Starship Asterisk*

Nice shot Chris, and thanks all!

The light does not really start to change dramatically until the final few percent. The sun, even in the last tiny sliver, is incredibly blinding.

There is an error in the description for this APOD. The 2023 annular eclipse path is from Oregon to Texas and down into South America. It's the 2045 total (the next US one after 2024) that goes from Northern California to Florida. (That's three eclipses in the US in seven years, but two are total an...

Unquestionably a composite if not more.

Some relatively rare and spectacular shots of a satellite reentry over Hawaii:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronom ... ullen.html

An added solid fuel third stage (a Star 48B) gave New Horizons the speed it needed. The combination of NH's light weight and the power given made NH the fastest spacecraft to date to depart from Earth specifically. Yes, this stage is also on an escape trajectory, but its trajectory has taken it well...

Yes that is correct, 224 seconds. Thank you.

Thanks for the compliments and comments. Yes, where the shadow first touches down, it is moving much much faster than it is when it reaches the center of the path across the globe. Even faster than 8,000mph in the area more to the west of us where it first hit earth (at sunrise). Yes, this was a fir...

Thanks for the comments. When a rocket launches, it arcs downrange and heads parallel to Earth's surface for the most part (far more so than it gains altitude). From the position near the launch site, the rocket appears to head up and then out towards the horizon, thus in photos looking like it is g...

There is nothing to suggest the photo is fake. It is taken from the following location looking south (with a telephoto lens), and the low pass Endeavour did is correct for the photo (east to west, exiting over the ocean). You can see the view in street view, however, all those palm trees have been p...

The photo link to the 'skyline of Los Angeles' is actually a photo of it flying over Houston enroute on Wednesday.

I am thrilled to have back-to-back APODs, that really made my day. Thank you guys.

Surprised there is no mention in the APOD caption about this being the eighth anniversary of its landing...

On the photographer's own website, the same photo does not have a sun in it on the horizon through the tube. I think it's a very nice photo, but the white sun as seen on APOD appears to have been drawn in. This photo was certainly taken after sunset at twilight. I would not mind it however the capti...

RafaSp wrote:

neufer wrote:

RafaSp wrote: Neufer: Thank you for your answer. What amazes me is not that they can enter the fairing through a side door; it's that they have to open the aeroshell to install the RTG

They didn't have to take it apart, the aeroshell had a door designed for its insertion as well.

I'm curious about the towers surrounding the vehicle, that seem to be connected to each other by cable. What is their function(s) before and after the launch? This is the lightning protection system. 400 foot towers with fiberglass rods on top and wires between them ensure the rocket does not get s...

Got a question about launch preparations: I've seen that the rover was cleaned and then enclosed in the reentry shell. This, in turn, was enclosed by the fairing and then, the whole vehicle+fairing, installed on top of the Centaur stage. However here http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/i...

It's actually not "about three or four months." Their arrival was specifically December 31 and January 1.

Yea, it is a multiple exposure as Chris notes, to play it safe (I did test shots before it began, and my concern was more about the xenon lights they had already turned on. I stacked three ND filters on the lens for this shot). It's was actually three shots. The exif only records the length of one o...

I think you are seeing a fire hydrant

Thanks!

Last week included one of the few times in history that humanity launched something completely off the Earth, moving away so fast that it will never return. What were the others? Every mission sent to land on or orbit another planet is the answer, with the small exception of a couple of sample retu...

nebosite wrote:Assuming that is California in the picture,

This is not California, or the US. For ascending node re-entries from the ISS, they come up from the South Pacific, across Central America, the Yucatan/gulf and into Florida.

I know this has been used before, but it might be worth noting that the number of people that have made it to the summit is around 3000 now (over 2700 people by the end of 2008, and over 4000 ascents if you count those who have done it multiple times).

^ What Indigo said! And the perceptions page, from 2009, has a link to a current (today's!) Bad Astronomy column (which puzzled me initially -- how did the APOD dude link to a future column?! <g> Obviously, I need coffee.) which is very cool: Astronomers may have witnessed a star torn apart by a bl...

No.

Anybody can explain what are the two big, gray, top-rounded boxes at both sides of the orbiter, just besides the OMS pods? Thanks If you are referring to the two round-topped structures on either side of the shuttle's tail and OMS pods, those are the Tail Service Masts (TSMs). They hold the umbilic...