Starship Asterisk*

Depends on how you define "largest" I guess. In terms of volume, Olympus Mons still wins out, with a 2011 study estimating it contains around 4 million km2 of material, compared to Alba Mons' 2.5 million km2, Kinda like comparing a large pancake to a big dish of ice cream: both are pretty ...

Thank you, Ann for a very good presentation and an interesting website. However it, like all other depiction of the local region of our galaxy, does not translate the information into a depiction of the sky as you see it when you walk outside on a dark moonless night. Translating those 3-4000 visibl...

Modern digital astronomical image making has opened up capturing the spectacular nature of celestial objects to a much larger number of astronomy buffs than was possible when I was younger, and we are all the richer for it. Not only are these images qualitatively head and shoulders above the imagery...

Does anyone know of anyone who has made a volumetric depiction of the visible night sky? I have looked for years for such a depiction, but in vain. There are many, many depictions of our stellar neighborhood from an external, 3D position, zooming in like an interstellar ship from a distance away the...

Looks more like a hummingbird than a penguin to me.

Or in certain parts of eastern Europe/Middle East: exploding alternative to bolide could be a missile shot down by defensive missile

Seems like the winds must be unreal on such a system, and judging from the heat retention, the atmosphere pretty darn thick. It would be interesting for someone to make a stab at modeling such extreme conditions!

The image is a another masterpiece by Tunç Tezel. APOD should be able to spell his name correctly. Holger [/quote] So is he from Turkey? That's the Turkey flag, right? [/quote] Where is this Turkish flag you’re referring to? [/quote] Look closely on the ground at approximately 9 o'clock..... https:/...

With the added detail, it reminds me of a single peony

Is that Cassiopeia's W near center? Probably not near center, but Cassiopeia should be in the picture. I definitely couldn't spot the familiar W. Ann Cassiopeia is in the picture. Look at the annotated version mentioned in the explanation. The image is a another masterpiece by Tunç Tezel. APOD shou...

If it was around 2 weeks ago in the morning, that waning crescent was heading toward a solar eclipse!

And before anyone extolls the virtue of how digital data collection can cover a greater degree of the spectrum, have greater visual resolution and can break time into way smaller chunks that the human brain is capable, that is all completely missing the point. The digital breakdown is in the simulta...

Once again, the digital sensors just plain maxed out as the sun re-emerged, while in person, the reappearance of the bright disk of the sun, while causing a person to avert their eyes from the brightness, was accompanied by a spotlight shaft of light shooting down from the sky into the circle of dar...

This is a fascinating discussion with so many things to consider ("consider" etymology, by the way, alludes to "looking toward the stars" con+sidere)! Perception emerges from the interaction between two or more objects, and as such is completely objective at its core and yet sub...

This is a fascinating discussion with so many things to consider ("consider" etymology, by the way, alludes to "looking toward the stars" con+sidere)! Perception emerges from the interaction between two or more objects, and as such is completely objective at its core and yet subj...

This conversation about digital processing and imagery differences shrinking or enlarging high contrast components of an image brings to mind my experience of the eclipse only a few miles away from where this photo was taken. The eye, occipital lobe visual processing part of the brain and other proc...

Seems that the designers of these landers haven't mastered the challenge of fitting that lander into the relatively narrow cylinder of a rocket, maximize the amount of instrumentation you can pack into it, AND do it in such a way as to have a low center of gravity so it can land on uneven surfaces/s...

The Moons were named after what was going on in the tribal territories that groups wandered around in at the time; reflections of the local ecologically or culturally significant events for that time of year. For instance, the January Moon for the Osages who lived in my area was called "Frost o...

Thanks, Johnny Deep for identifying the instrument station and the excellent links to more information. Exactly what I was looking for!

If you expand the photo, you'll see a station set up a ways away from Antares landing site, located in the upper left of the photo, and the tracks that lead over to it all. Is this a seismic station and other instrumentation set up to operate after they left, set up far enough away to avoid being da...

Woman with a pheasant flying right overhead