Starship Asterisk*

Just A & B, using paint

Cassini's camera was pointed in a nearly sunward direction It looks more like its pointed closer to perpendicularly to the Sun than at it! Wouldn't we see much less of Enceladus illuminated if we were truly pointed toward the Sun? If it was perpendicular, we would see a quarter phase, not a crescen...

I saw meteors last light, lots of meteors. This was easily the most prolific meteor shower I’ve ever seen, with more than one per minute. I also caught quite a few DSOs with my binocular: M31, M35, M41, M42, M43, M44, M45, M103, NGC 654, NGC 663, the Double Cluster, and NGC 1973-5-7. I believe I ca...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dePmzxejd8 Thanks, Rauf! Seeing a video really helped. I must say I'm a little disappointed, though - I sort of imagined that the light of Betelgeuse would be completely blotted out by asteroid 319 Leona. Guess we can't have everything! Oh, and thank you too, Jac! A...

I can't find it anymore, either. You might check out this little video tidbit about the Big Dipper. (Warning: The subtitles claim that stars closer to the center of the galaxy move slower, and stars farther from the center move faster. Whoever wrote the subtitles has been listening too much to thos...

offtopic about colourful scenes at night I challenge everybody to solve this mystery. If you zoom in this APOD and see just the bridge, the water and the trees, why do you still feel that it is night? It has to do with the quality of the light. Is the light "evenly distributed", as it is ...

It's always nice to see the Big Dipper! Although in this picture its shape seems slightly squashed, and the stars are completely colorless. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2312/BigDipperMt2_Cullen_960_annotated.jpg https://dq0hsqwjhea1.cloudfront.net/Big-Dipper-tracking-mount-May-22-2022-S-sharp.j...

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/asteroid-will-cover-betelgeuse-may-reveal-its-visible-surface/ Imagine your favorite constellation without one of its brightest stars. For a brief moment on December 12th, this may happen to Orion, at least for viewers in a narrow stretch from central Asia ...

But how close is considered intersecting? Earth passing through a comet's debris donut, I suppose? The orbits are defined by mathematical ellipses. Those are what intersect. So in reality they never do. But the distance between the two orbits at their minimum that you want to consider intersecting ...

What is the "smoke" coming off the solar array? Damage? I think you're mistaking crater rays for smoke? Neither smoke nor rays. I think Mulk was noticing the cable loops connecting the two solar panels: cable loops on orion solar panels.jpg That doesn't look like smoke though! :?

Mulk wrote: ↑Thu Dec 07, 2023 7:32 am What is the "smoke" coming off the solar array? Damage?

I think you're mistaking crater rays for smoke?

So, no natural mechanism that could do for particles what a laser does for photons (sort of), or that a particle accelerator can do for protons? Also, that unimpeachable source Wikipedia says: If you take "cluster" to simply mean atoms, sure. Not groups of independent particles. Alright. ...

One for future societies to look back at and frown upon, an aeroplane polluting the atmosphere Well, While it is easy to imagine that contrails are just dirty streams of pollutants billowing out of airplanes as they cross the sky, in reality they are mostly ice crystals. Water vapor is already pres...

Here's another NASA blog using this picture: https://blogs.nasa.gov/kennedy/category/artemis-i/ A view of Earth as seen from the Artemis I Orion capsule about 9 hours into flight on Nov. 16, 2022. (Image credit: NASA TV) And this website also mentions that the picture has been taken over 9 hours aft...

Hello, I am the author of the photograph. The shape of the Milky Way is quite normal. It is curved because of the (very large) panorama I had to make to get all these objects on the same image. In particular, an east-west panorama. This panorama causes deformations, which cannot be prevented. It's ...

It's hard not to ask oneself the question, "Why is it dark at night?", when one sees all those little galaxies as crystal-sharp grains of salt richly sprinkled all over Euclid's field. Ann And they say visible material is less than 4% of universe.. I have a hard time even understanding sp...

For anyone interested, you can read how the photographer herself has described her picture in her Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=934319118387122&set=a.845850313900670 "We sat and continued photographing to capture the entire sequence. As in my mind, I really wanted to c...

There's been a mistake I guess. Today's APOD incorrectly shows the date as September 21, and the link to Asterisk Discussion page also directs you to September 21.

Thanks a lot! The bot works perfectly. However, The invite link for the server has expired or so it seems.
Any chance for a new link?

I kind of like the unpredictability of discovering new comets, but that also means the Earth could become an impact site for one some day. I only hope we get enough warning beforehand to at least try to do something about it, though it seems doubtful we would be successful. Isn't discovering potent...

I kind of like the unpredictability of discovering new comets, but that also means the Earth could become an impact site for one some day. I only hope we get enough warning beforehand to at least try to do something about it, though it seems doubtful we would be successful. Isn't discovering potent...

Who will have a better chance for seeing this comet, northern hemisphere observers or southern? I think Northern, but maybe Southern observers could still view it at some points in its journey, based on what's stated at https://starwalk.space/en/news/new-comet-c2023-p1, but I've yet to find a defin...

Who will have a better chance for seeing this comet, northern hemisphere observers or southern?

So the other night at sunset my sister and I saw this bright ray of light that did not line up with the sun like a crepuscular ray, the angle was all off. I can't seem to post the picture in this post. I guess I'll share it as a link to my Facebook post. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=...