Starship Asterisk*

Ann wrote:

PanamaBen wrote:Was wondering what Earth would look like if it was barren.

It would look something like this.

A fascinating thing about the Earth is that it does have continents, and they would be visible even without the oceans.

Ann

Though the relief in that image is highly exaggerated.

Just to get this straight in my head: If you traced the Moon's (our moon) orbital path around the sun, it would be a wave pattern, getting slightly closer to the sun, and then farther away as it orbits the Earth, then back again, right? Now if the Earth suddenly disappeared, would the Moon continue ...

Hi pianosorplanets, you need look no further than yesterday's topic. A discussion of the economics was had.

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=34966

Chris, since we are using 'place holders' called Dark Matter and Dark Energy for things that we haven't a clue actually are, and seem to be a majority of what makes up the Universe, I cannot share your optimism. I also wouldn't count on not having our current theories to be radically revised once we...

Yeah, I am not sure I will ever not see it as the Horse's Patootie nebula from now on.

If one ignores the common use of a planetary foreground for concentric arc star trail pictures, it is a fine, and ingeniously created comparison. If one cannot ignore the admittedly incorrect relationship of the foreground to the 14000 year projected star field arc trails, then it might lead to hype...

This guy.

I think I get it, Nitpicker. The ring we are seeing is a part of the same surrounding gas cloud we saw when the SN was initially discovered, AND it was hit by the light of the SN at the same time as the dust we saw during the initial nova outburst, BUT because that part of the dust cloud is 4 light ...

I have a hunch this is what you seek http://www.psi.edu/

This short film is a large plate of Awesome. slathered in savory gravy of Make It So.

{qoute}What is the white material thought to be ?{/qoute}

If it were the devil's dandruff, space exploration would never suffer a lack of funding.

Today's APOD is just stunning.

This was also a recent Earth Observatory POTD I don't begrudge APOD for using it (other than I follow both sites daily, and this is a repeat for me). It is a fascinating image. I usually prefer color images of aurora. Is the monochrome image due to the filters used? Anyway great picture of our home.

I am thinking Escher

FloridaMike wrote:

neufer wrote:Smaismrmilmepoetaleumibunenugttaviras

bless you...

Add a few more consonants and you might have the name of an Icelandic volcano.

Chris Peterson wrote: There's not much in a galaxy that can be blue except for stars.

What about a particularly dense cluster of low luminosity boo berries?

I am so used to seeing fuzzy red blobs in deep space images of galaxies that formed not long after the Big Bang, that I never thought our own galaxy was formed only ~500 million after the creation of the universe. Probably, all galaxies formed in the first billion years or so of the Universe- altho...

http://static.socialgo.com/cache/159373/image/447.jpg Beyond wrote: Highly accurate rendering :?: Gee, i always thought of black holes as being kinda roundish. Oh well. Black hole here :?: :arrow: Ann Well, that's one of them... Yes, when I think of a horse's black hole (which is not too often) I u...

What struck me in the description is that NGC 6752 is "Over 10 billion years old". That got me to asking "How old is the Milky Way?" Wikipedia informs it is 13.2 billion years old. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way I am so used to seeing fuzzy red blobs in deep space images ...

Whenever I see a picture of a molecular cloud, I am reminded of that Star Trek: TNG episode where Picard and crew are lost in a molecular cloud. A very scary and forbidding place. But now that I see the infrared images, I wonder why Enterprise, the pride of 24th century Star Fleet, couldn't just hav...

Absolutely fantastic APOD and discussion! Thanks you Chris and Ann for your helpful explanations. But this one still confuses me When mass distorts spacetime, it makes it appear (from outside the distorted region) that photons are following a curved path, rather than a straight line (they aren't ......

I too voted for "around the world..." but also "Glimpse of CLIMSO" because it is just an awesome photograph!