Starship Asterisk*

In simpler English: At those temperatures. water ice is as hard as rock. Sort of, but not as descriptive. There are other materials that are as "hard as rock" that don't behave structurally like rock in a geological context. Which is actually why I put it the way I did... very cold water ...

Thank you Ann for that nice write up! NGC 6822 is indeed quite a pretty little galaxy. Heretofore I had thought that the only interesting nearby galaxies were the SMC, the LMC, and of course, Andromeda. But I had forgotten my rule that with astronomical objects, there truly ARE no uninteresting thin...

Sorry sir, Wenchang launch site is in the easternmost Hainan porvince, but not southernmost. You can check the google map, it shows very clearly;) "Southernmost" was a descriptor of Hainan province, itself: "Hainan is the smallest and southernmost province of the People's Republic of...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_201126.jpg The Great Turkey Nebula Explanation: Surprisingly reminiscent of The Great Nebula in Orion, The Great Turkey Nebula spans this creative field of view. Of course if it were the Orion Nebula it would be our closest large stellar nursery, found at the e...

Well, the light from Andromeda isn't really old light. In fact, no light that you see is old. The photons that strike your retina are never more than a few picoseconds old. Photons always travel at c . But light travels slower than c in a medium . That's because a photon in a medium will get scatte...

So if Andromeda Galaxy is the oldest light my unaided eye can see, my inquisitive mind naturally wonders, what is the youngest light that my unaided eye can see? It is not daylight since that is some 8 and a half minutes old. Could be even 100,000 years old since they say a photon can take that lon...

So if Andromeda Galaxy is the oldest light my unaided eye can see, my inquisitive mind naturally wonders, what is the youngest light that my unaided eye can see? It is not daylight since that is some 8 and a half minutes old. Could be even 100,000 years old since they say a photon can take that lon...

I have always wondered what the Milky way galaxy and Magellanic clouds would look like from Andromeda. An artists impression with some valid orientations would satisfy my thirst! Astrophotographer David Malin once said that from the vantage point of galaxy NGC 253 (at right above), the Milky Way wo...

JohnD wrote: ↑Tue Nov 24, 2020 6:49 pm "The outer gasses of the star"

maybe "The star's outgassing" was intended?
John

I don't think so. "The outer gasses of the star expelled into space appear..." looks grammatical, clear, and non-ambiguous to me.

Thanks, Orin, for pointing out that feature. I was curious about it as well. That would be one mighty big mountain top to reach that high! Maybe it is the wake from a Jovian submarine just below the surface. Being a little more serious, could a storm just below the surface cause the trailing stream...

Stellar density in solar neighborhood is only 0.004 stars per cubic light year :!: Stellar density is the average number of stars within a unit volume. It is similar to the stellar mass density, which is the total solar masses (MSun) found within a unit volume. Typically, the volume used by astrono...

But since Meridiani Planum is not really well defined, it looks like some other convention was agreed upon as the exact location of the Martian prime meridian. Looking at this map from http://planetary-science.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/GhoO4SV.jpg, I see one small crater in particular that see...

Thank you, heehaw! I am amazed that the originators were Beer and Madler in the middle of the 19th, but astronomers then needed a reference system too! While searching for the "feature A" that Beer and Madler chose as the location of the Martian prime meridian, I found that this "cir...

Yeah! first manned spaceship mission since the shuttles were retired! :D :thumb_up: :clap: You mean with an American rocket. And this is the second... you seem to have forgotten the manned SpaceX launch a few months ago. Yes I did mean first American rocket! No I didn't forget: I was going by this ...

Thank you Ann and Bruce. So the conclusion I take from this is that this double (open) cluster in Perseus really is unique, in that the two separate clusters are about the same size and age, and are physically close to each other (not just optically).

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_201118.jpg A Double Star Cluster in Perseus Explanation: Most star clusters are singularly impressive. Open clusters NGC 869 and NGC 884, however, could be considered doubly impressive. Also known as "h and chi Persei", this unusual double cluster , s...

I hate these curved galaxy photos. I wish you folks would t post them anymore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c1NJQ0UP_Q I like curved galaxy photos. I'm just a little less sure about aurora photos. Oh, wait, this is not an aurora photo, it's STEVE photo... whatever. It's nice as long as I don't ...

So this image is a one-off, not a composite? Not sure. Chris Peterson would have a better idea. This link - https://slovinsky.art/2020/10/30/light-and-glory - only has these details: Equipment: Canon 6D mod, Sigma Art 28mm from the tripod EXIF: 15″, f/2.2, ISO 8.000 Date: 17th of July 2020 How long...

Are complex dust lanes magnetic loops ? No. Magnetic fields in galaxies are nowhere near strong enough to influence the position of dust. At most, they can alter the orientation of individual dust particles, which is used to detect the presence of those fields (by looking at the polarization of lig...

By plate-solving the image. Ignacio Ok. I had to look up "plate-solving". Did you do this with software or manually? And, again, assuming your FOV is correct, the APOD is wrong to say it is 2 degrees wide, right? It can be done inside some image processing programs (this image was process...

The precise FOV is 1d 3' 47.8" x 1d 18' 46.0". Ignacio So, this is roughly 1 degree x 1 degree, and not 2 degrees wide per the text? How did you determine the exact field of view? By plate-solving the image. Ignacio Ok. I had to look up "plate-solving". Did you do this with soft...

"Formless protoplasm able to mock and reflect all forms and organs and processes — viscous agglutinations of bubbling cells — rubbery fifteen-foot spheroids infinitely plastic and ductile — slaves of suggestion, builders of cities — more and more sullen, more and more intelligent, more and mor...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_201113.jpg The Tarantula Zone Explanation: The rich field of view spans about 2 degrees or 4 full moons, in the southern constellation Dorado . The statement that this " view spans about 2 degrees or 4 full moons " seems rather fishy to me. :fish: The...

A minor nit: the statement "Of course one of Orion's belt stars is nearly 2,000 light-years away." - seems to be a very out of place factoid. Yes, it links to a previous APOD that showed the true distances of Orion's stars, and yes, one of them - Alnilam - is almost 2000 ly away, and is in...

"I'm king of the World!". I suppose the other side of that mountain is a lot less steep than the side we see, or else how the heck did he manage to get up there?