Starship Asterisk*

> A leading progenitor hypothesis for the square nebula ... The red square nebula is not at all well understood. The reason for this is the physical and spectroscopic similarity to the red rectangle nebula, which is not understood at all. The spectrum of light arriving at Earth absorbed by the inter...

Based on the similarity of orbital radius distributions between Kepler planets and Kepler binaries, more than half of the Kepler planets ought to be shown with highly eccentric elliptical orbits. Fewer than half have orbits that are approximately circular.

This image has been on APOD before, even the text is copied either verbatim or almost verbatim from the earlier APOD. The link is to the same 1995 article where some lines in the Sun's spectrum have still not been reliably identified, some may be higher ionisations of Fe, but other remain a complete...

The light spots on Ceres have to be either "Unusual light-colored rocks sitting on the surface" or "Underground light soil uncovered by recent meteor impacts". First of all, I want you to take notice that all the images of Ceres from Dawn so far are monochrome, not true colour. B...

> How accurate are the exoplanet sizes? Sizes from Kepler data are based on the time that the light curve dips from maximum to minimum brightness, with a correction based on how far the planet is out of alignment with the equator, which in turn comes from the total transit time. From what I've seen...

It must be very difficult to analyse such small signals within much larger signals. Does anyone know what the margins of error are in these findings? How many eclipses are typically observed per exoplanet candidate before confirmation? How accurate are the exoplanet semi-major axes and temperatures...

Have the stars in the neighbourhood associated with the WOW signal been scanned? Many times. Also, it doesn't seem to be widely known but one of their publications shows that SETI has picked up hundreds if not millions of other signals similar to but stronger than the WOW! signal. Some few of these...

I've been analysing the orbits of Kepler planets. There are three main situations in which a so-called "habitable" Kepler planet may not be habitable at all. 1. If the orbit is elliptical. So far as I can tell, no-one has checked these Kepler planets to see if the orbit is elliptical. By f...

Don't you just hate this image of Venus! It's the false colour image derived from the Magellan spacecraft radar reflection results. It in no way would resemble what Venus would look like if its atmosphere were stripped off. Please stick to what Venus looks like in some wavelength of the electromagne...