Starship Asterisk*

Today is a sad day.
Presenting badly manipulated data as reality isn't cool.
APOD has been a hallmark of quality, let's keep it that way.

dan kowall

It would be nice if they had specified collection data such as equipment and the parameters of the image acquisition as is customary.

dan k.

Why does Saturn's upper pole appear at the one o'clock position and it's bottom pole is shown to be at the six o'clock position? I've never seen this before.

dan kowall

" In Hubble pictures, I believe that the overall color of galaxies like NGC 5866 are defined as "white", and only details in the galaxy and in the background are shown as non-white (in contrast to the presumed overall whiteness of the galaxy)." Although the assignment of color in...

Exquisite.
Wonderfully planned and executed and the processing is spot on.
Well done, John.

dan kowall

Is the remnant even in the frame? Might it even be visible? The filaments visible in the image are the remnant of the star that exploded as a supernova. Sorry, I meant the pulsar that's what's left of the star... It's in the field of view although I'm not sure if it's visible. Click on the 'identif...

It looks like you have two images where the obscured data behind the spikes or blooms in one image is available in the other image. That's an ideal situation to remove blooms or reduce spikes is it not?

dan kowall

It's very typical when processing to set a white point based on an elliptical galaxy. If you're talking about a 'white point' which is the maximum pixel value of a particular image then any entity in the image suffices, be it a galaxy, star, or any bright object. If, on the other hand, you're talki...

Chris Peterson wrote: .... The thrusters are not required to maintain this orbit....

Thanks for the information, Chris.
I wouldn't have thought that a body that size would have enough 'pull' to hold Rosetta in orbit.

dan k.

Can Rosetta orbit the comet utilizing just the low gravity of the comet or does it have to use its thrusters to maintain the orbit?

dan k.

It would have been nice if he had fixed the blooms on the bright stars and backed off on the sharpening a bit as the brighter stars have the doughnut profile of over-sharpened stars.

dan k.