Starship Asterisk*

emc wrote: So Canton, GA isn’t the center of the universe!? Dang again! Now I feel even less important. If I were any lower I would be inside a black hole...

Not Canton. Austell, GA is.

But with Pluto and Charon in such close orbits I figured Charon should be able to siphon off some of that atmosphere. In which case the surface of Charon would also be covered in the same ice. Unless the weight of the different components of the atmosphere makes a difference. Methane gas is lighter...

But as for the much redder hue of the overall color of Pluto, could it possibly have something to do with the atmosphere of Pluto? Neptune's large moon Triton, which is partly reddish, also has an atmosphere. Deep orange Titan has a whopper of an atmosphere. Could it be that the sunlight that reach...

Well, while exciting to the max, a little disappointing that at least Charon wasn't Rama. :( Perhaps when New Horizon visit the next Kuiper Belt object.... Out in these realms even Hollywood is beat out by sifi (as always). Clarke's award-winning novel Rendezvous with Rama (1972) was optioned for f...

The Nova last night was a nice overview of the New Horizons project start to finish. Except that it still may have new objects to investigate. I haven't heard how it will navigate to the next target. Chance encounter? Or was it directed into areas of the highest density of TNO's . Objects.jpg Also ...

Metric system for the win!

A Swedish tabloid claimed there is snow (I guess ice) on the mountaintops of Pluto. Any thoughts? Ann From what I read that is not water ice, but rather Nitrogen ice with traces of Methane and carbon dioxide. Apparently the surface temperature is cold enough for solid nitrogen, but due to a methane...

geckzilla wrote:Yes, gosh darn it, as long as 'Murica is the one sending out the probes, we're going to use miles.

And crash probes in the Martian desert?

The picture is sorely missing a star trek imperial cruiser getting in between the star and the nebula at full speed and disturbing the dust on the left in the process. :mrgreen: I am revoking your geek card. :wink: It is either a Star Trek starship, possibly from the Federation's Starfleet, such as...

Last I heard the concept of a toroidal planet was still, though highly theoretical, not impossible. What mechanism could produce a toroidal structure in a planet massive enough to in hydrostatic equilibrium? As it spins faster, it simply becomes more oblate, until the outer surface can no longer be...

How about nobody has yet mentioned it is visibly flattened due to its fast rotation. Almost 10%.

Last I heard the concept of a toroidal planet was still, though highly theoretical, not impossible.

Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday dear APOOOOOODDD!!
Happy Birthday to you!

Woohoo! Yay! Where is the cake?

All diffraction is a quantum effect. That is, while it can be approximately described by classical theory, in certain regimes it is best explained using QM. A rigorous analysis of Mie scattering and the color effects seen in a lunar corona is best handled with QM. I think it is slightly misleading ...

♪ I can see clearly now, the 404 is gone! ♪ I have seen this effect many times. I never knew what caused it. Even around the Sun on particularly misty mornings. (it can get pretty misty in the Netherlands). Oddly enough if you reduce the photo to 256 colors the effect becomes even stronger; the diff...

So...uhm...from the comments I gather other people can see APOD.
But I haven't been able to get to the site in 3 days now.

This is beautiful!

In other words this is a lie. Why 2x the vertical? Please show same with 1x. Troll much? This is a non-issue. Virtually everything APOD presents is in some way manipulated. Images are cropped, combined, enhanced, in false color, sharpened or whatever is needed to either make it aesthetically pleasi...

... Chris's 4 arcminutes (~50,000 ly) refers more to the pair of interacting galaxies NGC 7714 + NGC 7715 (a.k.a., Arp 284). (Note, however, that the redshift distance to Arp 284 is more like 141 Mly and would make everything not quite so small.) SIMBAD quotes the distance as ~39.6 Mpc, which would...

By the way, I found this link that tells you about the size of NGC 7714 (it's small) and the filters used for the image. The blue color represents ultraviolet light, so those blue stars are hot stuff! :D Ann Yes, 2000 light years is oddly small. I am having some doubt whether that is correct. For c...

tomatoherd wrote:Is there not also a reflection of a rising or setting moon in his visor (the upper crescent)???

Considering that that is where the tether seems to be going, I am going to guess that is the Gemini capsule.

The thing I personally like to do with photos like this is figure out where they are over the planet.
My guess here is that they are over Mexico and you can see the Gulf of California and the some of the Baja California behind him.

geckzilla wrote:Somehow when I looked at this earlier I thought oh, another green flash. Only much later did I realize it was a rare moon green flash. I may as well be blind, sometimes.

Me too!

Anybody have an idea how long it would take for such a chaotic rotation or tumbling to stabilize? What I mean is...I always thought objects such as Hyperion and Nix are subject to tidal forces which should gradually stabilize them until they show the same face to their parent (like our moon). And th...

the old blind man wrote:Where's the Shrike?

^5 for Dan Simmons

Source: http://www.scienceminusdetails.com/2012/06/is-solar-system-tilted-sideways.html The plane of the Solar system is tilted in relation to the plane of the Milky Way. So Polaris is far away from the galactic north pole. Ann Wow! I figured the solar system would be somewhat tilted vs. the galact...