Starship Asterisk*

Wow, that is a pretty crop circle!!! I don't know about you, but personally I'm amazed at what humans beings have been able to achieve: http://blog.jameslist.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/taj-mahal.jpg http://hamzajennings.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/the-lhc-or-the-large-hadron-collider.jpg And ...

All the colors of the "bright yellow, almost white" Sun reflect off the cloud droplets, and therefore clouds look white. Shouldn't the clouds look "bright yellow, almost white" if they really reflect the color of the Sun? Maybe you have a better idea what this physicist means by...

Well, when you are speaking about a green nebula it's grey, eh? Bet you would have insisted that a red nebula is red, no matter how hopelessly grey it must always appear to our eyes! "Color" describes a physiological response to some mix of wavelengths and intensities. If the intensities ...

Chris wrote: The Sun's wavelength of strongest intensity is yellow-green. The Sun's spectral class is G2V, making it a yellow star (because the peak output of G stars is around the yellow part of the spectrum). I have always thought that the Sun's wavelength of strongest intensity is green, and that...

Why are people so convinced that flying saucers exist? My answer is that people believe that flying saucers exist for the same reason that they believe that the Sun is yellow - because they are told so all the time. I googled "flying saucer" and got 2,110,000 hits. That's a lot of hits for...

The code linked to a page where a physicist said this about the color of the Sun: it appears to us to be a bright yellow, almost white color. But what about the white color of clouds? Clouds include little condensed droplets of water. These droplets are a LOT bigger than atoms, and so they are not a...

Ahhhh, the Moon in agony!!!! (Can't you see it keening its angst at the cosmos? It has two wide-open, staring eyes, a nose and an open, gaping mouth. Open wide for the dentist of the universe!)

Ann

Chris said: The true color of the nebula is actually gray, since that's the only way the eye could ever perceive it. Well, when you are speaking about a green nebula it's grey, eh? Bet you would have insisted that a red nebula is red, no matter how hopelessly grey it must always appear to our eyes!...

If the Coat Hanger is an asterism, have you got an asterism for my coat?



Ann

http://www.sullivan-county.com/id3/denmark/den_islam2.jpg Here the Danish flag is being burned by Muslims who think that Denmark has offended their religion. Let's hope that neither the gay flag nor the solar spectrum will be burned by people who feel that their own heterosexuality has been offende...

APOD Robot wrote:
our yellow-appearing Sun

(Ann just shot Otto or set off the Big Bang. Let's have a poll.)

Ann

Indeed! And it isn't inaccurate; in a view like this, the Sun is yellow, although nowhere near as saturated as a dandelion. I think you just like needling Ann. I think he does, too, but in this case he is right. In a picture like this the Sun would look yellow-white instead of white, precisely beca...

There were several good images here. I'm a sucker for pictures showing the Milky Way over the Earth, so I particularly enjoyed the image called "The Milky Way on the Horizon". It is a large picture which looks really beautiful at full magnification! :D But it is a bit disconcerting that th...

In a way the image is slightly disappointing, because the cluster isn't that well resolved, and you can't resolve it a whole lot better by enlarging it, since it is apparently already close to maximum magnification. On the other hand, what the heck. This is a fantastic object. A young supercluster. ...

I always like to understand why objects have the colors they do. In this image power lines look purplish-blue in a wintry night-time landscape. Chris, you said it may be due to a coronal discharge, and I'm not arguing with you. However, can you explain why a coronal discharge might cause power lines...

Hmmm, I think I prefer NGC 206. I get a kick out of what I know that this object is, the largest OB association of our great neighbouring galaxy (and future nemesis), M31, the great Andromeda Galaxy! Usually I get really bored by pictures of globular clusters, but I think that the one of M3 is reall...

bright white stars Deneb (in Cygnus), Vega In the picture, Vega is the brightest individual star, a white point of light surrounded by a very obvious blue halo. I have shown Vega through a telescope to several people (to strangers who don't know anything about my color obsession, I might add) and I...

Chris wrote: I don't generally care for Gendler's images I love his images. Chris also wrote: I'm with you on this one... I just think the region is fairly boring and not very photogenic. ... Today's APOD is an excellent scientific image, showing the large scale structure of the area very well, but ...

Chris wrote: I also appreciate seeing star colors, which are mostly lost in Malin's images Well, I appreciate seeing star colors that match what I see in the telescope, which is something the HST people generally aren't very good at at all. That is why they may "paint" a galaxy blue even i...

Chris wrote about Malin's photographs:

strange colors

Glorious colors, if you ask me! The HST colors are almost always painfully inferior to Malin's! And the colors in the APOD, which, unlike Malin's, may have been produced with CCDs, aren't that impressive to me.

Ann

Thanks a lot, Léon! But in Malin's book the picture looked a lot more impressive. Glossy paper and all that, I suppose...(plus the color balance was different...)

Ann

Number 6 is my favorite. It looks fabulous and otherworldly. (Of course, one possible reason for its otherworldly appearance may be that it is otherworldly... )

Ann

I have loved this object ever since I first saw David Malin's brilliant photograph of it in his book, "A View of the Universe", from 1995. Malin's image is gleamingly clear and detailed. It reveals successive delicate layers of dark dust and red emission nebulosity surrounding the Dark Tow...

My two favorites are the Starry Night Scavenger Hunt and the APOD is fifteen years old mosaics, and I'm going to have trouble choosing between the two. I love the melding of classical paintings and minitaure APOD images. My second two favorites are the retrograde Mars image and the star trails and t...

Chris wrote: There is nothing wrong with posing the question "what caused the Big Bang". Good to hear, Chris! The best scientific answer is that the question cannot be answered, may not be answerable, and may not even be a scientific question. I get that, too. But scientists don't always a...