Starship Asterisk*

Pon, nice response to the questions. I was similarly puzzled about what we're looking at in your image. I also was thrown by the listed facebook time (7:12pm, 8 min before launch :). I had your location, and the sky field looked right, and the comet was the key to nailing down the day (Dec 25). I d...

On the “where is JWST now” link, the ruler shows the distance from L2 as much less than the indicated 29 percent that the number shows. Am I reading this wrong? 158F04D3-4FDC-4B77-BA65-E3EA74AE0B5A.jpeg EDIT: D’oh! Yes I am - the ruler shows days not distance! Post left undeleted as a testament to ...

Pon, nice response to the questions. I was similarly puzzled about what we're looking at in your image. I also was thrown by the listed facebook time (7:12pm, 8 min before launch :). I had your location, and the sky field looked right, and the comet was the key to nailing down the day (Dec 25). I de...

beryllium732 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 26, 2021 1:34 am I don't see the pulsar. There's several bright spots.

Crab pulsar, V* CM Tau, indicated.
 

... You might think the ecliptic (a great circle) should be the best-fit curve for planets. Logically, it would be for heliocentric coordinates, but from Earth, the planets' appearance against the stars is complicated by the Earth's orbit. ... Ok, below is the view from the Sun's equator-of-date. T...

Today's APOD reminded me of a recent post . I was curious if we were high enough above the plane to notice the broad disc – minus the dust clouds ? After time to pause, I’m pretty sure I’m not high enough to notice. 8-) But that sun sure is bright! :yes: The disk thickness is ~1% (~1000 ly) of the ...

One interesting side note. You might think the ecliptic (a great circle) should be the best-fit curve for planets. Logically, it would be for heliocentric coordinates, but from Earth, the planets' appearance against the stars is complicated by the Earth's orbit. For the 2492 planet grouping, I added...

... Impressive, alter-ego! Does that mean that today's alignment is extremely rare? Ann Well, thanks, Ann :ssmile: Yes! Extremely rare!! Below, Pluto is designated by the red cursor (also surrounding Venus!). Yes, at 13:00UT, Pluto reaches minimum separation from Venus < 4 arc minutes 8.5 hours lat...

Neufer wrote "while Mars (1.9°) & Neptune (1.8°) are the most obvious planets "not in the same line." Yeah, I overlooked that Pluto isn't shown, but from a purely line-fitting POV, depending on the line you choose, it looks like either Mercury and Jupiter are off it, or maybe Mer...

neufer wrote: ↑Sun Dec 19, 2021 1:37 pm

alter-ego wrote: ↑Sun Dec 19, 2021 3:48 am
Are you inferring Clarence graduated from a star to NGC 7320 after receiving his wings?

• NGC 7320Clarence Odbody dove in with the expectation
  that one of the Galaxy boys would dive in to rescue him.

neufer wrote: ↑Sat Dec 18, 2021 3:57 pm ...

Are you inferring Clarence graduated from a star to NGC 7320 after receiving his wings?
Tis' the Season!

I'll note that if you follow the "straight" line from the meteor trail up, it badly misses Castor, which is very near the radiant, but I presume that is only because of the panoramic view, and the fact that the normally "straight" trail appears curved here, and it is that (sligh...

Enlarge the image and you will see it I did that of course, but I still didn't see it. Is you divide the image into a 3 by 3 grid of squares, which one is it in? With the squares numbered like so: 123 456 789 Square 1 Two meteors are in that square. The faint one is to the left and up (~30° wrt the...

No one I ask tells me whether a fast moving BH can extract some mass from another BH it passes and thus allow some things escape from under the second event horizon (after its radius has been deminished). How could it? The entire mass of a black hole is in a dimensionless point (or maybe a subatomi...

There're a few events that I can't identify the chirp. I wish there were dashed lines indicating them, and I'm interested in their confidence levels too.

Nice image.
I estimate the pixel resolution at the ISS ≈ 1 meter. An astronaut on a spacewalk might be visible if face-on (maximum area) to the camera.

Of course, depending on whether you learn about this in an electronics class or a physics class determines whether you view the relationship between "current flow" and "particle movement" as being the right or the wrong way! I'm not sure why electromagnetics was brought into thi...

I don't know. It seems to me that what Chris, alter-ego, and Ann seem to be arguing above comes uncomfortable close to saying that the passage of time is (mostly) irrelevant when it comes to understanding astronomical images. Speaking for myself (and I guess the others, too) I'm not remotely saying...

It has a natural orientation defined by physics: its spin axis. And it's completely rational (and necessary) to define a "top" (north) and "bottom" (south) convention, based on the direction of spin. So yes... Antarctica is very reasonably described as the "bottom of the wo...

You are wrong. I can't put it more simply than that. It's like rejecting an image of your grandfather taken when he was a boy because it doesn't show what he looks like today. An astronomical image typically shows an object at a certain age. Not at a certain time in the past. That's an interesting ...

Oh, for goodness sake! May we - and this astronomy website - please stop using terms such as "Blood Moon". As shown, APoD is perfectly capable of describing the colours of an eclipsed Moon, without pandering to zombie and vampire fantasists. Nice pic, by the way! John I like the term. Not...

Mmm. Akin to the violet flash at sunset/sunrise here. Seems less complicated to understand. For an observer on the moon, one might call it a blue splash.

wiki says LL Pegasi is even farther away, 1,300 pc I took the 1kpc at face value, on the basis of mass outflow velocity, and the 700 yr to 800 yr shell separation. With that said, I would tend to give the newer Wiki estimate more credence. I wonder how far it is from the disk of Milky Way and what ...

Sorry for the laymen question but: Why are the progenitor binary stars (LL Pegasi) not visible in this image? Is the nebula so thick in near-IR that it masks them? That is reverse from what I would expect from IR sources so why are they not visible? The dust and expelled gas is very thick, and in f...

Then came neufer and told us how the things really are. So the star I saw as a side lamp is much nearer and sheds no light upon this loosely rolled soot cigar pointing at us Prior to reading your post, I researched this a bit and agree with that conclusion, and for other reasons. Here are some deta...