Starship Asterisk*

Inspired by Malevich's famous painting "Black Square" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazimir_Malevich
, I have prepared my all-time favorite APOD and ESPOD for your delectation: http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/pod.png

Hey, we need a google planet derby, too! OK, they are off .... we have a winnah! Earth! There's no place like home! #1 Earth 92,000,000 #2 Mars 35,700,000 #3 Mercury 28,900,000 #4 Jupiter 23.400,000 #5 Saturn 15,700,000 ~ a tie #5 Venus 15,300,000 ~ a tie #6 Neptune 14,500,000 #7 Pluto 13,100,000 #...

All this dramatic stuff going on in our Galaxy and billions of other galaxies for billions of years ... and no one to appreciate any of it, until us. ( Or?)

Thanks, Ann, for the comment on its size. In all my decades of looking at images of galaxies, I've never seen one like this. Fantastic is the right word!

Hey! What about an APOD showing a COMPLETELY socked-in night! Maybe even fog!

So much better than waiting for Godot!

And we are going to play bumper-cars with this baby! I can hardly wait! And do I recall that M31 has not one but maybe TWO black holes? If they have not coalesced by the time we hit, we'll see a dance of three black holes! Oh, it will be fun to see … oh wait…sigh...

It is a great photo. It would be nice to know what the total exposure time was.

Now if you could get that in a single frame, it would be worth getting up for. The hype over meteor showers makes me cringe. 100 an hour? Count slowly: "1,2,3....30 Whee! 1,2,3....Ooh!" Anything under 1000 an hour should be described as "weak." What's the harm? Well, look at all...

Boomer12k wrote:Took me a little time to realize those are not stars but snow....
Constellations of Snow....

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Oval snowflakes? Hmmm…. could be UFOs.

woody pope wrote:This is a fake. If the earth is lit like it is then the back side of the moon would be as well because the sun is shining on both.

The Moon is lit, but the albedo (reflectivity) of the rocks on the Moon is very low - almost black. No, this is for real.

I always feel so foolish when I see something - like this - that I should have anticipated but did not. What a joy to see the Moon and Earth taken in a single photo from this wonderful vantage point (toward the Sun). Thanks APOD and thanks NASA and thanks EVERYBODY! Woody Pope is wrong: the reflecti...

You can learn to point your eyes independently (like a chameleon) and amaze your friends and possibly advance a career in comedy... all harmlessly. Good heavens! I'm not going to try that. But what I learned long ago that I CAN do and HAVE learned to do, is hold up either hand, flat --- and have ei...

stereouseless wrote:dear chriss.. i still say its a big waste of time to put these images here..
looking crosseyed at something is not good for ones eyes.

Opinions on all kinds of things do vary. Just skip this one, my friend! As for me, I think it is wonderful! I am delighted with it! Chaqu'un a son gout!

If Pluto were in our own Moon's orbit around Earth (instead of the Moon we have) it would appear only 0.7 the size we do see for our own Moon.

sorry, I meant to say, cross your eyes on the henrystar version and Pluto will appear in 3D correctly: http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/correct
What a shame all the comments have to be on this narrow technical issue. The 3D image is truly great!

So, how does it work? I've been staring at this image for ¼ hour and don't see anything special. How do you "merge" these images? Do I need one of those old victorian stereopticon devices? I feel very left out. Just cross your eyes, so that the two images merge. Pluto will pop out, and st...

Ho ho ho! I crossed my eyes - and I saw a hollow sphere, with the surface of Pluto on the inside of the sphere! What fun! Then, of course, I took screen shots of the two images, put them side by side, just as they were in APOD, and verified that I got the same weird effect. Then I switched them, le...

Love to see the name "Circinus X-1" When I joined Herb Friedman's group of X-ray astronomers in 1967 there was great rivalry with Riccardo. Herb called his X-Ray sources "X-n" and Riccardo called his "XR-n". The race was won by Riccardo, and Herb didn't live long enough...

" scale of the Universe " ?? is there light that has not reached us yet ? There sure is! In fact we only detect light from the most minuscule fraction of the Universe. We only see a tiny, tiny, portion of what we "know" i.e. are sure, is there. Main argument is that the famous 3...

Boomer12k wrote:Send Rovers...they are cheaper, and do a pretty good job...
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That is how I feel about Mars, for sure! But gosh, Moon is SO close and is SO easy to get to - my inner Space Cadet wants people on the Moon!

At first I thought it was Uhuru. The aborigines discovered it before Mr. Ayres did, of course. Ten thousand years ago, all around the world, what did all those people, just as intelligent as we are, think, when they looked up at night and saw what we, with our street lights, cannot see today? It wou...

When will there be a human colony on Pluto?

Ah, Human Beings! What would we do without them? Here is my own contribution to this learned debate:
http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/donald.png

I think Dean Martin saw this one! http://www.metrolyrics.com/im-forever-b ... artin.html