Starship Asterisk*

Amen to that! And for the record, I, for one, never thought the shot was faked, only that it needed further explanation of it's unusual appearance. Unusual to me anyway - my posting history will show that I find a lot of stuff unusual looking :) Until someone addresses my concern about an Ariane ro...

In any case, the point is this: whatever they did above Thailand, you can bet it was part of the mission plan and scheduled to the second, and not something that put the probe at risk. By design. I believe by the time I observed it, JWST was already kilometers away from the spent upper stage/exhaus...

I remain confused about many aspects of what I am seeing in your beautiful image but I no longer question that is the result of the Ariane 5 second stage that launched the JWST. (My apologies if you took offense.) I'm not offended. As I said it's perfectly ok to be skeptical. However, having been r...

Pon - Thank you very much for the time and care you've spent following the posts, clarifying and correcting our understanding of your images, and sharing your many years of experience recording and figuring out the plume(s). For us, one APOD sometimes does not tell enough information, and for sever...

Pon - Thank you very much for the time and care you've spent following the posts, clarifying and correcting our understanding of your images, and sharing your many years of experience recording and figuring out the plume(s). For us, one APOD sometimes does not tell enough information, and for sever...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap181013.html https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap181012.html https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap171224.html https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120329.html Ok, so those rocket plumes and trails have varied appearances, but none look like a sphere. The sphere is harder to explain. But I did ...

I didn't follow all the technical back and forth discussion above, and maybe I missed it, but what's the significance of the plume being surrounded by an almost perfect sphere, seemingly centered on the point of the cone of what I would call the plume proper? jwst plume from tailand.JPG That would ...

Pon, nice response to the questions. I was similarly puzzled about what we're looking at in your image. I also was thrown by the listed facebook time (7:12pm, 8 min before launch :). I had your location, and the sky field looked right, and the comet was the key to nailing down the day (Dec 25). I d...

Pon, nice response to the questions. I was similarly puzzled about what we're looking at in your image. I also was thrown by the listed facebook time (7:12pm, 8 min before launch :). I had your location, and the sky field looked right, and the comet was the key to nailing down the day (Dec 25). I d...

I've attached some photos of the images that were also shot that night. Here are some close up of the (spent) upper stage rocket and its plume. The plume is probably lit by sunlight but you can also see the glowing heat from the rocket engine as it spiraled out of control. _DSC1196.jpg _DSC1233.jpg ...

Hi, the original photographer here. Allow me to explain some of the issues that have been raised. The image was shot exactly at 12:57 UTC from Chiang Mai, Thailand. The coordinate is (if anybody's asking): 18.55387688510697, 98.48196698124625 Yes, this is a single shot. Barely any processing was don...

I was surprised that an article titled "perspectives" do not show any from the equator or below. The perspective from Peru or Buenos Aires is totally different for a reason not discussed. I do wonder if anyone below the equator captured the strike. Tracy Kolenchuk In the image I ignored t...

A bonus note to point out: If you trace all the moon images as they appear against the background stars, they happen to trace out a rough geographical map of the Earth as seen from the Moon during the impact! (Albeit the map would be inverted) Yes...the map would be inverted top to bottom ... but n...

A bonus note to point out: If you trace all the moon images as they appear against the background stars, they happen to trace out a rough geographical map of the Earth as seen from the Moon during the impact! (Albeit the map would be inverted)

Hi, I'm the person who composed the image and the text. There seems to be a few questions regarding the post, allow me to try to explain some of them. Simultaneity: - All these images were taken with different exposure time, so it was impossible to perfectly line up all the shots. However, as the im...

It appears as if it points to incorrect link. The proper link to the new submission page should be http://apod.com/submit/upload.php .

If you're having problem uploading to the new submission system, please use the URL posted here.

Sorry for the confusion.

Ariane? You can't convince me that's not a comet. French Guiana is 12,000 miles from Thailand. It really does look like a comet, especially with naked eyes. However, a comet wouldn't have streaked this fast in the span of few minutes: _DSC3312_3316.jpg Nor would it look like this up close: _DSC3320...