Starship Asterisk*

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_210918.jpg Rubin's Galaxy Explanation: In this Hubble Space Telescope image the bright, spiky stars lie in the foreground toward the heroic northern constellation Perseus and well within our own Milky Way galaxy. .... ASIDE - NOT RELATED TO ASTRONOMY The explan...

1. How can we be sure this was caused by an impact and not by some other mechanism? Stupid question I'm sure, and I'll bet the answer is that there simply is no other known mechanism! 2. This event seems to be different than the ones resulting from the breakup of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9. Did those i...

All the same, much of the rover was in those frames. They chose to blot them out rather than include them. I asked the creators of the image about why the rover was not shown in their panorama, whether they had decided not to include it or if they had found the frames impossible to stitch together,...

Sounds reasonable: Thanks! :) Another possibility is that as the panorama was taken in part to help plan a route for further exploration, photographing the rover itself was not necessary. All the same, much of the rover was in those frames. They chose to blot them out rather than include them. I as...

MarsPanCompressed_Curiosity_1080.jpg So why is the Rovers picture deleated? Just a guess, but because the rover is so close to the camera, there are perspective shifts between shots that make stitching the frames difficult or impossible (we've seen that on other panoramas, where it looks like piece...

@ Ann. Fascinating and informative as ever. Thanks very much. However, I am confused. I thought that the Andromeda galaxy was the most distant object visible to the unaided eye, but the description states that the Triangulum Galaxy is: "the image top is the Triangulum galaxy (M33), the third la...

The image shows the eccentricities of the orbits of the inner planets quite well. Mercury has an eccentricity of 0.206, which is the greatest after Pluto (0.248) (yes, I know Pluto's designation is 'controversial'*). Venus' orbit (eccentricity 0.007) is less eccentric than our own on planet Earth (0...

Can I assume that the reason the planet, PDS 70c and the ring are shown as brighter in the image than the central star, PDS 70, is that the image has been processed to reduce the star's brightness so that the other elements of the image are not overwhelmed?

What is happening at the end of the meteor trail? It looks as if the meteor has split in two and the parts flown apart and at least one bit seems to be following a curved path.

Any explanations?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Maternagrane.jpg The blown-off atmosphere in NGC 2359 just happens to look like the unrealistic Viking helmets that Richard Wagner made his Viking-impersonating singers wear for his four German-language epic music dramas, Der Ring des Nibelungen. ...

The curious case of the corkscrew meteors.... seems to conclude that the pictures taken in gusty winds & should not be relied upon. If only the meteors weren't both hypersonic & disintegrating: <<Acer is a genus of trees and shrubs commonly known as maples. The distinctive fruits are called...

The curious case of the corkscrew meteors.... neufer, thanks for the reference. Lovely images. @ Chris Peterson: The meteor was far too quick for any possibility of my eyes or the binoculars 'wiggling' and causing any illusion of corkscrew motion. Meteors are not aerodynamically stable like an Apol...

There is an interesting article in New Scientist online concerning the shape of flames in zero or micro gravity environments:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg ... -on-earth/

I once saw a very faint Perseid meteor through binoculars (8x42). It appeared brown and tumbled across my field of vision in what appeared to be a corkscrew flightpath. I've never managed to see any others through binoculars, so count myself very fortunate in that respect. That doesn't happen. It w...

I once saw a very faint Perseid meteor through binoculars (8x42). It appeared brown and tumbled across my field of vision in what appeared to be a corkscrew flightpath. I've never managed to see any others through binoculars, so count myself very fortunate in that respect.

I wonder how different Western history would have been had Andromeda been easily visible in the sky when the Roman Catholic Church decided that the whole of creation orbited the Earth. It would have been obvious that Andromeda was a system all of itself.

Just a request to the APOD administrators. This is a wonderful image, but most screens are in 'landscape' mode, and this image is in 'portrait' mode for no readily apparent reason. Please consider that when there is no real 'up' or 'down', to present the image in 'landscape' mode so that we can vie...

Just a request to the APOD administrators. This is a wonderful image, but most screens are in 'landscape' mode, and this image is in 'portrait' mode for no readily apparent reason. Please consider that when there is no real 'up' or 'down', to present the image in 'landscape' mode so that we can view...

The "Stitched together on planet Earth" brings up the panaramic (detailed) view. Quite spectacular once you get it into the full view. https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/25640/mastcam-zs-first-360-degree-panorama/ Eclectic Man: I think the "damage" you are seeing is not damage, but...

In the detailed view, I noticed that there are a lot of circular black and white 'target' type plaques installed on the upper surfaces of the rover. Towards the top left, there is a coloured sundial, and just above and to the left of that is a plaque which appears to be missing the right-most part o...

wispr_venus_image.jpg To me the planet looks like a giant waste land! It doesn't look like a planet in the habitable zone! :( And it probably isn't located in the habitable zone, either. We used to think that it was, but I believe that astronomers have had second thoughts. https://www.almanac.com/s...

Wow!

I wonder if it is now safe for the dish to be dismantled? I expect that several science and engineering museums around the world would like some of it for their exhibitions on both engineering and astronomy. And maybe also the James Bond Museum in Keswick, UK.

The end of an era.

Great photo

If there have been "wild and violent" gravitational interactions distorting the orbits of the stars, does that mean that each star's equivalent of an Oort Cloud and Kuiper belt have been perterbed and any planetary bodies are (were) being pummelled by millions of rocks and comets? If so it...