Starship Asterisk*

Time of year?

I'm sure there's a better explanation out there.

by Bry Walker » Tue Dec 17, 2013 10:07 am

I must be all twisted around. I thought Sirius would be somewhere in the lower right.

You are right. The perspective changes from this APOD at a similar location.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120123.html

Time of year?

by Bry Walker » Tue Dec 17, 2013 9:50 am

Is that Aldebaran on the far upper left?

Sirius I suspect.

by Boomer12k » Tue Dec 17, 2013 7:12 am Orion is AWESOME in this picture, the nebula is very visible....great job... HELLO TO OUR FRIEND ON TENERIFE!!!! I agree with Boomer. This is a great shot of Orion. A fun APOD would be a composite of Orion photographs corresponding to a series of latitudes to...

by geckzilla » Tue Dec 10, 2013 2:01 pm Ron-Astro Pharmacist wrote: I bet that cat's name is "Super Nova" If you were referring to the posts above yours, his name is actually Maru, which means round or circle. No - just taking a guess. Maru is quite the character. The yellow one is round ...

I bet that cat's name is "Super Nova"

Well done geckzilla. So, the tightly packed elliptical feline galaxy (which looks in danger of being sucked into a black hole) is part of the local fluff, and everything else is light years away and aeons ago. Got it! :lol2: :lol2: :lol2: :lol2: :lol2: And yay to cats! :kitty: :kitty: :kitty: Ann D...

Meanwhile it’s Comet Lovejoy Quixote tilting at a windmill. What giant may be on its mind?

“That Sun is coming up too fast and it’s hot, hot, hot. I’d rather go down there by that cool windmill smelling the lavender!!!”

Beyond wrote: It reminds me of the something really bad that was coming to earth To me it looks like it is a ghost image of the Earth following either decades of global warning or millions of years of continental drift or both. A true “planetary” nebula if there ever was one. But of course - it wou...

I could guess what red and yellow make but I know this shows my density -

Rho, Rho, Rho your light
Gently down the wave
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is brown dust grains

What an amazing APOD. There are so many interesting areas to investigate. Like the cluster hidden in the cloud upper right from M4. A photograph like this truly demonstrates why many of us are so fascinated by our universe and the structures in it. You could spend the entire day only superficially d...

Black hole "jets" was the intial question. I guess I had black holes "on my mind" Ron

The inital question was "What are black holes made of"? I can’t keep my overactive curiosity to myself so I’ll put it out there. If photons do have a super-symmetric partner; the photino and that partner is somehow related to dark matter, why couldn’t a black hole be a congregation of dark...

Do active galatic bi-nuclei exist? Two supermassive black holes with dual jets. Get out your gravitational wave dectectors

Did the HST do (or can it do) a spectra on the light from the ejected material to compare it to other objects of similar nature?

It would be great if we all had the knowledge of those at the top on their fields but most of us still only have access to limited to the things we might find interesting. Were left with speculating the unknown and speculating how things “might” be. I find it one of the more fascinating and fun part...

Reply with quoteRe: APOD: Creature Aurora Over Norway (2013 Nov 06)
by middlekid » Wed Nov 06, 2013 2:58 pm

to me it looks like a dolphin or a sailfish jumping out of the water - not scary at all, just beautiful

I agree. That was my impression too!!

I suspect you are right. To rate the difficulty of a calculation one would need to also rate the ability to understand. A general description such as lines of code in a program or program run time would probably really not tell much about the true complexity of a calculation or richness of the infor...

Not being a highly math-skilled person, non-the-less it would be interesting to try and comprehend the complexity and logic required to solve a solution such as determining orbits of faraway planets by the various methods. As in the December edition of Astronomy where it’s attempted to describe some...

It was sun many in New York might identify with… It’s got on a Yarmulke.

Being part Scandinavian but not quite fair-haired I might get away with this. "To Find the Truth, You Must go Blonde" came to mind. We all have our days and today's APOD got me I must admit.

Gee, thanks Ann. Now I'm stuck at the bottom of a very deep Mandelbrot hole, with a bad case of Mandelbrotitis You've got to love the good natured kidding this site. Maybe you can just change your "Beyond" quote for today "just slightly" in light of our Scandinavian friends?? :)

One can nEVER have enough OXiDANE

Oh sure you can. Too many aromatic hydrocarbons with ethanol over frozen oxidane will get your attention the next day.

Or if you find it on the pilla' next to you....

Great Photo! Thanks for not catching a whale jumping toward Andromeda to give APOD a third day running title of : Andromeda versus Cetus

I like the title (and the photo) just as it is. Along with the comments and explanations which adds that little extra “twist” to the plot.