Starship Asterisk*

The fact that the proto-star is so close to the cusp of the parabola, does that mean it is moving through the interstellar medium at the same speed as its stellar wind?

Geck! Can you drop by a moment, tell us how you’re doing?

Whoa, how have I missed this one? It should be well visible from my latitude!

I think I know. It’s not visible from 40° north, so it’s not talked about.

As of this minute, there is no main image displayed of this amazing technical feat... Hopethishelp. I think you're supposed to click the X (Twitter) link. (Not something I'm terribly fond of doing, myself. I could have hoped they found the same or similar video elsewhere.) It’s all good. I’ve alrea...

With the colors, this looks more like a mandrill than a baboon.

I saw Chicagohenge in September of 2021. Regretably, I didn’t get a photograph. Chicagohenge didn’t occur to me until I was riding the El shortly before sunset, and I am slow getting my camera out.

Indeed, it was pure luck. From https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/87433/how-misinterpreted-anagram-predicted-moons-mars Earlier in 1610, Galileo had discovered the four so-called “Galilean moons” of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Although we now know that Jupiter has several dozen moo...

Both Martian moons were discovered in 1877 by Asaph Hall , an American astronomer working at the US Naval Observatory in Washington D.C. But their existence was postulated around 1610 by Johannes Kepler , the astronomer who derived the laws of planetary motion. In this case, Kepler's prediction was...

The other odd feature, to me at least, is that the crescent moon is lying flat on it's back, which it never is from European latitudes. That’s one thing I appreciate about living in the tropics. I think of it as the “Smiling Moon.” (The smile will have to do for me, as my pareidolia cannot see the ...

I’d like to know the vertical exaggeration of this render. Apparently, I need to have an Instagram account to view details on the source image.

There is also open cluster NGC 6603, near the center of the image.

APOD Robot wrote: ↑Wed Jul 17, 2024 4:05 am ... while Io's volcanoes are caused by gravitational flexing resulting from Jupiter's tidal gravitational pull.

It’s not just Jupiter. The orbital resonances with Europa and Ganymede also contribute.

APOD Robot wrote: ↑Mon Jul 01, 2024 4:06 am Humans first appeared only about 6 million years ago, ...

That’s a rather broad definition of “human.” 6 million years ago is when our lineage split from the chimpanzee/bonobo lineage, so this definition would include Australopithecus and Ardipithecus. I’ll take it, though.

(but - oh the heresy! - the video cuts out the last chord of that Bach piece!) (which can also be heard on Voyager's Golden Record) I came here just to say this! Not heresy, but MAJOR cringe! I think that would produce the same effect for ANY song on fans of that song's genre. I assume that was acc...

It looks like the mouth of a sandworm (Villeneuve version).

If the star directly impacts a massive black hole , then the star falls in completely -- and everything vanishes. This, of course, is not what is illustrated, but it has me wondering: if the black hole is rotating (which probably most are), is a direct impact even possible? My understanding is that...

Christian G. wrote: ↑Sun May 05, 2024 3:03 pm

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Sun May 05, 2024 2:51 pm [...] Still waiting for new physics there.

Thanks, you've made my day!

This exchange made me smile.

I find it interesting that the trailing side is slightly hotter than the leading side.

I appreciate NASA is an American agency which is beholden to increasing interest in space for Americans but I would appreciate having the courtesy of having conversions to metric units in brackets after the imperial ones, for the benefit of us international readers. I agree. But I also think in thi...

You'd think at that orbital distance, the parent star would either wick matter from WASP-43b, or cause the orbit to decay until the planet broke apart, or given time, both. I'm no astrophysicist, though..... :' ) The sizes in the diagram are not to scale. 2 million km is large compared to the sizes...

I saw Jupiter (not shown) and Venus. The sky was too cloudy to see Mercury or 12/P, even through a binocular.

I did see solar prominences for the first time ever, though!

Was anyone able to see a brightness gradient on last night’s eclipse? I couldn’t.

It completes one orbit in just 7 hours and 39 minutes. That's faster than a Mars rotation, which corresponds to about 24 hours and 40 minutes. So on Mars, Phobos can be seen to rise above the western horizon 3 times a day. This is better expressed “up to 3 times a day.” Since Mars is also rotating,...

The caption states that Phobos has traveled from the first dot on the right to the first dot on the left in 22 minutes. It has also stated that Mars is rotating faster than Phobos is traveling. How can Hubble keep Mars in focus if it is spinning at that speed? Read it again: “It completes one orbit...

Finally, the caption contains a mistake. APOD Robot wrote: In the sky above the Halley-type comet, the Andromeda (right) and Triangulum galaxies flank bright star Mirach, beta star of the constellation Andromeda. This is correct, but when it is put like this, it may lead you to believe that the Tri...