Starship Asterisk*

Art / Chris,
Don't litter the landscape with inconvenient facts. I am sure it feels much better to conclude that ISS has contributed nothing at all. Arguing the facts is like twerking in a space suit…

In a space suit no one can see you twerk...

...Just as an example (purely hypothetical), the idea of 3D fractals makes me think about ways that asteroids and meteoroids might be simply modeled, since we know that one form these can take is a rubble-pile structure. Most current models are hard to work with. If they could be simply described w...

The last image on the right reminds me of M-Theory and colliding membranes. The parallel field lines illuminated by the aurora make a decent model of the membranes. The dancing motion of field lines represent the gyrations of the membranes and suggest the possibilities of collision as speculated in ...

Maybe we should have a Fluffy Cat Nebula Of the Day...

&& &&

Crossing fingers and toes hoping for a good show....

As others have mentioned, we have a mountain range called Sierra Nevada in the US, too, and these are usually referred to/called "the Sierra Nevadas." Half the Spanish speaking countries of the world have mountains with that name. Not very creative. I guess at the end of the day a "s...

Question Visible are several "more distant" galaxies. Some galaxies seem to be between the Anemic and Earth. One of those is even (from Earth seen) before the dustring, so I don't think that galaxy is at greater distance than the Anemic. Is that galaxy so very small and the Anemic a giant...

"My God—it's full of stars!"

This has to be the geekiest APOD ever.

Nit, your picks are most entertaining, thank you.

Also, don't forget the earth - moon system is more of a binary planet, and this has benefited life here in many ways. Again, with a sample size of one it's hard to predict how many of these will be found in the universe.

You may study the stars Chris, I study something much, much more complex. Humanity.

I certainly do hope that science gains a better insight into dark matter and dark energy in my lifetime. But whenever it happens, I am confident it will bear some similarity to the current understanding. Your confidence is more a matter of faith than of knowledge. That's fine, you may well be right...

I see Ions...

I am loving this discussion, everyone is making good points. Keep it going!!!

Chris Peterson wrote:....Models....are powerful tools....

True, just not to be confused with the final answer, lest we forget.

Just a wild guess here but I'm thinking Mars will have its own annual meteor shower as a result of the commit fly-by you guys are discussing. True?

You guys are amazing. Thanks KNitPicker.

Well Composed, I like it. Thanks. BTW: Happy Mole Day Chemistry fans.

I really love the shape of the analemma for some reason, don't know why. Thank you Tunç Tezel for all the effort an image like this takes.

... By the time the Universe was a picosecond old, it was already a substantial fraction of its current size.... In the old days, the inflationary period brought the size of the universe from microscopic to "grapefruit" sized. To the best of my recollection anyway. When did that change? T...

... By the time the Universe was a picosecond old, it was already a substantial fraction of its current size.... In the old days, the inflationary period brought the size of the universe from microscopic to "grapefruit" sized. To the best of my recollection anyway. When did that change?

Even a block of lead is mostly empty space.