Starship Asterisk*

The geocentric universe was not an inherently religious perspective unless you're willing to accept the fact that nearly everyone was "religious" in some way throughout Antiquity. Atheism was not really a thing. The geocentric universe was not religious. It was the de facto understanding o...

Thanks for the help everyone! I got it to work!

The two images are too far apart. I can't bring them together.

Gravity is enough! The problem is that planetary systems are inherently chaotic in their orbital dynamics. Once you get a star inside a light year or so of another, their planetary systems are likely to be perturbed, and it doesn't take much to shift a planet with life on it into an orbit that is i...

The step by billion-year-step toward full collision is really interesting in the link given. The idea of an eventual collision is a fascinating one, if only because of the likelihood that there won't be any direction physical collision, only gravitational interactions. (And the mountains in silhouet...

es, I've read it's still in development stages, but I didn't see a planned date. There are more telescopes joining in, I presume for more data to help with resolution and fidelity. Back when M87 was imaged, they knew that the MW BH is harder to image. I can't remember the details, but I believe the...

I don't like cats much, but I've had the cute living kitten every time. I was starting to question whether or not there was a dead cat possibility at all. As an animal lover in general and cat lover in particular I found so-cslled astronomy picture of the day most disagreeable, disgusting and contem...

The Pleiades wins every time! It's my favorite star cluster. (But the California Nebula is also very lovely.)

One of my friends made me a picture because of how much I love it.

Every time I see a picture of Pluto, I'm blown away by it. I grew up with Pluto being mostly a big question mark and I never thought that would change. To see these up close images is just so amazing. I'm taking my students on a tour of the solar system next week and I always show the pictures we ha...

I had a friend ask me about the background galaxies on the left side of the image. She was wondering if there was gravitational lensing happening there. I said I don't think so because I didn't think there was any distortion like I'd expect from lensing. Am I right? I know there are plenty of people...

As I was scrolling down to see the description, I was thinking, "What have they done to the Moon? The colors look all wrong." Then, I read "inverted-color negative" and it was all clear. I've never seen the Moon this way. It's really interesting. It almost gives the maria a metal...

Original photographer here! First, thanks so much to the APOD team for the consideration and feature. I'll try to address some of the questions regarding my image. First, in regards to the star that's been confused with another galactic core, the reason it looks so much different than the Hubble im...

"the bright cores" There are just two galactic cores, are not they? Arp 273.png That is exactly what I was going to ask. I'm glad that it's already been asked and answered! That's a beautiful image today. So in the two pictures that Ann provided, it seems obvious that the other blob was a...

and even a jump from the cliff survivable.

Yikes! Survivable or not, I don't know that I could bring myself to jump off a cliff.

A little trivia… The logo for Subaru cars is a highly stylized Pleiades cluster! http://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.timetoast.com/public/uploads/photos/10708911/3a5ef95eaa68c51be379d66f6cb1c936--subaru-forester-subaru-brz.jpg?1506973174 Eric Which is one of the reasons why I chose to buy a Subaru. :D

Torn between thinking "UFO" should be included, and relieved that it was not! :roll: Of couse APOD is thoroghly professional, but it is likely true that some sporadic "lights in the sky" originating in the atmosphere are not identified. They're all UFOs until your path through t...

The question here is then - what makes a 'fake' image in astronomy ? Of course, these images aren't really "fake", any more than a painting of a landscape is "fake" in comparison with a photograph. They are is synthesized images that realistically represent an assortment of astr...

That is absolutely fascinating. I didn't even know we could predict when and where new images would show up, not even with a margin of two years. I hadn't thought about lensing images changing over time. I definitely learned something new today.

A beautiful video. I think I remember seeing it before. Regardless, well worth seeing again.

Find the Big Dipper[/url] and follow the handle away from the dipper's bowl until you get to the last bright star. Then, just slide your telescope a little south and west and you'll come upon this stunning pair of interacting galaxies, the 51st entry in Charles Messier's famous catalog. You don't e...

Now, they need to make another one with balls dropping to other types of objects like onto a neutron star or something. :) I read a description once that a marshmallow would hit the surface of a neutron star with the force an H-bomb. An A-bomb not an H-bomb. 1 regular marshmallow weighs 7 grams or ...

That pic is proof we need to be doing more to track ,deflect or destroy any of those that may hit us today or tomorrow. Great post. We already know what to do. We just need to send Bruce Willis into space to set off a nuke. Nukes fix everything. :) More seriously, this is an interesting amalgam of ...

I love this video! I think I need to use it in my class when I talk about gravity. It's a vivid example of how it works on bodies of different masses. Now, they need to make another one with balls dropping to other types of objects like onto a neutron star or something. :) I read a description once ...

This is really amazing. I still remember when I read an article about the first five exoplanets ever discovered, all several times larger than Jupiter. I can't believe how much more we have seen since then.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Old time is still a-flying
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.