Starship Asterisk*

All images are clickable for better viewing.

If you would care to share why you voted for a particular image, I'd be interested to know. Thank you!


Sunset at Oropos, Greece
http://www.perseus.gr/Astro-Solar-Scenes-Oropos-07.htm
Copyright: Anthony Ayiomamiti



Pleiades Star Cluster (M45)
http://www.massimotosco.it/M45%204000.htm
Copyright: Massimo Tosco



N11 in the Large Magellanic Cloud: Edges of a Superbubble
http://quarks.maynau.com/nova/sin_galerie_hu.shtml
Copyright: Nikolaus Sulzenauer



Star Trails and Radkan Tower, Iran
http://uploadpic.org/showpic-54029/radkan_tower.html
Copyright: Ariana Ahangary



NGC 602 in the Small Magellanic Cloud
http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/NGC6 ... ndler.html
Copyright/credits: Robert Gendler, processing; NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope (HLA), image

The sky is an AWESOME place, a place of magic, mystery, color, and inspiration. All of these pictures are great pictures, and the coice was difficult. However, I decided to vote for the picture of NGC 602 for several reasoons. First, while I may not be in Greece, I have seen beautiful sunsets. Therefore, while a nice picture, it was not "astronomical" and mysterious enough for me. A similar thing holds for the star trails (while not in Iran - I have done that before). That leave M45, N11, and NGC 602.

M45 is always an inspiration to me (I love looking for it in the early fall/late summer as the nights get cooler). And there is the problem - I do and can look for it. So, while the picture is awesome, it does not have the mystery, the magic, and the power of the other two.

N11 is a great picture, but the split is distracting. It lost points for that.

Which, of course, brings us back to NGC 602. It has everything a truly awesome APOD contains. It has out-of-this-world colors, forms, and flows. The pillars of dust are almost organic in nature. It has mystery - what would it be like to travel near there, seeing stars be formed, maybe new planets, new systems. Wow that would be COOL. But it has more - way more. Look deep into the picture, and you see a galaxy. Oh wait, there is another. Oh, and look at that, even more. This picture continues to reveal new secrets and excitement every time I look at it.

THAT is why I picked NGC 602.

Thank you for posting it.

Sid1138

In addition to Sid1138's great reasons for voting for NGC 602, I feel like I'm being pulled into the image the longer I look at it.

Damn the scaffolding on the Radkan tower! Great image, but even better without that.

I have to go with NGC 602. I've seen several photos of SMC, but none like this one. Look at all those galaxies!!...and then something else, and then something else...

I disagree with DigitalNoise - I think the scaffolding on the tower is precisely what makes the image interesting!

I meant to add, I would like to see a photo of the Iceland volcanic eruption cloud from ISS.

there is one of the oldest sticky threads that may be relevant to this poll... or... are these non-apod images?

I choose the Oropos Sunset for the feeling of scale it gives. It is just a sunset, true, but it is a very astronomical picture. The other pictures are beautiful, but it is not readily apparent how big and far these structures are. You have to imagine that yourself. In the Oropos picture it is easy to feel how enormously big the sun is, looming over the tiny structures on earth, yet not harming them. On the contrary: nurturing and sustaining them. This is astronomical harmony.

about astro tower (radkan) can view this site: http://www.jamejamshid.com/radkan.htm

All these photographs deserve a day on APOD and certainly that's doable...can now appreciate how hard it is to choose the daily image!

NGC 602.

I like the colors, the 3-D structure, and the distant galaxies peeking through.

While many of the non-stellar photos seen are stunning, and I am NOT complaining even a teeny bit, I can see with my own eyes many of those subjects.

What I cannot see with my eyes, with anything I can afford, or even if I did have such could not see in my part of the USA, is the awesome time and telescopic photos of the heavens so often seen on APOD.

The NGC602 picture is one of the genre I have no hope of seeing myself, and this decade of APOD presentations of such has given me a treasured look into the heavens. I hope you have no plans of some kind of thematic switch. APOD is one of my favorite things. Sometimes I will spend hours browsing through the archives.

The double photo format was distracting and can't be used as PC wallpaper, which I frequently do. You should see some of your larger pictures in 2560x1600 native resolution on my HP 3065 monitor!

That is probably one of the best sunset pictures I've seen, simply stunning. The Seven Sisters have always been one of my favorites. I would like to see a mosaic of the N11 region of the LMC. The split was distracting. Nice pictures, though. All of those open star clusters are amazing. With the story behind Radkan Tower, the star trails would make for an interesting APOD. My favorite of this group has to be NGC 602 in the SMC.

makc wrote:there is one of the oldest sticky threads that may be relevant to this poll... or... are these non-apod images?

This are non-APOD images.

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I appreciate very much your thoughts on these images and how you arrived at your decision as to how to vote. Most of these images have no context attached to them, and that makes the voting perhaps a little harder than it might be otherwise. Or perhaps it doesn't! I don't know whether any of these will end up as APODs, but IMHO they are all worthy of consideration; as with previous poll images, I find something in each of these photos to admire, and I am very glad to have the opportunity to see all of them!