Starship Asterisk*

The eye is drawn to the smaller crater within Stickney, Limtoc crater. I'm not seeing any craters whithin craters here, so my guess is that Limtoc is quite young. Any estimates as to its age?

It looks like a special effect from the 60's Star Trek!

OK, WOW. But how are we seeing an image of the rings on the upper half of Saturn's disc when the nearside (top) of the rings themselves is obviously in the umbral shadow? The explanation refers to "a faint, eerie light on the cloud tops", but wouldn't such reflected light be quite difuse r...

APOD Robot wrote:During the day, a phenomenon similar to the gegenschein called the glory can be seen in reflecting air or clouds opposite the Sun from an airplane.

Or from the top of a mountain with clouds below you and your back to the sun.

AKA Sundog.

I see jellyfish swimming in a see of kelp.

Allright, I always thought of myself as an astronomy nerd, but...airglow? Gravity waves? I always thought that gravity was constant. This is over my head.

OK, is it just me or does the line that the pair traces curve slightly upwards?

Last time I checked, the earth rotates smoothly and regularly, therefore the track should be perfectly straight. Is the earth's rotation now suddenly wobbling?

Looking at these spiral galaxies, I can't help but think of water in a sink, going down a drain, what do you think? But in a spiral galaxy, no material is moving in towards the center. If your sink worked this way, the water would never drain. If you click on the image you get the same view that sh...

I use the APOD desktop background updater to see the the pic, but I have the site bookmarked and usually go there daily to read the explanation and explore the links.

Clicking on the picture takes you to the full crop, which shows the going-ons at the base of Lady Liberty, as well as the top of the spire of the ESB.

RJN wrote: That and the title typo have now been corrected.
- RJN

Still says 'tit'. heh heh (Beevis laugh)

Awesome shot! Thanx APOD

Probably no way to tell if it is sunrise or sunset. Unless there are other shots that show movement to the right or left.

This picture seemed reversed...until I realized that it was the southern hemisphere! ooops. I think that it would take me some getting used to the sky if I ever travel south of the equator. Here's to dreaming!

I'm curious why the lowest image of the moon appears to be more in eclise than the images above it. Is this just a factor of it being low in the sky and thus generally obscured by the atmosphere? The lower left side of the moon in that exposure appears specificaly obscured.

I'd like to know how the boundries of the green disc of the habitibal zone was arrived at. For our solar system, it seems to show orbit of Venus almost within the zone, while I've always imagined Venus as an extremely inhospitible place, with no chance for liquid water. Mars is pictured well within ...

This might just be APOD of the Year. Wow! And a dot of Earth to boot.
What a universe this is!

I don't remember an APOD ever being an illustration before. While there is a lot of beautiful space art out there, it is mostly subject to speculation and conjecture, and therefore not truly scientific. Is this a new precident for APOD?

I'm still not clear on the need to avoid contamination of Europa. We have sent many probes to other bodies, including Mars, Venus and Titan. Perhaps those probes went through a complete serilization process? I find it hard to believe that we could guarantee that there were absolutely no bacteria, vi...

Interesting picture. I guess that the orbiter was moving from bottom to top, concluding with the bright spot at top. But why the curve? Did the shuttle really manuver to such an extent dring re-entry? Was this motion for re-entry angulation/postion management or just manuvering toward the landing ta...

I think I answered one of my questions. I did some 'streamlining' of my laptop and that's when the APOD backgrounder program stopped working. So today I noticed APOD was liste under 'Programs' pn my Windows start up menu. I just clicked 'Run APOD' and now my background seems to be updating. Woohooo!...

The real sign of ostentacious excess here is that the Burj is pretty much empty, having been completed just after the global financial meltdown. Dubai and other desert boomtowns (such as Las Vegas) stand as our testement to our wretched excess and obsession with temporary glitz to the detriment of r...

Hi all. New guy here. First post. I have a couple of questions. 1. When I enter here via APOD, there is a 'Discus' tree, which brings up the Board Index plus 'Active Topics' where the 'Learning and Resources' section is on the main Index (which is how I found this thread). But by clicking on the Boa...