Starship Asterisk*

Rotating wheel space station
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotating_w ... ce_station

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
http://2001.wikia.com/wiki/Space_Station_V

They should take a close-up picture. Why don't they?

Not much has happen since 1977 (37 years ago) in the exploration of the outer solar system. Kind of sad. (The Voyager 2 probe was launched on August 20, 1977) (Voyager 2's closest approach to Jupiter occurred on July 9, 1979) (Voyager 2's closest approach to Saturn occurred on August 26, 1981) (Voya...

I see they are still spending good money on the ISS. Has it ever been useful? Has it ever contributed anything to science?

This is the 1st landing on the Moon since 1976 (Luna-24).
Quite a shame really that it took so long to go back.

Europa just becomes more and more interesting. I hope we can find a way to explore it. Ann JUICE is planning to go there, but not before 2031, (JUICE = JUpiter ICy moons Explorer) JUICE is the first large-class mission in ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 programme. Planned for launch in 2022 and arriv...

Naked eye Nova :?: Well, at least put a monocle on it :!: "Naked" is a high value keyword in lots of nanny filters of the sort used by libraries and schools. It's crazy, but today's APOD is probably going to be blocked at a lot of sites. Just like me not able to access my Hotmail account ...

Sorry to bother about what may have a trivial answer, But what's up with the 1" scale and the kpc scales? Seems like (for the 1") 8.7 is the magic number, around which there's a kind of strange symmetry. I would have thought that there's a linear distance-size relationship. Obviously, the...

Attack of the tardigrades by *Ramul
http://ramul.deviantart.com/art/Attack- ... -143385439

First Animal to Survive in Space
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W194GQ6fHI

Comet ISON: Comet of The Century? Coming in SOHO's field of view: November 2013 Comet C/2012 S1 was discovered in September 2012 by Russian astronomers Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok using data from the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON). For that reason, it is also known as Comet ...

http://gbphotodidactical.ca/images/wall ... nal-ws.jpg

"The picturesque barred spiral galaxy NGC 1365 visible on the lower right is also a prominent Fornax cluster member. "

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap070328.html APOD 2007-mar-28

I was one of the thousands of people who worked on the space shuttle program for Rockwell Int'l. That time of my life was the best and now I am entering retirement age. It seems so long ago. Like so many other aerospace projects the shuttle program exceeded all expectations. "the shuttle progr...

I wonder why the 2nd strand must be copied backward, as is said in the video at 2:40.

some galaxies (bottom left corner):

In a few billions years, our galaxy will collide with Andromeda galaxy, and in about 5 billions years the Sun will end it's main sequence star phase to become a giant incinerating Earth. But other things will happens before that. I also read a scientific paper saying that within the next 250 million...

Considering the expansion of the universe, it is usually seen as an expansion of space, but I prefer to view it as a contraction of matter. It may be that those two point of view are exactly equivalent, but maybe they are not. In any case, whatever the correct interpretation, the actual experimental...

owlice wrote:
It is far better to dare mighty things even though we might fail than to stay in the twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat. ~ paraphrase after T. Roosevelt

"Shoot for the Moon. Even if you miss, you will land among the stars".

Meh! Tell me this is not the best image this lander can produce!! Not long ago I went outside with my circa 2007 digital camera and lens combination that together cost me about $1,500 retail, and with Photoshop on my PC made a 17566 x 4049 pixel panorama of the view of my entire front yard in which...

I remember Viking landing on Mars almost 40 years ago. It was awesome, so is this. It is the same thing all over again, for a new generation, with much better hardware, thanks to improved technology. And it can move! (How we wish Viking could have moved just a bit, just to peek behind those rocks, o...

Ah SpongeBob ... always in my heart.

Over the last 4 billions years, as the Sun rotates around the galaxy, crossing galactic arms and passing through who knows what clouds or clusters, I wonder what are the probability of the Earth never coming too close to a lethal exploding supernova. Only the lucky ones would live to tell.

Our stellar neighborhood, within 12.5 ly http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/12lys.html A list of stars within 20 ly http://www.atlasoftheuniverse.com/nearstar.html I wish we would send a small fast (ion propelled?) space probe toward proxima centaurii, 4.22 ly away. It would take a long time to get t...

Found the other Mars pits I was talking about... http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_009488_1745 and: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_003647_1745 / http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_004847_1745 these are even more mysterious (to me anyway), as they are too deep to see the botttoms... mK thanks for ...

Velocities should be roughly constant regardless of distance from the center. @neufer Are you sure? In this case we would have a homogenous disk. But We have spirals because of the speed-gradients between the center and the outer areas. constant velocities still implies non-constant angular velocit...