Starship Asterisk*

I light bonfires in my paddock every now and then and they light up paddock like the Sydney Cricket Ground! Yesterday morning when I saw this apod for the first time I too was going to post a question about the outback lights in western Australia, but by then several others already had. The wild an...

Thanks Ann! That was exactly the kind of detailed answer I was seeking. Do you want to know what today's APOD would look like to our eyes, if our eyes were sensitive enough to detect color in nebulae? This is what it would look like. Ann Wow, to my eyes that is a MUCH more attractive photo! That's g...

When ever there is a discussion about the location of water, be that the earth, moon, or Mercury, it is usually said that the water came from comets. How did all that water come to be the main part of all the comets? Where was the water created in the first place? The hydrogen in H2O was created wh...

Why do the colors in this apod look so unusual? The nebulas are very recognizable by shape, but not by color.

It's a tough crowd Bruce :wink: It is even so, FloridaMike, and greetings from the other side of the Gulf. Your friendly reply made it worth the flaming arrows. Genesis only dates to a few hundred years BCE. There are Babylonian cuneiform tablets with astronomical data for the Moon that considerabl...

One of the oldest written records of our Moon in a written form is found at Genesis 1:16 where this object is referred to as "the lesser luminary for dominating the night". I'm grateful that our lesser luminary exists and that its orbit is such that eclipses are so wonderfully varried. Br...

One of the oldest written records of our Moon in a written form is found at Genesis 1:16 where this object is referred to as "the lesser luminary for dominating the night". I'm grateful that our lesser luminary exists and that its orbit is such that eclipses are so wonderfully varried. Bruce

Thanks Ann and Chris for your well reasoned answers. I now realize that meteor colors are due to ionized atmospheric gasses. Therefore the colors we can record is for basically the same reason that the auroras are so often green; ionized oxygen. Perhaps today’s apod is of a meteoroid that stayed ins...

Thanks Nuefer, that’s fascinating. I hadn’t thought of chemically induced coloration. So then I guess it can it be inferred that comet Tempel-Tuttle was chock full o’ coppers? I’ve seen greenish and multicolored flames when burning driftwood that has soaked up sea salt. This rapid oxidation (aka fir...

This is an awesome capture from an equally awesome video sequence! Today’s apod reminded me of something I wondered about from the “Leonids Over Monument Valley” apod of 2 days ago. (For the record, just to be totally clear to everyone, I did NOT think that that apod was a fake. But the setting did ...

Don't be tellin' me this picture is fake.

how come you think that it's a fake?

No one is saying THIS apod is a fake 2birds. Stowaway is referring to yesterday’s flaming arrow attack on John Wayne and the cavalry.

Having just endured the PUN ishment of having spent the last 2+ hours reading this entire thread (owlice should have assigned it for my recent infraction :) ) I report my favorite to be BMAONE23’s Governmentium post way back on page one. There are many others that are good too, and some of the bad o...

It still seems like Higgs & co. wuz robbed. Confirmation of the Higgs boson was a huge news item which made him a household name, (at least in my house

Sorry, guys. I'm a Christian, and I do not believe in the big bang theory. God created the heavens and the earth by speaking them into existence. No, it doesn't make logical sense. Yes, it takes faith to believe it. And I believe it. Just wanted you to know that you don't speak for me. It's not my ...

I was a little hesitant to watch the video at first, since I believe in both Creation (vs. Evolution) and that the Big Bang was not a spontanious event, but actually controlled by a higher power. But that is a discussion for another time. The point is that I didn't think that the video would agree ...

You're still on Daylight Savings Time???

Apparently, I’m running on I.S.T. which in this case stands for Insufficient Sleep Time.

Thanks again,
Bruce

The Total Solar Eclipse Down Under How to Watch it from Anywhere in the World Universe Today | Nancy Atkinson | 2012 Nov 13 Slooh will be having their webcast at events.Slooh.com, starting Tuesday, November 13th at 11:30 AM PST / 2:30 PM EST / 19:30 UTC. Viewers can watch the show on their PC or mo...

Has a dagger pierced the heart of the great Scorpion? It looks like the meteor passed right in front of Antares..

Check out the APOD's of May 5, 2006 and May 23, 2008. Can someone tell me how it is that "climate change" on Jupiter occurs without humans present? Or are there Jovian SUV's floating around in that hostile atmosphere? Of course not all climate change is due to human causes. However, when ...

Check out the APOD's of May 5, 2006 and May 23, 2008. Can someone tell me how it is that "climate change" on Jupiter occurs without humans present? Or are there Jovian SUV's floating around in that hostile atmosphere? Of course not all climate change is due to human causes. However, when ...

The last expression in this apod's Explanation got my attention: the Tadpole Galaxy will likely lose its tail as it grows older, the tail's star clusters forming smaller satellites of the large spiral galaxy. I've always thought of galactic interactions as a canaballistic process where the number of...

"Awesome" is an over-used word, but this video is literally awesome. Seeing how big and powerful this storm was, and contemplating how much damage it did, I experience "overwhelming wonder, admiration, respect, [and] dread." Now that such a huge and destructive storm has impacte...

(1) Methone is so small, it’s unlikely to be hit. There must be many areas of a like size on bodies around the solar system that, given the random nature of collisions, have escaped any impacts. Probably not. We've never seen any other body without evidence of collision, even small asteroids. Stati...

Very interesting Bruce, especially your second hypothesis, i wouldn't have thought of that. Maybe one of the scientists can say if electromagnetism could be at play here? My very first thought when I saw this perfect egg shape in the picture and read "3 km diameter" was 'snowball'; Methon...

I can think of two reasons why this moonlet is craterless. (1) Methone is so small, it’s unlikely to be hit. There must be many areas of a like size on bodies around the solar system that, given the random nature of collisions, have escaped any impacts. That it hasn’t been hit by anything large is a...