Starship Asterisk*

I think this APOD is a nicely composed and captured image of a beautiful astronomical scene - and the caption is well written and clear. Good job all around.

zloq

Hi- I didn't know you were studying this - there is a JPL web interface for custom ephemerides at: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi You can enter different locations on the earth and request different types of output - and the key items for this would be the geocentric coordinates of the sun, an...

I disagree with almost every single thing you say there. As for V not being a substitute for G because it is "does not work for collecting green" - there are many web examples that support this usage. Here is one from the European Southern Observatory: http://www.eso.org/sci/libraries/lisa...

You keep talking about this stuff being done all the time - so provide some examples. HST LRGB. Also - an HST VRGB image where a Johnson V filter was used for the multiplicative luminance channel (??). Ummm - the V filter stands for Visual, and it is intended to match the central region of the visua...

I don't mean something similar - I mean LRGB to achieve an aesthetically pleasing true color image - like the current APOD. You seem to regard all imaging techniques as equivalent to LRGB - but I am specifically talking about LRGB - not SiiFuchsiaEmeraldOiii. Furthermore - I most certainly do not co...

A third reason for the claim that the Sun is an average star is that its mass is indeed "midway" between the most massive and the least massive of the stars in our galaxy. Ann I think that is all that is meant by the sun being "average" - just that it falls in the middle of the ...

But many of the "accurate" color images from professionals that we see on APOD, and generally released for public consumption, are produced using LRGB or similar techniques- because that is the only method available given the sort of data typically available. I think I did hear you say th...

To be clear, the method is extremely common amongst professional astronomers. I certainly disagree. Professionals aint making pretty pictures at which to ogle - they are getting quantitative photometric information and high-res detail in particular wavelengths of interest. There is no improvement i...

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=26274 Hi Ann- This is most likely an LRGB exposure, which uses a long "luminance" image to capture detail, combined with separate, shorter, filter images to provide color. This is never done by professional astronomers because the only reas...

Well you seem to agree with my main point - that the moment of solstice is not defined as an extreme declination of the sun, but as a specific longitude along the ecliptic. One reason to do that is the motion of the sun is fairly steady in longitude, whereas when it is near an extreme point its beha...

I agree it sure looks like a morning shot, and north is to the left. I'm more interested in the first sentence, though. It shows a common misconception about what the moment of solstice really is when it's calculated to the minute like that. Although solstice usually, and casually, refers to the mom...

Here is a pretty good write up that I think answers many of the questions people have been asking here: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/07/13/guest-post-evalyn-gates-on-cosmic-magnification-or-invasion-of-the-giant-blue-space-amoebas/ The key point is that - yes - gravitational...

I had heard of a comet coming in so I had been watching the SOHO movies and waiting. I noticed the small fragment enter the frame and thought "what a non-event" Thankfully I checked back a couple of days later for the real Lovejoy. Granted it was no McNaught but I noticed the second fragm...

I believe you are seeing a leading shard of the comet. There appears to be another leading shard that followed the same path but 2 days prior see this mpeg file from 12-13 2011 the fragment appears pretty close to the sun and vanishes by the end of the vid it also appears in the closer C2 movie I a...

geckzilla wrote:Oh, just send them an email.

Thanks - I will. I wasn't sure who had write permission on the captions and how the process worked. I guess I'll find out.

zloq

Day to day typos are fine. It's the ones that end up in important places like APODs that must be smitten. I don't mind obvious typos and grammar slips, but I think conceptual and quantitative errors in the APOD caption itself should be fixed with high priority. I have noticed a focus here on fixing...

Many basic assumptions about life on earth remain to be tested.For example, we assume that it is a universal principle that life forms change over time and that DNA is the universal packaging material for heritable traits. What if these are not universal? What if other "data storage" exis...

I guess if another paper were comparing planetary systems, it would use Kepler-22 and Kepler-16 to refer to the systems, and then use Kepler-22a and Kepler-16a as the stars in those systems. It would pretty much have to because otherwise the text would be ambiguous or full of unnecessary words like...

I don't know if the Wikipedia article is correct in stating that Kepler-22 is synonymous with Kepler-22a, but it is clear that in the discovery publication for this system, Kepler-22 is considered the proper designation for the star (and also for the system). Yes - I consider that a good reference ...

Let's suppose that, 600 years ago, Keppler 22b was at exactly the same stage in technology that we are today. Is our SETI ability good enough to pick up their RF? I think the general topic of SETI detection would involve a lot of open speculation - but the way you posed it makes it better defined b...

I note that on the NASA Kepler site they don't seem to refer to the star as 22a. They just refer to the Kepler 22 system, or to the star in the system. Precisely - I still don't know of an example at the NASA Kepler site where they refer to the star specifically as Kepler 22, as does the APOD capti...

The Kepler site itself calls the star Kepler 22 most of the time This is where an example would help make your point - especially if it is "most of the time" breaking from the convention. Do you have a few examples (links) of this at a kepler.nasa.gov site, where they explicitly refer to ...

It seems a pretty natural shorthand to refer to the central star (if there is just one) by the same name as the system as a whole. In most cases, there would be no possibility for confusion in doing that. I think the key difference is that the Kepler catalog isn't a catalog of stars, some of which ...

Kepler 22a is the star itself, usually just shortened to Kepler 22. I see the little wiki page says that - but it looks sloppy. I think the convention is to use Kepler 22 for the star *system* (i.e. the star and all discovered planets) and 22a to denote the central star in that system. Then b is th...

The credit mentions S2P and OPM but neither has a link to further information. I have tried searching for both but have not been able to readily definitely find out what they are. I would therefore be grateful if anyone can please tell me what S2P and OPM are. I wonder if OPM is Pic du Midi Observa...