Starship Asterisk*

So why would the astroimagers do that? Does it in some way contribute to data which may verify the reason for it? Or is it just boys playing in a sandbox?

And I never know quite what to say to make them feel better. Sometimes I'll just say, no, this is about as good as it gets, the light is so faint and diffuse that if we were inside it, it still wouldn't look brighter. Sometimes I talk about the limitations of the human eye, that if we could collect...

The tiger stripes at the bottom look like river deltas, but there is no sea to form them. On Earth, deltas are very rich and biodiverse. These structures on Enceladus seem like interesting places to explore.

I have a not-too-expensive Orion refractor, which does nicely with Jupiter, Saturn, Andromeda, and the like. But I get happily lost gazing through my very nice birding binoculars, especially the Moon. More than anything, it's how they transform a disc into a sphere. It's given me goosebumps on warm ...

But there are caves on the moon. I read about that just days ago. And astronomers are very excited about that. It would not be surprising that the first perennial manned mission might be located near one of them. Pretty safe in a cave, relatively speaking! Our ancestors certainly utilized them; thos...

Agreed, as I implied. But for now, our Moon wins!

And there is another special interest involving the Moon's South Pole: it may harbor the coldest non-space areas in the entire Solar System. Almost everywhere, on every rocky planet and moon, there are places that receive no direct sunlight, but according to current data, all receive secondary ligh...

And there is another special interest involving the Moon's South Pole: it may harbor the coldest non-space areas in the entire Solar System. Almost everywhere, on every rocky planet and moon, there are places that receive no direct sunlight, but according to current data, all receive secondary light...

What I love about Milky Way images is how they remind us that we are seeing a galactic arm edge-on, in every way similar to distant edge-on galaxies. Especially in this APOD, I find, maybe because of the straight tapered aspect of the arm extending from the bulgy center. KingOfWings_Pinkston_960-3....

The Celestial Moray Choir singing their hearts out?

Really tired of the vapid, patronizing explanations of quirky photos. I don’t see the humor in the “meteor missed the galaxy” bit. As to the colors of the meteor track, the velocity is sufficient to ionize atmosphere and meteor debris. Colors will vary. “Dust” looks like red sprites, which are high...

I imagine they never did it because Carl wasn't around to tell them to. They had no interest in doing so the first time; NASA as a body is science-oriented, and finance-oriented as a necessity, not romantically oriented. The space-faring astronauts themselves had no choice but to become emotionally ...

I hope APOD presents the new NASA Webb visualization of the Pillars Of Creation here. To see this in a 3D format is striking, since everything is basically 2D-looking otherwise. Even if it isn't actual, it certainly is dramatic, and I hope, helpful. It would be exciting for the rest of us to see oth...

Whitman's could make a chocolate box out of it.

Thanks, Ann. I do love neat cloud pics, and I have a slew of'em lol...
I saw Asperatus clouds once, but mild ones. Still waiting for that glorious day.

Since today's APOD is an EPOD, here are a couple of photos I took a few days ago. These mammatocumulus appeared after quite a randy storm!

Congrats johnnydeep on your 3001 posts. That's quite an odyssey!

Thanks Chris. I expanded my question, but it wasn't necessary.

"Dark energy overtakes gravity." Is this because gravity was universally weak at this stage due to less matter? I am not sure what exactly this statement really implies. What would be the difference between the Universe with no dark energy and the Universe after dark energy "overtook&...

“The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.” ― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Sorry, couldn't resist. Have a nice day everyone) Thank you!...

Perusing around today's APOD is something.
Does anyone know what this is? I assumed a star rather than a galaxy, but are the blue areas anything other than light tricks from Webb's camera?

There is a Hubble image of a portion of Pandora's Cluster, and I decided to compare it with the same part of the cluster as imaged by Webb. And to the ~4:30 position of Description #2, there is a quite blue little cluster that is red in Webb. There are lots of tiny blue dots that are red in Webb; s...

This is so beautiful! I couldn't see any of the Northern Lights because of the city lights. In fact, after moving to the city, I rarely see the stars at all. Except here! In at least the last 25 years, any aurora sightings where I am in SE Pa has been "obscured by clouds". It has gone far...

The cluster that the Sun formed in is long since scattered. Open clusters only last for a few tens (or at most hundreds) of millions of years. That said, I believe a few stars have been identified that possibly formed at the same time, and have been traveling nearby along with us. Over nearly 5 bil...

The write-up mentioned that our Sun may have been part of a cluster at one time.
Do we know where our sun was born? Was that theoretical cluster here, or did the Sun migrate to here from 'parts unknown'? Do astronomers have any theories of as to where our cluster was?