Starship Asterisk*

I wonder about the sliver crescent image. I would think that would only be "up" during the day.

Hi,
I am wondering why the stars in the upper left have vertical/horizontal spikies, while the others are tipped 45 degrees. I assume they are all Milky Way stars, so thinking they are from different images.
Craig

2. Was the shockwave experienced in Russia a result of the object ramming through air hypersonically, or from it exploding, or both? Primarily from the explosion. When the object fragmented, a huge surface area was exposed to ablation, superheating a large volume of air (a cylinder because of the m...

Two questions:
1. Is today's APOD video in real time?
2. Was the shockwave experienced in Russia a result of the object ramming through air hypersonically, or from it exploding, or both?

Thanks All, great discussions!

I must confess, these overtly digitally-manipulated shots give me the creeps. They seem almost entirely antithetical to what APOD is really about, IMO, as if some person's Photoshop skills are more noteworthy than what's really up there... i was thinking this is from a fish-eye lens, and the only p...

Rivers of lava can form these when the lava source runs out. Hmm, I might be wrong about this, but... Some time ago I posted this image on the Asterisk forum. http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_wWvzozlDj-M/TFcIu3HJZdI/AAAAAAAAACU/nwivr2ZYNcM/s320/RivierKlein.JPG To me this seems very much like a river on Mar...

I was going to show both videos to my students, but not either now that the edit has been redacted. It's very cool and educational and flattering to the original. Neener, neener, I guess.

Polaris never changes position from a given point on Earth. But if you create an afternoon analemma it will have a different angle in the picture from a morning analemma, because the camera is facing in different direction. This one was in the morning. I think the last time i saw this, it was tilted...

I wonder why APOD enlarged the photo so much, which accentuates the noise from the Canon 1000D. I'm not sure what the vertical noise stripes are. I'm now intrigued to try a similar exposure with my Nikon D5000 to see if there is a difference. It's a tough shot anyway with a consumer dSLR because if ...

Do the foreground "spikey" stars have the spikes added, or is it a natural result of optics?

Lets get over this GREEN thing Its not going to happen its a joke First-you cannot fly supersonically at great altitudes without using a large amount of energy to get there. Secondly, Sonic boom will always be a problem no matter what kind of quieting you attempt. Third-at the present course, there...

I've had a question for my students to identify the "Death Star Moon" for as long as I've been teaching Earth and Space Science. But anyway, in this picture I get the impression that the ice in the crater is transparent, like seeing into a green ice cube.

On distance: Are you saying that the blast from the supernova reached out 15,300 light years to create the pulsar, or that something somehow propelled faster than light to become the pulsar????? An enquiring mind(?) wants to know :P :) The light arrived 1700 years ago, but from 17,000 ly away, whic...

I once asked astronomers on Science Friday, the NPR science radio program, if the solar system were to drift into a dust cloud, would the density be great enough to cause cooling of the earth. This seems to me to offer another variable in global heating/cooling. The astronomers were quite negative ...

My students asked why Earth was being destroyed, and then I said look at the continents, along with the sun(s)! I think the point is that it's an old system so there could have been a mature jewel like Earth. But in a binary? Are stable planetary orbits possible?