Starship Asterisk*

<<Shiing-Shen Chern (October 28, 1911 – December 3, 2004) was a Chinese-American mathematician and poet. He made fundamental contributions to differential geometry and topology. He has been called the "father of modern differential geometry" and is widely regarded as a leader in geometry ...

The only colour that's not in the legend is dark brown ... what cosmic process is responsible for Tc, Po, At, etc.? I'm guessing none. I think these all have half lives that are too short for there to be any left over that have originate from cosmic processes. Anything naturally occurring now would...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_200808.jpg Crescent Saturn Explanation: From Earth, Saturn never shows a crescent phase. But when viewed from a spacecraft the majestic giant planet can show just a sunlit slice. This image of crescent Saturn in natural color was taken by the robotic Cassini sp...

WWW wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 5:45 pm It's deja vu all over again? https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap071023.html

Well, the image is the same, but the text is not.

Grizzly wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 7:01 pm

APOD Robot wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 4:08 am From Earth, Saturn's disk is nearly full now

From Earth, isn't Saturn always a disk?

I think it's always at least gibbous, but not always completely full.

Isn't Methuselah A supermassive star? Andyet it is very old! https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-sz-001&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=sz&p=star+older+than+the+universe%21#id=1&vid=100a52bcce613161331d0b6b1a155515&action=click Wikipedia says it's only .8 times the mass of the...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_200804.jpg NGC 2442: Galaxy in Volans Explanation: Distorted galaxy NGC 2442 can be found in the southern constellation of the flying fish , (Piscis) Volans . Located about 50 million light-years away, the galaxy's two spiral arms extending from a pronounced ce...

Great looking shot... amazing... but IF you look at the top trunk "differently"... you can see a female cosmic "fish-woman"... The elephant's "eye" ...is HER eye... a rather fishy eye...lower she has... Legs... :---[===] * Sorry, but I fail to see much of an elephant's...

I usually avoid saying how beautiful, wonderful an Apod is, but somehow this one does make me feel emotional. The slight curve of the smoke trail lifting into the darkening blue of the sky. As you may know, I'm not an American, but it made me think of the "The Star-Spangled Banner" and &q...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS7CcyMbGDc NASA Launches Perseverance Rover to Mars, Capping Summer of Missions to Red Planet By Kenneth Chang, nytimes, July 30, 2020 NASA’s Perseverance rover is headed to Mars, the third spacecraft to head that way this month. Perseverance, a robotic wheeled vehi...

Why is it that everything is space is more interesting the more you learn about it? From the link to HD 150136 within the wikipedia article article about NGC 6139, HD 150136 is listed in the Washington Double Star Catalog as having seven visual components within 30 arc seconds. Component A is a clo...

The main reason why I love NGC 6188, the nebula, is because of the ionizing cluster, NGC 6193. And the main reason why I love NGC 6193 is that this cluster contains the nearest magnificently hot and blue star of spectral class O3, HD 150136 . Read more here . <snip> Ann Why is it that everything is...

CometLightning_Palmer_960.jpg Beautiful! Neowise on a long space journey, adeos untill we meet again in 6700 years! :mrgreen: And quite a collection of objects with disparate longevities in this image: lightning, clouds, grass, trees, comet, mountain, rock, stars (though likely many - most?/all? - ...

Ahead! Warp factor 9 gazillion, Mr. Sulu! The warp factor : 250,000 <<The warp drive velocity in Star Trek is generally expressed in "warp factor" units, which—according to Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual—corresponds to the magnitude of the warp field. Achieving warp factor 1 is equ...

orin stepanek wrote: ↑Sun Jul 26, 2020 11:34 am I've often wondered what was at the end of the known universe! There can only be one answer;--more space! but what is there?

What’s at the end of the known universe you ask? Why, the unknown universe of course!

Tszabeau wrote: ↑Sun Jul 26, 2020 12:17 pm “Nothing” is the biggest the biggest aspect of the multiverse... otherwise, we’d bump into everything.

Yeah. Space is the universe’s way of keeping everything from being in the same place. Just like time is the universe’s way of keeping everything from happening all at once.

Who wrote that? What link to education was there? Of all the things in all the universe is this comet is now a fairy tale to obsessed over like a one hit wonder pop culture song? Over and over again. How about a nice pic of Io? Just roll with it for another few days. A comet like this is a once eve...

Also, should I know who Judy Schmidt is? Yes. She is aka geckzilla, one of the simultaneously feared and revered moderators here, and the producer of many of the amazing astronomical images shown as APODs from her skilled work with Hubble Telescope data. Bruce, with a tip of my cap to her dragonshi...

Explanation: NGC 6302 lies about 4,000 light-years away in the arachnologically [sic] correct constellation of the Scorpion ( Scorpius ). NGC 6302 lies about 4,000 light-years away in the arthropologically correct constellation of the Scorpion ( Scorpius ) Of all the foot joints , in all the phylum...

Still nothing explicit there about just why the mares are on the near side. An "obvious" explanation I immediately thought of for why the mares are mostly on the near side is that the near side is simply heavier! That is, there are more heavy elements on or under the near side, with the r...

BDanielMayfield wrote: ↑Sun Jul 19, 2020 3:31 pm @ johnnydeep: See my comment immediately preceding yours.

I saw it. Humorous, yes, but not very scientifically satisfying

Are there any good proposed explanations why these 'lava seas' are all on 'our' side of the Moon ? In the latest thinking, is this thought to be an artifact of the moons formation, or subsequent to that ? The dark and relatively featureless lunar plains, clearly seen with the naked eye, are called ...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_200718.jpg Finding NEOWISE Explanation: If you can see the stars of the Big Dipper , you can find comet NEOWISE in your evening sky tonight. After sunset look for the naked-eye comet below the bowl of the famous celestial kitchen utensil of the north and above ...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_200718.jpg Finding NEOWISE Explanation: If you can see the stars of the Big Dipper , you can find comet NEOWISE in your evening sky tonight. After sunset look for the naked-eye comet below the bowl of the famous celestial kitchen utensil of the north and above ...

<<By early July, Comet NEOWISE had brightened to magnitude −1, far exceeding the brightness attained by C/2020 F8 (SWAN), and had developed a second tail. The first tail is blue and made of gas and ions;. There is also a red separation in the tail caused by high amounts of sodium . The second tail ...