Starship Asterisk*

Do these clusters rotate? Does the lack of rotation allow them to keep their uniform shape. Do they lack a central gravitational singularity?

JoWi wrote:"For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky"....

I was going to post this quote from Star Trek TOS. Glad someone else had the same notion...

Truly stunning and different. Wow has ground based astronomy improved. Today's pinnacle of professional picture production follows yesterday's apex of amateur astronomy. Does today's description say "free floating planets" are imaged in this photograph? I did not think that possible and fi...

Wow, This is one great accomplishment. I vote this as one of the all time greatest images ever presented @ APOD.

Just below The Horsehead I see a dog sitting and looking upward with his ears flowing downward. Then just to our right of the dog is a boy. His hair would be parted on the far side of him and combed towards us. You can clearly see his hairline outlining his face and his left ear, and then the line ...

The Horsehead Nebula was ready for it's closeup ...

Sometimes I wonder if the reds and blues ever correspond to the direction of movement relative to the observer ? Red areas from material moving away and blue compressed by rapid motion toward the camera. The idea may, may not, violate the rules of relativity but is based on Doppler physics.

Barred spiral NGC 5101 shows vast purple regions. I'm used to seeing star forming area in pink. The expanded view of NGC 5078 is full of beautiful purple and looking very energetic. Are we seeing a representation of actual color ? Is the purple caused by X-ray emission ?

Looks Like someone knocked the cover off a baseball ...

SPF 2000 ! ... Wow, How big is the Sun in the sky on Mercury ?

One of the things I most enjoy about life is repeatedly finding out how stupid I am. How could I have never thought of that way of photographing a telescope inside a dome? But I didn't. Makes me wonder again whether there is simple yet undiscovered physics out there, waiting for someone. Like the t...

Wow, That's a lot of real estate in that frame. I can't get over how many galaxies there are in the expanded{Double left click}version of this image...The definition of awesome . I am uncertain about the resolving power of these devices. At 3 million light years distance, are we seeing individual st...

Finally, A decent image of "The Great Bird Of The Galaxy". I've been waiting for almost 50 years ...

It's not 'Dirt' we are looking at. The island melted back into the liquid it solidified from. This seems pretty likely, I am a bit surprised it is not already on the list. Methane, Ethane ... Frozen or Liquid ? The real mystery is the origin of these so called "Fossil Fuels" ?

Thanks for the great and totally detailed answers...

(Don't Tell Me The Moon Is Blue)

I'm curious about the white balance of this photo mdash or, why do the spacecraft look blue? As downloaded, the image seems not to have any bluish cast overall. I checked with a digital colour meter, and the black areas are close to 0 (zero) in R, G, and B channels, and the whitest area is very clo...

I have seen Jupiter and three of it's moons without a scope. I was quite amazed to spot those Jovian moons. Standing on my driveway on clear cold winter night, I wondered "Could one of Jupiter's moon really look to be that far away from it's planet? " Then... " Those three objects are...

I hope to view Mercury, someday. When will, or did, Mercury reach greatest elongation this time around ?

Wow, the full screen view of this magnificent vista has me thanking creation for being alive. The electric green glowing plasma curtains in the heavens dwarf the Earth bound transmission line stretching towards the vanishing point. This is a beautiful way to start a new year of discovery and wonder....

Was that a staging incident near the peak of the arc? It looks like the first stage continued to follow a perfect ballistic parabola as it headed back to Earth. That appears quite a course correction as the second stage burns. ...Beautiful...C_S

What land masses do you see on Earth in this image? My guess: Eastern USA, including Cape Hatteras + Eastern South America.

To paraphrase Gertrude Stein ... " There IS A Lot Of There There "

Are they truly meteors? OR...Is Lrrr attacking the Earth once again ???

At first glance the small spiral galaxy in the center looked like a human hand.(Sorta pointing to 8 O"Clock position) Must be those old 'Star Trek' episodes like "Who Morns For Adonis' with the huge outstretched hand in space.