye, nose (slit opening not distinct nostril openings), open mouth).... I see a profile also but I see it as a woman with a large, sparkly earring. And I see Frankenstein's Monster! Ain't pareidol...

"Stronger" and "weaker" is probably not the best way to think of it. The force of gravity falls of with distance, while the force of dark energy, while very small, is uniform across all of space. So it dominates when space is nearly empty of mass, which only occurs over cosmolog...

Yeah, thanks... But thank you, Johnny, for working it out for me. Ann And quite coincidentally, I'm sure, 0.5° is almost exactly how "wide" the Moon appears in Earth's skies! (PS - I suspect Ann is not nearly so "math challenged" as she claims.) Well, groan - I might have worked...

This is the point where the expansion rate of the Universe transitioned from slowing to speeding up. Where the "force" of dark energy became greater than the "force" of gravity. So this question just occurred to me: how much weaker (or stronger) is dark energy compared to gravit...

"Dark energy overtakes gravity." Is this because gravity was universally weak at this stage due to less matter? I am not sure what exactly this statement really implies. What would be the difference between the Universe with no dark energy and the Universe after dark energy "overtook...

Electromagnetic radiation isn't the only medium we have for observation. Gravity waves (which we are increasingly able to detect) might provide a way of looking at the Universe during a time when it was optically opaque. Ok, thanks. I always seem to forget about gravitational waves (note: not gravi...

The Big Bang is not a hypothesis, it is a theory, and one which is well supported by multiple independent lines of objective evidence. The existence of inflation is similarly well supported, and doesn't violate any physical principles. We observe the CMB (which I assume is what you mean), and while...

Really, now? We don't know if there was a big bang, it is a hypothesis without any evidence to support it. We have no idea what is this "inflation", except we know it must have violated all assumptions that are the foundation of modern physics. We have no idea how things were in the part ...

About 0.5° apparently, so not much! Spoiler! I was giving our math challenged friend an opportunity to work that out. Yeah, thanks... But thank you, Johnny, for working it out for me. Ann And quite coincidentally, I'm sure, 0.5° is almost exactly how "wide" the Moon appears in Earth's ski...

Is the time spiral illustration available for purchase? You can freely use the image as it has a Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ And you can also buy a much higher resolution image for $15 from the author here: https://payhip.com/pablocarlosbudass...

My computer was acting up yesterday, and I dislike using my mobile phone to comment on Starship Asterisk*, so I decided not to even try to comment. But I have a stupid amateur question. If the Earth was seen rising over the Moon, shouldn't the Earth also be seen to slowly rotate? Well, yes, the Ear...

Great. Yet another 3D celestial orbital arrangement I don't really understand the consequences of. I.e. the circumstances that result in a "lunar standstill" event. Something about 18.6 years and the axial tilts and orbital inclinations involved. In theory, these diagrams - from Wikipedia ...

Yeah, I'm not clearly seeing any obvious aligned "jests" in this image. Fortunately, there is a nice image at the "detailed explanation" link that provides some help, though the alignments aren't as close as I was expecting. The original image is too big to post, but here's a sid...

Is the music really by Claude Debussy? This is Jeff Dai's Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/p/C8bIkxTyiUL/ Here, it uses Clair de lune. But in APOD, the music is different. Can anyone tell me which piece it is exactly? No, but the "License" link points to https://plus.ibaotu.com/d...

Is the music really by Claude Debussy? This is Jeff Dai's Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/p/C8bIkxTyiUL/ Here, it uses Clair de lune. But in APOD, the music is different. Can anyone tell me which piece it is exactly? No, but the "License" link points to https://plus.ibaotu.com/d...

0.jpg Perusing around today's APOD is something. Does anyone know what this is? I assumed a star rather than a galaxy, but are the blue areas anything other than light tricks from Webb's camera? I'd guess a star, but in extremely narrow field images such as this, there usually aren't any stars from...

Telescopes as time machines is a familiar idea but we should never lose sight of how extraordinary this is! Imagine if palaeontologists could study actual pictures of dinosaurs! Or if historians could see pictures of Cleopatra, or geologists seeing pictures of the Late Heavy Bombardment! What’s mor...

Telescopes as time machines is a familiar idea but we should never lose sight of how extraordinary this is! Imagine if palaeontologists could study actual pictures of dinosaurs! Or if historians could see pictures of Cleopatra, or geologists seeing pictures of the Late Heavy Bombardment! What’s mor...

[url=https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap240623.html] https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2406/SaturnColors_CassiniSchmidt_960.jpg The Colors of Saturn from Cassini, Judy Schmidt Actually, we're talking about art here. A worthy evergreen. Congratulations to Judy once again! Meaning what? Is this a complement...

How is it that when looking north, east is to your left? Not on any compass I've ever seen. Is this photo a mirror-reversed image? If you lay on the ground, with your head to the north, east is to your left. Stellar coordinates mirror terrestrial coordinates because instead of being drawn on the ou...

So once again the brilliant engineers at NASA have managed to make the most of the situation by compensating for failing hardware. I didn't quite understand from the links how using only one gyroscope instead of the full complement of four compromises accuracy or other capability. Does it affect thi...

Also, I thought I could delete a past message of mine, but that option seems not to be available. Was it ever? If it is the last message in a thread, you can delete it. If someone else has posted since you posted the message, you can no longer delete the message. Ok, thanks. I could see being unabl...