Starship Asterisk*

Sorry to be away so long. Life takes us different ways at times. Anyway, just thought I'd mention. The proper translation of 眼睛的天堂 or Tianyan is "Eye of Paradise." Friends from my college days told me that, in Chinese, they have no word for God so may not have a word that we would translat...

OK, sorry before I start. I know I'm a physics idiot. That hasn't stopped me from "trying" to wrap my brain around it. But LIGO's latest "findings" begs a question that I really wish somebody would answer intelligibly for a physics lamebrain like myself. Did or did not Oleg D. Je...

Since I seem to be the only one who sees this, I'm likely about to speak out of one of my lesser orifices. But: By following the dust trails carefully as well as what is left of the spirals, I find no good reason to classify this as an interaction between two galaxies. Unless the spectroscopy declar...

This is true, but I quibble with your semantics here. Well, I think you're right that it is semantics. I don't think we're saying different things, or have substantially different views. I'm certainly not suggesting there's nothing new under the Sun... only that the new things we're going to discov...

Humor aside, these are almost certainly signs of a sublimation for starters. Since the description claims such of its own accord, I find it rather easy to agree with them. Even if we don't always agree with them, our fearless leaders seldom make statements unequal to common sense. I doubt Pluto real...

1000 years ago, it would have seemed absurd to think that we could collect and make sense of data out of the lights in the sky, let alone light from the sky that is outside the ability of the human eye to detect via brightness or frequency. So is it absurd to suppose that there is decipherable data ...

Does anybody have a clue whether the nude descending the staircase was a male or a female? Perhaps I would do better to ask if it is a terrestrial being?

Sorry if this is a bit self serving, but this super moon eclipse will always hold a special place for me. You see, the dates for the series of late were 1964 (the year I was born), 1982 (the year I graduated high school), then September 27, 2015 (MY BIRTHDAY!). I have been going blind for the last d...

Thanks for your quick answers Chris and Geck. I dislike asking others to "spoon feed" me answers to questions which are readily answered on my own with the proper research but I had found myself at a logical bind and didn't know which way to "tug" to loosen the mental knot. I had...

This 'thin crust' interpretation is my own. There is still a lot of information to come from New Horizons so I might have to make corrections. Many others have different ideas. The idea may just be your own but it helps me wrap my brain around what I'm seeing. As a working hypothesis, I think it is...

In the last year, I've done a lot of reading and study on most subjects surrounding astronomy and astrophysics. (Not that I'm laying claims to a deep understanding of astrophysics which would not be true.) I've been trying to wrap my brain around the concept of new star formation but no source I hav...

Wow, I got all shivery over this last image. I can't wait to hear what the geologists make of it all. I've not been commenting here lately but that is only because I've been working hard catching up to everyone in terms of data sets in my own brain. Cutting down on idiot remarks from me. Loved the l...

I'm trusting it was an oversight but rather well caught if I do say so!

bystander wrote:

Dad is watching wrote: I tried to access the hi-res image but it seems to have errors in it and I can't display it.

It is quite large (9 Mb). Here is a link to a download page at HubbleSite.

The large file behind the presentation picture on APOD is a 9.060meg file.

That's actually the hottest image of M31 I've seen from GALEX. Up until now, my impression was that the UV output was significantly less than today's image would make it appear. This is more what I'm used to seeing: http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/files/2013/09/M31_galex_small.jpg I suppose ...

Being new, I suppose that it's long been discussed but, still, I can't help but marvel at the double tail. Each comet, like huge snowflakes, presents such a desperate shape to their tails. Do the tails flow off the comet mostly based on the physical shape of the nucleus? If so, I'd love to see the s...

Maybe this helps with my argument that “Milky Way” is just too wimpy of a name. If I lived in 3C 279, I would scoff at such a puny preponderance. I would not be so quick to arms however if “Milky Way” were named... say, “Dragon’s Lair”... or “Death Trap To All Hostile Intergalactic Alien Invaders, ...

I would bow to Chris' wisdom on this. I would ask him one quick thing, if he has a moment to reply. It may not be possible so far out and in such coldness but I wonder if the friction of impact could potentially cause any amount of temperature increase leading to liquefaction or, at least, a lesseni...

Quite a lot of larger material stays in nearly the same orbit as the parent comet for many orbits, only slowly dissipating due to the above mentioned forces. Do I understand you to be saying that larger fragments can break off a comet and follow it all the way around its orbit possibly numerous tim...

This mission has gained amazing knowledge for mankind; for us, our children, and generations to come. Why don't we ask every adult in America to contribute $10 to building hospitals, curing diseases, etc., out of their movie, clothing, dining out, smart phone, music downloads, booze, dope smoking, ...

A tour de force that we have come to expect from NASA! But is it worth $750M? For that amount a hospital could be funded for an entire year. For instance, it costs St Jude Children's Hospital about $2M per day to provide free care. Is NASA even relevant to the needs of the USA anymore? Please don't...

As I understand it, the term "binary planets" is used when two bodies orbit a point outside either of their masses which is what I understand Pluto and Charon do. Students everywhere will no doubt be pleased to learn that it doesn't matter what terms they use. "Everyone gets 100%,&qu...

Can't think of any mechanism for one body to "siphon off" atmosphere? Maybe I can help. How about a double star system with a white dwarf? This type of star system includes a very dense, small member (the white dwarf) and a much larger but less dense member that has begun to swell up and ...

No such agreement is likely, because none of these terms are well enough defined to eliminate ambiguity. Both are reasonably called planets (in which case they are a binary system), Pluto is reasonably called a planet and Charon a moon. It really depends on context. And frankly, it's not all that i...

I can't think of any mechanism for one body to "siphon off" the atmosphere of the other. No gas molecule on Pluto feels any net gravitational force except downwards, towards the center of Pluto. Charon certainly encounters gas which has dissipated away from Pluto, in the same way that moo...