Starship Asterisk*

I don't see the scientific lesson here about the unwinding. Although you can't see it on the APOD main page, if you click on the larger screen version for it you can see double. The rectangle is divided into two double portions, the left and right sides are with with the identical star formations in...

Some interesting statistics. NASA states that this photo was taken about 81,000 miles from Enceladus. And also Enceladus orbits about 112,000 miles above Saturn's cloud tops. Plugging in the figures we can imagine that at an angle 120 degrees away behind the camera, the scenery must have been stupen...

Something unreal about his picture, besides the artificial full moon. I understand that during the full annular eclipse that the sky gets dark because the moon is blocking the sunlight. But then why at the top right when the moon has passed away from in front of the sun is the sky black instead the ...

Wow 2 horse head nebulae! Just an off the cuff observation but to me that looks rather like a grayhound dog's head running after a rabbit. Just like Sirius the dog star, could there be a dog nebula as well? Google search tells me there is a "Running Dog Nebula." Also called the Heart Nebula.

Is there an easy explanation I can tell my 7-year-old grandson explaining why the nebula is mostly 80% red but has a distinctive blue colored clock hand about at the 3 o'clock position? Here's what I know. The red is mostly hydrogen gas absorbing the red as absorbtion from the solar winds. The blue ...

Man that's something! Scenes like this meteor shower make me think I happen to live in the wrong part of the world. When I go out to watch during almost peak times at 1:00 AM, in relatively dark skies on a farm, I might see 2 or even 3 at the same time or within a 3 or 5 seconds time period, but nev...

Wow, get a load of the 18 diffraction spikes on bright foreground star Alpha Cephei in the upper right! So, why does this TAKAHASHI FSQ-106EDX4 REFRACTOR produce 18 diffraction spikes? (I'm sure Chris has addressed this question before somewhere...) If I can make a wild, unscientific guess, from Wi...

"The Sombrero Galaxy, also known as M104, spans about 50,000 light years across." There seems to be some discrepancy with the Wikipedia Sombrero Galaxy article. And I quote; [The Sombrero Galaxy] has a D25 isophotal diameter of approximately 29.09 kiloparsecs (94,900 light-years),[1] makin...

I would like to know what causes those large patches of baby blue stars which aren't co-mingled with white or red stars? You can see an example at 1 to 2 o'clock in Rob's close up screen grab. And directly below that at 3 o'clock are a patch of all red stars. Is that due from the collision and the r...

Cool. A shock wave that actually looks like a wave. I wonder do we know which direction it is moving? Is it moving from right to left or vice versa like a wave on the ocean, or is it moving in one mass from top to bottom or vice versa.

So if the monster was pictured in the light of hydrogen almost 2 weeks ago, would we still see the light of hydrogen today? Or has in the meantime the light switched to something else, say, the light of nitrogen?

So I take it that the dwarf galaxy is the white oval shape above center and the large galaxy is edge on. What I like to know is which direction is the collision? Is the dwarf plunging downwards like a head on collision, or, is it hovering in place like a helicopter but it is being cannibalized from ...

Chandrayaan-3 lifted off on July 14, and is scheduled to land on the Moon on August 23. That is as I calculate a travel time of 40 days.
Just to put it in perspective and to show the advancement of technology and science, how long did it take Apollo 11 some 54 years ago, to reach the Moon?

Just a thought. Carbon fusing stars might not just contain gaseous carbon, but in lower, deeper pressure zones could produce diamonds which is just carbon formed in high pressure into a crystalline form. What if the star is raining diamonds down below and under certain flare conditions blast the dia...

Despite the season, the splendid meteor is not a Perseid :) How can you be sure? Although the Wiki link states that the Perseids mainly only begin on July 17 and today is only the 16th, Wiki also states that in 2020 they did start on July 16! And besides that Wiki states that they actually started ...

I was wondering from the explanation that the Webb nearby stars have 6 spikes due to the 18 hexagonal mirror segments, although it is rarely explained, does this mean that the Hubbble stars have 4 spikes because the Hubble has 12 mirror segments? (I.e. the solution is divisible by 3.)

That is some hi-res hirise camera. Stickney crater is some 9 kilometers wide and it fills the photo frame. You feel like you see it from some 9 kilometers away. Yet we are told the camera was some 6,000 kilometers away! That would be like photographing the city of Washington DC from London England, ...

So why do they say Everest is the highest peak? It doesn’t look that way. Oh, they must say it depends on where the “mountain” begins. This is a photographic illusion. Although Everest and Lhotse are adjacent, Makalu is actually 19 kilometers away from Everest. Here Makalu happens to be closer to t...

Just a thought of why the lightning is green instead of electrical white. On Earth Auroras are usually photographed green and are from Solar winds descending the magnetic poles. Jupiter's magnetic fields are ten times stronger than Earth. And this is near Jupiter's north pole. Could this wide green ...

wolfie138 wrote: ↑Sun Jun 18, 2023 8:16 am "nowhere else in the galaxy"
except here
viewtopic.php?p=289252#p289252

NASA has also found a hexagon on Jupiter.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia2355 ... ns-hexagon

This raises a curious question. Why is the shark Nebula blue here when in the APOD 6 years ago

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap150907.html

the Shark was brown and the PGC 67671 galaxy was also brown?

Pictured are the two 'largest' satellites orbiting Earth. Out of curiosity, what is the third largest satellite around the planet Earth? The James Webb telescope? Is there any satellite bigger than the JWT?

Interesting - top left. There is a depiction of Ezekiel's Wheel. Similar to https://dia.pitts.emory.edu/woodcuts/15 ... 017291.pdf

"The wheel in the sky keeps on turning."

There is also , bottom left a priest crawling on Earth with his head sticking into the heavens above.

The first sentence in the explanation got me to thinking. Of all the entries in the Charles Messier's famous catalog, Which entry WOULD be considered one of the very least (famous or beautiful?) As it's said if somebody comes in first place in a race, then by definition somebody else must come in la...

Another question about the light from Neptune. From the https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap091213.html it says that Neptune emits more light than it receives from the Sun. Here today that statement has been edited out. Has that been debunked? If Neptune does emit more Neptune light than it receives from t...