Starship Asterisk*

Clearly the dot is a hole caused by a camera shy sand wurm. These Mars pictures are always my favorite APODs. Keep up the great work!

In ancient times wasnt the occultation of the morning star a sign tha a king was born? Maybe I should start working on my groveling

Its sad to see the drive-ins disappering. But I'm glad that we can still watch movies under the stars. A lot of communities in the US have started offering free "movies in the park"events in the summertime so not all is lost

Id assume its angled a bit. The way we could tell would be by checking to see if one side is blue shifted and the other side is red shifted. This would tell us that one side is moving towards us and the other side is moving away therfore it wouldn't be face on.

Just read question number 13 on the apod FAQ. Lol. Great pic today.

Often times people talk about global warming as being a bad thing. I however take a differnt view. Right now ice covers a good percent of the earth. Last I checked ice has only a few uses, such as keeping my soda cold. If less of the earth was covered with ice we could use that land for planting cro...

How big a telescope did Mr Messier have available to him ? http://www.astrosurf.com/re/messier1.html "Charles Messier used over a dozen telescopes during his career but his favorite was a 7.5 inch 104x Gregorian reflector. Later when the apochromatic refractor became available he utilized seve...

Yay I get to be the first to say it!!! Fly on Mothra!! Congratz on another great apod. If your butterfly quota hasnNt been filled by this nebula hop a short way over to M6, the Butterfly Cluster! One of my personal favorites

Yummm ..blueberries and marshmellows and pluto can be a scoop of ice cream! Todays apod is making me hungry!

I can explain it in one word... ALIENS!!! :shock: Just kidding :lol2: It is a very cool structure. Sadly all I have is boring old clay where I live. All of the interesting rocks and dead dinos are about 20 feet down. :? I do have lots of coal under my place though, so if Texas ever gets cold ill be ...

Something about this image makes me think of Alice in Wonderland... Can't put my finger on it though

I was wondering does Saturn have jets of energetic particles coming out of its polar regions like newly forming stars and galexies? If there were I would think it would only be radio waves and would probably be very weak, but it would definently be interesting to study. Also I've never heard of it b...

Is that a dust bunny at the lower right? Better run rabbit or the anime cat will get you.

The successive pictures of this light echo over the past 6 years could be used to create a true 3D map of dust in the surrounding region. Would be awesome. Has anyone tried? I don't know about any 3d maps but there are some nice timelapse videos of it on youtube. Very nice picture by the way. One o...

K1NS wrote:' . . . but was reprocessed recently by an amateur . . . "

Doesn't the "amateur" have a name? Come on, credit where due.

Donald Waid. His name is under the pic

So I'm wondering; since there have been two of these events at about the same time in the same area, as far as I've heard, are they related to the same parent body or are they different events? Are there any minor meteor showers that have the same trajectory going on right now? Should I start planni...

Shamanomaha wrote:I notice a bright red dot in the star field just to the left of the shock wave. Any ideas what that could be?

If you zoom in you can see it has a halo around it. Kind of looks like planetary nebula to me.

Orion is being devoured by that cloud! Its sign that the world is coming to an end! Quick everyone send me your money so I can spread the message!
Happy winter solstice everyone!

Reminds me of the old Star Wars arcade game; flying down the trench of the Death Star. . May the force be with you...always.

Hi all! How come the all the meteor traces seem to have a common spot? I don't get the geometry about it since it the same for traces both to the left and to the right. Thanks for the site btw, it's great! As the earth orbits the sun it passes through the trail of debris left behind by a comet. Rig...

Hi there, I was looking at some pictures of the pinwheel galaxy, and in particular the SN2011fe supernova. It occured to me, that pictures taken just one day apart, showed a supernova flash which looks to be a few light years in diameter. If the speed of light is constant, how could the light have ...

The other very interesting thing about Abell 39 is that perfectly spherical planetary nebulae are very rare! It is hypothesized that the majority of planetary nebulae that exhibit complex morphology are either the result of a binary star or a binary central star is somehow involved. In the past few...

The article includes the statement "a large mountain that reaches twice the height of Earth's Mount Everest." What is the base from which that height was measured? If I remember correctly the base is measured from the average height of the asteroid. Something along the lines of "if t...

Another great APOD! Without a doubt art in my book. Sadly the part of the photo that got the most of my attention was the big scratch across the front of his helmet :shock: I wonder what the story behind that is... Bumping the helmet on something or fighting off giant Japanese space aliens with tent...

This reply will probably demonstrate my abysmal ignorance but I have a question for you all: In the APOD for today showing M60 and NGC 4647, there is a link in the text "simpler egg like shape". If you click on that, you get what is supposed to be another shot of M60. But, in that shot, t...