Starship Asterisk*

Shouldn't the sun be moving up and to the right, towards the south and eventually the west. or do things work "backwards" in the Southern hemisphere? Travel to the southern hemisphere (as I have), and it’s amazing how fast you’ll notice that the Sun rises in the “wrong” direction. I’m sur...

timclair wrote:I count eight planets: I see Earth and 7 others.

The description says, “...with seven planets in a starry sky.” The Earth isn’t in that starry sky, at least not from the photographer’s perspective.

I would have been good to precise that the round colored halos around all bright stars are not nebulas but reflections in the optics! They are very visible and I think that's confusing for most people. :) A larger question is how much information should the editors repeat from the original image pa...

(I would have said that the light reaching us now was emitted just as anatomically modern humans first developed.) <<The genus Homo emerges from australopithecine hominins some time after 3 million years ago. With the arrival of Homo erectus in the fossil record ca. 1.8 to 1.3 million years ago, cr...

True. Fluids and solids can share many properties that gases do not, however. [...] Shouldn't that be liquids and solids? I used "fluids" deliberately, since gases, liquids, and solids are all capable of existing as fluids, and it is the fluid properties that allow something to act (at le...

Chris Peterson wrote:True. Fluids and solids can share many properties that gases do not, however. [...]

Shouldn't that be liquids and solids?

Which way is the spin axis? Is it 11 o'clock &ndash; 5 o'clock, or is it 8 o'clock &ndash; 2 o'clock?

The rock strata also scream “water.”

If the revelation that Orion has a dong was shocking, wait till people find out she's transgender!

Clearly, morally bankrupt. Science should be about science. I get the humor aspect, but questionable content should have been deleted when discovered. You guys are just weird. - the kids are banned from this site. Not because of the comic, but the attitude towards the content herein... Sorry for pl...

Really??? My kids read this!!! They should get a good snicker, then. ;) At 7 years old? Are you serious? Are you out of you mind? How do I explain this kind of thing to a child? If your child is a boy, he already has a dong, and you don't need to explain anything. If your child is a girl, it's high...

If this is looking west across downtown Philadelphia, then how is that the Schuylkill River?

geoffrey.landis wrote:There are, I'm told, good reasons for vertical exaggeration, but I really wish that this would be explicitly called out when it is done.

This!

This image just screams vertical exaggeration at me, but I can't find any text stating so.

Nitpicker wrote:Unless we define top equivalent to North and bottom equivalent to South.

I would consider that inappropriate in a scene that includes a terrestrial horizon, unless the camera is pointed straight up.

APOD Robot wrote:At the Winter Solstice in Earth's northern hemisphere, the Sun appears at the bottom of the analemma.

Doesn't the Sun appear at the bottom at winter solstice in either hemisphere (unless you are within one of the polar circles, in which it doesn't appear at all)?

sffilmstagemusic wrote:Good Evening: I have always called that thing at the upper left the "Up Yours Nebula."

I suppose that's more polite than what I call it.

Winter in the Virgin Islands (among other seasons).

APODFORIST wrote:During Apollo 17 they drove away 5 km "air"-line from the lander. A lot of walking in case of emergency.

On Earth, that would be only an hour's walk.

Have you ever gone to Google Maps to find a street view of these locations? This one was easy to find.

Some of those galaxy cores show diffraction artifacts. This is some feat of light collection!

The only non-religious explanations are ... Are you sure this is exhaustive? Even though I don't know as much about this matter as Chris does, I'm not going to assume that the only non-religious explanations are those that have already been proposed. This is classic argument from ignorance, as well...

Were you using the Barlow lens with the diagonal? From the manual: TELESCOPE ASSEMBLY INSTRUCTIONS 6. Insert diagonal (D) into the focus tube (C). Secure by tightening small retaining screw on the focus tube (Fig. 4). NOTE: Diagonal is only to be use in combination with the eyepieces (oculars). Nev...

Curiosity unexpectedly went into safe mode in early July, but it was brought out last week and has now resumed exploring the once lake-filled interior of Gale Crater for further signs that it was once habitable by microbial life. Curiosity has resumed exploring the once lake-filled interior of Gale...

We have a brand new astronomy club in St. Thomas, and a couple of weeks ago, we had our first star party. One child and his grandmother showed up with a Tasco 420x60 refractor. They obtained it in the usual manner: it was gifted to them. I was prepared to focus on the positive, and give them tips on...