Starship Asterisk*

The level of detail in the WEBB images is absolutely stunning. What surprises me is the fact that the strongly redshifted galaxies from the early universe - that are now visible compared to HUBBLE - many of these are already highly structured. jac berne (flickr) I was almost disappointed in a way, ...

I had the same question. I could imagine some slight misalignment, but they're not close at all. No, the equinox points do not coincide. Earth's orbital eccentricity creates the asymmetric figure 8 as pointed up earlier. For a perfectly circular orbit (eccentricity = 0), the equinox points would co...

I'm a bit confused as to why the two equinox lines don't conincide. Shouldn't they?

Thanks for detailed explanation, Ann! I thought galaxies are well capable of producing grand design spirals on their own, perhaps I was mistaken.

What would point to the spiral structure being due to the interactions with the companion? As opposed to it being spiral galaxy for usual reasons, whatever they might be

The colors in this one are absolutely beautiful, wow

orin stepanek wrote: ↑Mon Jan 31, 2022 2:04 pm happen while I could view it!

I wonder if it would be at least a little dangerous to view such an event with your own eyes. Surely exposing one's eyes to high energy particles can't be all that healthy

hmm, but here it says the orbit approaches circular as time goes by :? It does indeed say that... and it makes no sense to me. :roll: This link has a huge bunch of math which is too deep for me, but maybe not for you - http://astro.pas.rochester.edu/~aquillen/ast233/lectures/H_Tidal.key.pdf Startin...

To follow up johnnydeep's question: I imagine the amount of energy needed to heat an entire planet's worth of ice to melt should be quite substantial. Does it noticeably alter Europa's orbit? Shouldn't it be decaying? The standard rule of thumb is that a moon (like our own) that orbits a planet slo...

To follow up johnnydeep's question: I imagine the amount of energy needed to heat an entire planet's worth of ice to melt should be quite substantial. Does it noticeably alter Europa's orbit? Shouldn't it be decaying?

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Tue Dec 28, 2021 9:54 pm So, if the two bright spots on either side are sun dogs, what is the bright fountain-looking thing on top?

check out this Cloud Of The Month if you wanna know the names of some of the more rare optical effects:
https://cloudappreciationsociety.org/december-2021/

Looks like noctilucent clouds also made an appearance. Isn't Italy a bit too southern to see them? They're also towards the south

What's wrong - the fitting, probably A circle fits pretty decently actually.

yes, but to see it as rounded we'd have to be far enough away from the plane containing the light source and the line (edge of the linear object), casting the shadow. Earth is pretty far from the Moon (at infinite distance the Moon would act as a totally flat screen) and obviously lies very near th...

Yes indeed, we see the roundness of the Earth as it casts its shadow on the face of the Moon. If the Earth had not been round, the shape of its shadow would have been quite different! Shape of Earths shadow on the Moon.png Shape of the Earth's shadow on the Moon. Image: Jean-Francois Gout Shape of ...

In Thule Greenland at the end of the 24 hour sunlight time of summer the sun grazes the northern horizon horizontally at midnight and rises. Then you can change the visual position and therefore the colour of the sun by walking up and down a north facing hillside. Descending, the last bit of sun ch...

Thanks, Ann! I couldn't even make out the Big Dipper, surprised how little it stands out.

Makes sense, thank you Mark!

Why does some of the material immediately fall back and start orbiting close to the black hole while some of it is propelled so far away? Why such difference in speeds, is that merely to do with the diameter of the star?

That was a rather aggressive landing, was that according to plan?

*random imagination of super complex things we really don't know much about* no more random than any image of atomic nucleus you've ever seen. And while black holes are certainly complex, they're not complex to the point where we absolutely can't even imagine what one would look like: we can and th...

Too bad youtube compressed the video into noise.

The APOD says SMC is 15kly across, wikipedia says 7kly, who's right?

So did they control for redshift? Or, perhaps, a more interesting question: does one even need to control for redshift if it's just as much a property of the universe as the color itself?

Thank you Ann! I too tried to find a similar shot with stars intact to compare the two and did a google image search. What came up, interestingly, was a bunch of paintings, mainly Aivazovsky inspired themes of a restless sea. https://vozdemoscu.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/800px-stormy_sea_at_night.j...