Starship Asterisk*

It's a beautiful shot! If it emits blue light is a young star. I always wondered about that... If memory serves there are some blue stars, I believe, found in globular clusters. Were those called Blue Stragglers? Can't quite remember if that was the name... Yes, that was it: http://en.wikipedia.org/...

What would the night sky look like from inside that cluster???? I'm reminded of an old classic Asimov short story, "Nightfall" I think it was, where people evolved in a world where there is always light, and they all go mad from fear of the dark when they get an ever-so-rare simultaneous ...

It's a beautiful shot, Luis. Thanks for sharing it with us.





-Noel

Can we see the pulsar in this picture? In the picture I'm posting here, we don't see much of the thick dust lanes of the Crab Nebula. Instead we see the bluish "interior" of the Crab Nebula. You can see a pair of stars inside a white box. In the series of black and white images at right, ...

I wonder whether intelligent life, if it's possible to evolve for more than a few hundred years after embracing technology, wouldn't be communicating via means other than radio waves. Looked at another way, if our successors are still around in a few thousand years, will they all be communicating vi...

To me this (again) raises the thoughts: If Mars WAS habitable (even if it was not inhabited) then it BECAME uninhabitable, that could mean something to our successors here on Earth. Say, for example, that Mars lost its atmosphere because its core hardened into a solid and thus lost its magnetic fiel...

Only here could we have a thread span from a serious discussion of exoplanet habitability to Aquaman and Darth Vader - and have that be okay.

Thanks for never letting us forget that the universe is really just all one big joke, Neufer and everyone! Never change!

-Noel

All the confusion / discussion really illuminates the fact that it is our basic nature to assume we perceive things as they "are" - instantaneously... This of course was true (for all intents and purposes) for anything important (nearby) that our ancestors saw all through the multi-billion...

Rogelio makes looking this deeply into the universe look so easy, doesn't he?

What a rare and amazing view. Thank you for taking the time to capture it, Rogelio!

-Noel

Sorry, I thought I was talking to people who are interested in science and truth and what is real and what is fake. Those of us who actually DO know a thing or two about photos and optics and such know not only these things, but also when a person really knows what they are talking about, and when ...

This photo really has it all! Hats off to Stephane for planning and executing a shot of such a spectacular bit of scenery. Thank you!

-Noel

A hammer will hit the surface of the moon in exactly the same time a feather will. No - the moon rises up to meet the hammer sooner. Are you speaking theoretically or practically? In other words, are you implying the moon will stretch an infinitessimal amount toward the heavier object? Or did you j...

Just as a SWAG, it seems to me we're talking about numbers in the vicinity of 10,000 to 100,000 miles/hour here.

-Noel

My first thought was: I wonder how far these features have "oozed" in an hour. What's the scale of this video? Betcha they're not really oozing all that slowly*, but rather blasting across the surface at unbelievable rates. -Noel *To me the term "ooze" implies "slowly"....

Thanks for that. I must have uncovered a glitch in the software I'm using (Cartes du Ciel), because a search for PGC 13065 led me to a field where I can see the stars shown in the APOD - a different spot from what entering the coordinates takes me to. There's a possibility one of many, many settings...

You're welcome, Ann. I was hoping you'd see it.

Does the charting program you have show anything at this object's position? Assuming not much, it really makes Adam's capture of this field, in which several of the stars seem absolutely brilliant, all the more impressive!

-Noel

Interesting. One of the few exploded things in space that really looks like an explosion. The central star appears pretty reddish-orange in this image. I wonder... Is it the reflected starlight that's making the explosion fragments shine red, or are they glowing on their own, or both? Using software...

This is very pretty, though for my tastes a hair too much star reduction has been done in the processing. Some of the small stars that are very close together almost seem to have little "webs" between them, which can happen with the use of the Minimum filter (especially several times). Tha...

It's simply beautiful astroimagery. Nice work! The kind of thing I'd love to see all the time on this site. Ever notice how, when we have a nice, traditional (and VERY well done) astroimage, there's little discussion, but when (for example) a video of people dancing or something shows up we get 81 p...

Wouldn't it be hilarious if one were to point a QR Code-reading smartphone at the sky and get a message from God...

"Congratulations, you found me. Now stop playing with your phone get back to work!"

-Noel

I am shaking my head at the folks assuming the "experiment" had to be practiced in order to make sure it came out "right", while simultaneously ignoring the fact that we actually got the astronauts all the way to the moon. Do you think that would have been possible if the scienti...

A most excellent APOD! Really feels like you're out there.

-Noel

no attempt to orient the images so that the lighting direction is "normal" You'd think the "normal" lighting direction would be from above, so why do I see your first image as bumps and the second as divots when I first look at it? Is my brain just upside-down? :) In all serious...

Good Halloween choice! That last link was really something with the formation inside the crater. 8-) http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0804/whiterock_marsexpress.jpg What is it about Mars that so many of the images come out looking "inside-out" (meaning that things that should look like inde...

All I can say is this: I hope to see an aurora one day.

For those of you who have seen them, are the colors visible to the unaided eye?

-Noel