Starship Asterisk*

I didn't comment on this picture before because, well, it's not my kind of picture. But the mission itself is certainly impressive. Now the sample return capsule carrying rocks and gravel from Bennu has returned to the Earth! And the rest of the spacecraft is on its way to another asteroid to conti...

This is a C-type asteroid, so we know that it is made up of the primitive earliest material forming the Solar System. The selection of a carbonaceous asteroid was based on obtaining good samples of such material unaltered by passage through the atmosphere in the form of meteorites. Yeah, but now we...

Gosh! Years ago, the origin of the grooves on Phobos were the subject of a long and sometimes bad-tempered (these are the moons of the War God) debate here on Staship Asterisk. Then just the the day another turned up that didn't, in fact only got a response from neufer: http://asterisk.apod.com/vie...

This is truly one of the more interesting pictures that I've seen on APOD. The Hummingbird (or Penguin) Nebula is gorgeous. The variety of galaxies and stars, the types of interactions and their placements within our view just make the whole image very striking. All true. And I really prefer "...

So the two bright blue stars at the top of the pic are obviously stars from our galaxy but the stream of stars behind the right star looks to be an irregular galaxy. Is that correct? How far distant is that from the star in front? Thanks. The galaxy goes by LEDA 1237172, and is identified only as a...

When a famous University performed the cat experiment in the 1970's, upon opening the box the found the cat was neither dead nor alive but missing. After investigating and never finding the cat, they tried again some months later. At the opening of the box on the second run of the experiment the res...

... Oumuamua doesn't have an unnatural shape, but is consistent with other bodies in our solar system. You keep making this point. Can you show us any evidence of natural objects from our solar system with a 5 to 1 or larger aspect ratio? <snip> Thus, my point, that the light curve of this body is ...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_181125.jpg Phobos: Doomed Moon of Mars Explanation: This moon is doomed. The ultimate result will be for Phobos to break up in orbit and then crash down onto the Martian surface in about 50 million years. "The ultimate result, absent Human intervention [/i...

Explanation: Gravitational radiation has been directly detected. That is neither new nor exciting. Confirming the flightpath of light from stars was being bent by Sol's gravity well was new and exciting but that was about a century ago and nothing new has come out of Relativity since. Finding that ...

Why is it that Americans assume all the world understands their time zones? For the same reason USAliens (Not "Americans", as Mexicans and Canadians and South Americans all recognise that different countries with different customs exist) think we all worship Disney's rodent, eat hamburger...

Galaxian, It is extremely easy to see that APOD images are widely shared and often, used illegally. I have a Facebook friend who reposts images that market Greece as a travel destination; because I'm familiar with APOD, I have recognized some of the images as the work of certain photographers. I al...

Wow, Thanks for posting the link to the 3D imaging of The Bubble nebula.The 3D image is amazing http://astroanarchy.blogspot.fi/2013/02/3d-study-of-bubble-nebula.html . There have been so many astronomical images of planetary nebula that could benefit from this process. Nothing benefits from this t...

It would have been a beautiful image had not the creator decided to mar it with his ownership details. True, cutting off a chunk isn't too onerous but that rather spoils the owners original work and I'm not sure that's strictly legal. Don't people know they can watermark images invisibly? Watermark...

What a gloriously beautiful image. If I had created something like this, I would certainly sign my name to it. By the way, who does that Van Gogh guy think he is, scrawling his name on an otherwise perfectly beautiful picture of daisies? :lol2: Okay. Point taken. I won't do it again. However, to be...

Also, silly graphics tricks. Not an "invisible" watermark but a very sneaky one just for fun. See if you can find it. Note: It might be completely obvious if you are red-green colorblind but I'm not sure about that. Thanks for the hint. I was looking for something tiny and obscure. Your w...

Don't people know they can watermark images invisibly? I didn't, or at least I don't think I use software which can and I might not know how to find it if it was there. Regardless, owners may do as they please, for whatever reasons. The fact that this APOD was selected might indicate that it is not...

geckzilla wrote:Actually, people who submit images to APOD are encouraged to leave a small note in the corner like that.

Oh. Didn't know that. Sorry.
Why?

Fantastic image. Great to see the tear drop nebula amongst the Alnilam and Mintaka. One of my favourites nebs. It would have been a beautiful image had not the creator decided to mar it with his ownership details. True, cutting off a chunk isn't too onerous but that rather spoils the owners origina...

The double star looks quite bluish to me. But then, the galaxies in Seyfert's Sextet look quite bluish, too. However, these galaxies are certainly intrinsically yellow, since they are clearly evolved (except the "vertical" elongated one that looks grainy because it is full of young cluste...

You would expect each object in a cluster like this to have slightly different redshifts, since their orbits about each other introduce a Doppler shift superimposed on the cosmological redshift of the entire cluster. Oh. Yes. Obviously. I forgot about roundy-roundy motions. <Mumbles> Idiot. </mumbl...

Can't help being curious about the bright pair (perhaps a binary star pair?) to the right and slightly above center in the image. The leftmost member of the pair appears to have a slightly yellowish tint, whereas the other has a bluer tint. I'm assuming this pair is unrelated to Seyfert's Sextet, b...

mike studyform wrote:For those who don't see what I'm seeing.

Click on TIGHTLY PACKED in the image description.

Thanks geckzilla, at least I now know why this keeps happening (at least the mechanics if not the mentality),

Aaaawwwww. That's so cute.

Can anyone tell, I was owned by cats?

The sextet actually contains only four interacting galaxies, though. Near the center of this Hubble Space Telescope picture , the small face-on spiral galaxy lies in the distant background and appears only by chance aligned with the main group. Also, the prominent condensation on the upper left is ...

Kazakhstan has the most northerly nesting place for flamingos in the world. The name of its capital, Astana, means "capital." The capital used to be Almaty (formerly known as Alma-Ata), the name of which comes from something to do with apples. And somewhere, I have a sound file of the cou...

Most? Which life forms on earth do not require water? Send them to Mars! Well, *I* don't require water. Beer, yes. The occasional two-pint mug of tea, yes, but *never* water. And while it has been *rumoured* that my origin was not entirely terrestrial nothing was ever proven. I find these "art...