Starship Asterisk*

Sad to see the iconic shuttles make their last journey, looking forward to the future of space though, lest we forget the shuttles already have a functioning partial replacement. Manned missions to be coming 2015! http://www.itwire.com/science-news/space/56761-spacex-to-launch-first-commercial-fligh...

My first thought was that some of that age cluster between 50-69 must be due to that being the boomer bracket, although after looking up the numbers that no where near accounts for the surge. http://www.nationmaster.com/country/us/Age_distribution Indeed, it must be that this group was the most ener...

At first sight, I thought "meh, another astronaut picture, doing the self portrait for their facebook no doubt for when they get home" but zooming in on the picture made me awestruck. I love the reflection of the earth and the other astronaut, where in turn we're used to seeing a face, we ...

Had to go with all three, because as with most things, the answer is "it depends". Love a good landscape with earth and sky, love a good galaxy shot, and I'm ok with the occasional earth-focused apod. Life would be boring without variety. I do feel this was a silly question though since it...

Have we ever caught an elf on camera? Image or video...? They sound amazing.

Absolutley stunning photograph, the clouds are my favorite part in both the picture and and movie, just mesmerizing how the fog moves. Thank you for this wonderful APOD!

The two links "retrograde motion" and "can be seen" REALLY helped me visualize what was going on here exactly, I never quite understood when/for how long the retrograde motion actually occurred (one month didn't seem like long enough). Thanks for those!

This was good for a few laughs if anyone is interested in a venture off the apod site.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/daves4/the-inte ... er-landing

I had the pleasure of driving through Klamath Falls about a month ago, it was actually snowing! Wish I'd had the time for a Crater Lake detour. :-/ This is an incredible shot though, at least I get to see it here! It possibly exacerbates that tinge of regret though with the exceptional beauty...

Love how blue-green my favorite set of sisters look in this lovely image...

Why is it so white? Even as a black and white photo shouldn't the surface of mars be more greyish like other HiRISE images? Is it just a higher than normal albedo because it's a different type of sand with higher reflectivity? If so what type is that?

Beautiful picture, Centaurus A has always been incredibly fascinating. I'm also glad to see it finally described as a "peculiar" galaxy... since none of those other galaxy descriptions seem to adequately fit.

I suppose I prefer to think of Centaurus A as a lenticular, not an elliptical. Elliptical seems like way too much of a stretch for such a colorful galaxy.

To Art or anyone else who can answer... Has there been any effort to correlate a galaxy's location/trajectory (with respect to us and/or big bang origin) with its type/classification (and hence its "age" if you can call it that)? Is this maybe one of the goals of the galactic zoo project? ...

Great post zloq, that link you included was hilarious. Sometimes I forget how many crazy/stupid/insane people there are out there... from people believing the moon landings were a hoax to people believing in "moon bases", and that's even some of the more reasonable stuff that's out there o...

Beautiful image Stephane!! I so desperately want to go to Iceland some day, for now I'll have to make do with this as my new desktop background.

unless their are two suns or two Moons on this earth this is a fake images please see notes their are other mistakes in this image this is to just name the most obvious APOD: Waterfall, Moonbow, and Aurora from... (2011 Nov 14) See my mobile me page http://gallery.me.com/artist17#100914 for diagram...

What a lovely panarama, especially how the nebula on the right is showing up purple! Is this a result of red hydrogen/emission nebula light combining with blue star/reflection nebula light? I don't know if I've ever seen (or noticed) a purple nebula before, hmmm. Think I'll have to crop this image s...

Why hello there Andromeda!

I counted 43 streaks, but I'm thinking that the extra long streak at the top of the image is in fact two meteor streaks overlaid, which puts my final answer/guess at 44 meteors. Although I wish the answer was 42 to give us another question to that ultimate answer. :-/

Stellar picture of my favorite stars! I can usually make out 8 of them on a clear night... I never understood why they were the "7" either and always found myself wondering which one was considered the seventh lol... maybe that's what always keep me looking...

It may be a few days late but this seemed relevant to the playful banter here... although I certainly wouldn't be surprised if this isn't new information to y'all.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12474/12 ... 2474-h.htm

What exactly distinguishes a small brown dwarf like this from a planet like Jupiter? Also, has it been ruled out that stars like this aren't at least partially contributing to the elusive dark matter problem? I would very much enjoy a discussion on this topic...

Loved this APOD, especially the Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor's raw sound goes well with the raw Cassini footage, I do wish there was a "slow motion" button on vimeo though, I guess I can just pause the video a lot to absorb the images. Was still very cool seeing it sped up though, much in...

Armageddon might be one horribly innaccurate movie, but I do think it would be really interesting to do a manned mission to an asteroid or comet... I realize this would be exceedingly difficult and expensive, but IMO I would appreciate that more than a manned mission to Mars, and it might even be ea...

Thanks for today's image. The vast symmetry of that galaxy makes my jaw drop. :!: The extreme symmetry of M104 is in itself proof that this galaxy is "quiet" as far as star formation goes. Take a look at this SDSS image of basically "red and dead" galaxy NGC 4314 by David Hogg: ...