Starship Asterisk*

I am sorry, but the APOD explanation is erroneous. It has nothing to do with Great Circles. Great Circles are curves around a sphere - these rays are parallel straight lines. I found a better explanation a few years ago: Parallel straight lines appear to converge looking in either direction. If you ...

You get to see yourself coming and going on Monument Rd!

I found the term "light" quite off-putting since nothing in the image was visible light. Electromagnetic radiation I believe is the best term. It is not the light spectrum, but the electromagnetic spectrum. If you were writing this for fourth graders "light" would be fine. I have...

Looks more like honeycomb than sponge or coral to me. Maybe the honeycomb structure is an artifact of Hyperion's formation and not impacts. Some form of outgassing, or???

Great photo! Brings back fond memories of an occultation of Saturn I observed shortly after I had made my first six inch Newtonian (circa 1961/62) back in Indiana. I was able to see the whole show - entrance and exit. My favorite part was the emergence (or disappearance) from the dark limb of the mo...

Interesting discussions. Sometimes it is good just to ENJOY the photo or the phenomenon. I first noticed this display while driving in eastern Oregon with my stepson. I stopped the car and we stood there wondering why the rays were reconverging toward the opposite horizon ... They should keep diverg...

Chris, you mentioned cyclic but without regular periodicity. It would be interesting to know how often this phenomenon has occurred. Someone must be keeping recent records. I checked my old log and I saw a one-band Jupiter on January 18, 1990. I am not a regular observer - You get out of the habit l...