Starship Asterisk*

As was pointed out, the three images of the same cluster look different. Does that mean that the lensing shows them at different times (or ages), although they are captured at the same time from our viewpoint on Earth? For example, does JD-1 show the object at age Big Bang + 300 million years, where...

The picture on APOD marks an area on the upper left that is mostly in the Mars sky. It says "Tether Storage Box". What does that refer to?

The last link, which takes you to an APOD from 1997, shows the intruder galaxy, which they indicate as being 250,000 light years away from the Cartwheel Galaxy! That makes me wonder when the galaxy collision took place. How long does it take for the two galaxies to be that far apart?

When I think about dust, I think about the handful of bunnies below my bed or behind my computer. If I collect and compress all of them, they consume less than a thimble and weigh less than a gram. But this Elephant's trunk is 20 light years long! It's hard for me to imagine that much dust. Does tha...

I'd like to know if, when the super Moon was last this big, 1948, the scientists of the time knew about the concept of a super Moon. Did they know that the Moon had an eliptical orbit and that the full Moon was near perigee? When was the concept of super Moon first introduced?

With Juno now in orbit around Jupiter, there is something I don't understand. I get that Jupiter is huge, especially in relation to the size of the Earth. But I read that we don't yet know, if Jupiter has a solid core, or not. So when Jupiter is measured today, it includes all of the gas atmosphere ...

what was that object streaking across the video at a high rate of speed in the upper right hand corner about 15-17 seconds into the video??? that thing was flying... Being a time lapse video, everything is moving much faster than it would naturally. My guess is the streak is a satellite -- they ten...

[I'm no scientist. Just an interested novice.] So I was directed to this APOD from 15 Apr 2007 by a link in today's APOD, 19 Nov 2013. The explanation does not really tell me the cause of the stars blinking. I'm not sure how long astronomers have been finding extrasolar planets by measuring the ligh...

So I have to wonder what it would be like to live on a planet that is orbiting a star in this galaxy. Nights would be much brighter than here. There would still be a lot of stars in the night sky, but they would all be brighter and bigger and closer than what we are used to. I wonder if we would see...

[I'm no scientist, but] the debris cloud has grown to 60 light years across in approximately 1,000 years. So that means it has grown 30 light years from its explosion location in every direction. How close do you have to be to a supernova to be affected by it? Assuming a constant cloud growth rate, ...

[I am not a scientist.] I know it hasn't been proven, but I personally think that life exists in thousands, if not millions, of different places in the universe. With that much energy being expelled from the center of that galaxy (Hercules A), but only in two directions, could life exist on a planet...

I have a question concerning Venus transits.

If they occur in pairs every 100 years, or so, how many of the previous ones were forecast? I assume scientists forecast the ones in the 1900's. How about the 1800's? the 1700's? Earlier ones?

I am always disappointed when I hear about these things on the news AFTER they've happened.

Is there a website that I can visit that would alert me to upcoming cool spaces happenings, such as this one?

DLH wrote:The sun rising in the west...

I, too, was puzzled by this, because the boats look like they are illuminated are our (west) side. It must be artificial light.