Starship Asterisk*

Thank you, Wayne!

Chris, I'm embarrassed to say that I found it by color. I am happy to cede my turn for a new one to you!

Wonderboy, check this out: http://www.atoptics.co.uk/opod.htm

That top pic is stunning! Wow!

dbenford, thank you very much for your detailed answers; much appreciated!

I think APOD just might be responsible for 80% of my Googling... From Wikipedia (because of course I had to look up blazar ): A blazar (blazing quasi-stellar object) is a very compact quasar (quasi-stellar object) associated with a presumed supermassive black hole at the center of an active, giant e...

We call her Luna This triggered "We call him Flipper! Flipper! Faster than lightning!" on the radio in my head. The angular momentum vector of the entire solar system points in a certain direction. Interesting, and thanks, and now, I'm off to Google "angular momentum vector." (S...

Wow; that's really lovely.

biddie, from Wikipedia : Sound is a travelling wave which is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibration...

jimsaruff!

I knew about http://www.atoptics.co.uk/, but not about OPOD! (I'm certain it was an APOD that first sent me to http://www.atoptics.co.uk/.)

I thank you very much!! (And oh, dear heavens, I may never get another anything done ever again!! )

WOW; thanks for that!

What a planet!!

neufer, merci beaucoup aussi!

Amir, thanks, and BMAONE23, good point. My question perhaps should have been, "What the heck are the white dots?" :ssmile: These concepts are all very interesting, but I am doubtful that any apply to this image. I think that caustic is misused here, and no caustics are actually visible. Th...

Such beauty, and a vocabulary lesson, too! I had to look up caustics , which led me to another new word nephoid , and then to evolute , involute , and the term circle of confusion (which, previous to today's APOD, I'd have used to refer to the group of friends I had dinner with Sunday evening <g>). ...

(heard on Prairie Home Companion)

A Bb, Db, and F walk into the bar; the bartender refuses to serve them, saying, "You know we don't serve minors here!"

The Db leaves, so the Bb and F have a fifth between 'em.

Once again, an APOD from which I learn quite a bit, and not just about astronomy! I didn't know there was such a thing as Pontic Greek, for example; now I do. Chris, please thank your wife for prodding you to get up, go out, and do something; you did indeed end up with "something nice!" Th...

Thank you, rstevenson and geckzilla; much appreciated!

makc wrote:how does this not apply to apod?

Yes, I willingly acquiesced it does; just because I express an opinion doesn't mean 1.) I know what I'm talking about; 2.) I won't change it.

Point taken; thanks! Point further pushed into my pea brain when I stumbled upon a list of blogs and APOD was on it.

I don't think of APOD as a blog. I do think it's good enough to be included in anything, except possibly the batter for yellow cake.

Yeah, I kind of get what I think he might be after, though disagree with much of what he says. For example, this hit me: "We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture" Really? He hasn't seen the programming for most major symphony orchestras then, has he, at least in the...

I like Quick Reply, but don't see it anymore. (It did exist here, didn't it? Or did I imagine that?)

Wow. That's stupendous. So much beauty! Thank you for sharing it.

:: starts packing her bags ::

owlice wrote:This has me wondering whether Lagrange objects in general tend to be smooth

Apparently not!

(Thank you, bystander.)