Starship Asterisk*

(deep voice) “J. O. I.”

How dramatic!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1a/Gustave_Dor%C3%A9_Andromeda.jpg Andromeda on the Rocks http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_160419.jpg Explanation: Because the stars trailed above the horizon while the picture was made, separate exposures tracking the stars were combined with on...

Does anyone else see the Flying Spaghetti Monster in this?

neufer wrote:

• They would definitely be of zoological importance.

Unless we redefine “animal” to include extraterrestrial clades with phylogenies similar to those of Metazoa, a better expression would be “biological importance.”

When I look at the closeup, the dark areas look like cast shadows, with uneven edges toward the bottom. This leads me to believe that the scene is illuminated from the top, and that the linear features are double ridges.

Cousin Ricky wrote:... (The observatory scope could not be used because the recalibration for public viewing was cannibalizing to much research time.) ...

Don't you hate when you find a typo after the editing period has expired?

I haven't seen any "name a star" service that claims the star names they catalog will be official outside the catalog, or that they will be adopted by the scientific community. They appear to be careful to explicitly state the opposite. So, if people "buy a star" thinking otherw...

geckzilla wrote:I guess we won't ever know what the individual from Ricky's story was thinking unless he comes back.

He didn't seem disillusioned at the time.

I volunteer at public nights at the local observatory. At public night last November, I met my first International Star Registry victim. This guy’s star was in Lynx. Unfortunately, Lynx was low in the sky, over suburban lights, and the Moon was waxing gibbous. I am unfamiliar with Lynx, and there wa...

I noticed right away that the stars smear north-south, meaning that they cannot be star trails, yet the figures are not similarly smeared. How is this a single exposure? Was the camera moving during the shot?

heehaw wrote:I was shocked to the core when I went to today's ESPOD : http://epod.usra.edu/blog/ Click on the picture to get the high resolution. I hope this is not some stupid April Fool joke?

Do you really have to ask?

The image was made on 25 July 2015 at UT 13:43. The view is to the southwest, almost directly towards the 74% moon (out of the field at the top). At this time, ISS was only just in the night, with the Sun lighting the northern horizon behind it- almost certainly the source of the blue light. (And t...

I'm curious about the white balance of this photo—or, why do the spacecraft look blue?

Arguably the closest mountain top to the "Stars" would be what ever southern peak (probably Vinson Massif in Antarctica) lies closest to Alpha Centauri B, our closest star that isn't the Sun That would be Proxima Centauri, not Alpha Centauri B. And certainly not Vinson Massif. There is a ...

Lilly wrote:My students dont like this explanation today... They said it is to complicated... too much information in a few words..... I found it interesting....

Draw them a picture.

For the same reason USAliens (Not "Americans", as Mexicans and Canadians and South Americans all recognise that different countries with different customs exist) [...] If we were writing in Spanish here, you’d have a point with your terminology. In Latin America, the word América does ref...

phlloydl wrote:Why is it that Americans assume all the world understands their time zones? This is an astronomy-related web page and astronomers work in UT. So what is "11:00 am Eastern Tome" in UT, please?

That’s nothing. I’ve seen the word “miles” used in APOD explanations.

Yes, the engineers should celebrate the fine work they've done but this doesn't advance Science one bit. Maybe, when Amazon sells gravity telescopes for amateurs at less than a hundred quid this event will be seen as the start of something but today it's just yet one more in a long, long, line of c...

Can't they just compress space-time and get us the news now?

Startreader wrote:My definition makes at least one person happy.
Therefore the greater benefit to Humanity in general would be made by adopting my definition.

Damn!

I was never able to see any sort of man in the Moon until Carl Sagan pointed one out in The Demon-Haunted World. I'm not sure I could see it today. When I was a kid, I read a book illustrating the face, but all I ever saw was a rabbit. A few years ago, someone gave me an explanation. We live in the ...

I was about to compose a rebuttal, but then you wrote this:

Startreader wrote:Why? Because that makes me happy.

Sorry, science doesn't operate that way.

All other rebuttals are rendered superfluous.

APOD Robot wrote:Though some might claim to see six planets, ...

Who wouldn't claim that? B.o.B?

AFAIK element 43 Tc (Technetium) is also manmade, hence it's name. At least the Dutch Wikipedia agrees with me. Any comment or rectification on my knowledge or on Wikipedia(Dutch)? Technetium is naturally occurring, but its half life is short enough that all the primordial technetium on Earth has d...

Nitpicker wrote:I suppose the list of brightest stars is based on what is resolvable by the unaided eye. So, Alpha Cen is considered brighter than Arcturus.

The explanation referred specifically to “the brightest star in the Alpha Centauri system.”