Starship Asterisk*

I'm using Internet Explorer 8, all the latest updates, in WinXP. Then you're a sitting duck for any new security holes that open up (and they will). Microsoft has stopped issuing security updates for WinXP, which was the already the least secure operating system to begin with. Internet Explorer is ...

Ann wrote:Quo vadum(?)? Where are we going?

My best guess is "vadimus," but Latin still throws me for a loop.

According to the filter views posted by Geck, the cyan veils are caused by H-alpha. It would be red if the image were in true color (and if our cone cells were sensitive enough), but that is not the image that is posted.

Great! Now all I need is some Internet service that delivers the bandwidth the ISP has shamelessly promised us for years.

I was wondering what NGC 7320 would look like if it were pushed back to be with the other galaxies and calculated that it would be about 20% of its apparent size at that distance. If it were anywhere near the others it would be quickly distorted and probably integrated into its neighbors like a lit...

When two galaxies collide , the stars that compose them usually do not. That's because galaxies are mostly empty space and, however bright, stars only take up only a small amount of that space. When playing golf, one's opponents often claim that trees (eucalypt, say) are 90% air. This is probably t...

I'll let somebody else answer Beyond's question and instead ponder the fact that Comet Lovejoy is apparently looking down on the only artificial feature on the Earth that is visible from space, except it isn't visible from space (at least not from the Moon and certainly not from the position of Com...

Is that a satellite streak underneath sigma Ophiuchi and off to the right edge?

Is M16 the Eagle Nebula? It was my understanding that the Eagle Nebula is IC 4703, and M16/NGC 6611 is the open cluster within the nebula.

How do the pillars form? Are they pulled out by the stars births? Do the pillars push the newborn stars or do the stars string the pillars out like breadcrumbs as the accelerate? What starts the motion of a newborn star? Does the nebula exert positive or negative momentum to it's child stars, relat...

Well, to a degree. But beyond a certain point- and it's not very large (well under a meter), aperture isn't usually about higher resolution, but about greater light collecting ability. The TMT isn't going to provide any higher resolution for wide angle shots than amateurs are getting every day. Lar...

You've got all that stuff in that small space? No wonder i couldn't tell anything. But even if i did recognize some of it, i still wouldn't have known what you were talking about, even though i spent almost a year and a half in Vietnam. And what's those two gray rectangles?? It's no good if you hav...

Anthony Barreiro wrote:I don't understand what flying saucers have to do with Vietnamese skylore, nor what connection you have to Vietnam.

My Vietnamese sign is the cat, and NGC 2683 is in Lynx. I have no connection to Vietnam, but I do like the Al Stewart song, “Year of the Cat.”

The other day on another forum, someone asked if there were any atheists who lent credence to astrology. Of course, the answer is “yes” (however few). If you look at my avatar, you’ll know what my astrological (tropical?) sign is. However, you’ll also know what I think of astrology. :wink: Someone ...

The other day on another forum, someone asked if there were any atheists who lent credence to astrology. Of course, the answer is “yes” (however few). If you look at my avatar, you’ll know what my astrological (tropical?) sign is. However, you’ll also know what I think of astrology. :wink: Someone m...

Is M83 really a barred spiral, or is it just a regular spiral whose arms are unusually straight near the center? In images of all other barred spirals I've seen, the bar structure is distinct from the arms, but this does not seem to be the case with M83.

The bigger error is in assigning any value for the size of the Universe, which is somewhere between the size of the observable universe and infinitely large... and no current theory allows that to be narrowed down very much. I gave them a pass on that because the pop-up bubble at the end does admit...

Wish I could watch it, but my Internet service (which my ISP laughingly calls "high speed" and "state of the art") is having a bad day. Actually, it's having a bad month. I haven't been able to get through a YouTube video without it choking since about a week before Christmas. (A...

The image of the Virgo Cluster (which shows M84 and M86) is not to scale. It only shows a small portion of the cluster, and that portion is shown too large. Otherwise, this is an awesome work! I learned a lot from it. The scariest part is that if I look hard enough, I should be able to see dust mite...

geckzilla wrote:Meh, I just realized that in my previous post I had managed to paste the wrong URL for "try this image" ... fixed now, but quite a bit too late. Oh well.

Ah, yes, that's very clear!

Chris Peterson wrote:Here's today's APOD in context.

ic1805comp.jpg

Thanks. Geckzilla is right: the image is too small. I can match the dark nebula, but I can only match two of the stars.

No matter how much I stare and twist my head, I cannot reconcile the APOD and Atlas of the Universe images. Can someone give pointers as to how the former fits to the latter?

http://sun.kochi-ct.jp/e/sun-radio-waves.jpg The visible spectrum in that diagram is way too broad, covering most of the range between 1 nm and 1 µm. It should actually cover 380 nm to something over 700 nm, or a fraction of the range between 1 µm and the tick mark above it (100 nm). I don't normal...

So why is the visible-light portion of the Sun shown in false color?

They are in metres and indicate the elevation of the top of the ice. The highest elevation in Antarctica is almost 5000m, at Vinson Massif in western Antarctica, although that area is not nearly as vast as the eastern ice shelf. According to this link, if you don't consider the ice, the highest ele...