Starship Asterisk*

I just went and looked at a lot of examples from Google image search. I thought they were mostly simpler shapes. Maybe they are as a rule -- but since we humans like to find and document the most extreme -- it seems that on Earth, we can get hoodoos in almost any tortured spire-like profile, as long...

PerigeeApogeeCompare-1v.jpg Happy B-Day APOD! Thanks, Orin, for posting the clearer comparison image. And for reminding me of APOD's birthday. I love APOD! I can scarce imagine how much work Robert Nemiroff & Jerry Bonnell have had to put in, faithfully for so long, to have provided this archiv...

Space is the only viable option for a worldwide communications network. There's room up there for plenty of competition. IMO the benefits vastly outweigh the harms. Well, I think the biggest issues with the way the U.S. and its tycoons are proceeding are (international) political issues, so ... I j...

We do need that many. And many more. I would disagree. I feel like we already have enough communication. But more importantly, what I think we need to have is the debate as to whether or not we need this. Instead, we now live in a world where a single person can manage to become a billionaire, and ...

StarTrailsPinnacles_Rozells_960_annotated.jpg Do we really need all this? Oh so many satellites! :roll: https://cdn.pixabay.com/photo/2019/09/04/08/24/cat-4451003_1280.jpg Kitty is wise! We do need that many. And many more. I would disagree. I feel like we already have enough communication. But mor...

I had the example of our solar system in mind. But this example may not apply to the case of 3C 75. https://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/tumblr_mj0vvcqnZx1qdlh1io1_400.gif Solar system “vortex” gif (by DjSadhu) I see. This picture would apply to the two black holes themselves. I...

. . . I'm not sure if the assumption "two supermassive black holes are bound together by gravity in a binary system" can be correct, because otherwise it would be expected that the two double tails of the black holes moving in the same direction would have to twist helically against each ...

Ann wrote: ↑Thu May 26, 2022 6:25 pm

Ann -- Thanks for this additional post, as well, once again chock-full of enlightening information.

no ripples at the top because the craft is already supersonic My first thought, as well. But no. The photographer was about 20 km from the launch, and the Sun was 5° above the horizon. So the vehicle altitude was 1.7 km, at which point its speed was 500 km/h (139 m/s). It became supersonic (1100 km...

The mostly vertical ripples at the bottom limb of the Sun are interesting. My guess is that these are caused by sound waves from the rocket. These would make somewhat cylindrical shock waves surrounding the rocket's path, leading to the vertical structures seen in the image. Not sure about that. If...

Let me begin by passing a verdict: NGC 4565 is a quite yellow galaxy ███ , and not very colorful at all. . . . So there are blue stars in NGC 4565, but they are not very bright, and they are not found in large clusters. And there are no large bright pink emission nebulas, even though there are undo...

... Suppose the Universe is indeed perched at such a false vacuum point, and that it might catastrophically fall down. The way I understand it, this would be the end of the Universe as we know it, and we couldn't survive the "fall". How would we know that the end was nigh? How could we te...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_220523.jpg The Once and Future Stars of Andromeda Explanation: This picture of Andromeda shows not only where stars are now, but where stars will soon be. Of course, the big, beautiful Andromeda Galaxy , M31, is a spiral galaxy -- and a mere 2.5 million light-y...

So, does "dust is used as a tracer for gas" imply that the two are always found together (is dust an inevitable consequence of molecular gas "clumping")? And is star formation caused primarily by gas or dust or both? Well, I'm not an expert, but ... To make a nice star, all you ...

What causes the specific colors of the stratosphere and mesosphere? The troposphere is caused by blue light being scattered by Rayleigh scattering, so only red gets through, same mechanism that makes red sunsets. The mesosphere I can imagine also being Rayleigh scattering but why is the stratospher...

Note in the Wikipedia stub a fantastic animation of stars actually flowing from the Small Magellanic Cloud (elongated object at upper right) to the Large Magellanic Cloud (large round object at center). Ann Cool! If you had not mentioned it, I'd have missed it. It starts out so slowly. I wonder if ...

... All of life exists between about 4.2 miles up and about 7 miles down from the sea-level point. (The tardigrade can live in extreme conditions, for example, still, not much of anything living has been found anywhere above about 22,000 feet. We found life at the Challenger Deep at the bottom of t...

Great additions to my musings, y'all. And I loved the Kansas video! Not only a great song, and appropriate to my musings, I think the title applied to the APOD itself very well. What causes the specific colors of the stratosphere and mesosphere? The troposphere is caused by blue light being scattere...

This got me to thinking about a couple of famous comments: "This is a little tiny blue skin that is 50 miles wide." -- William Shatner Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ...

Yeah, and 60 kg is 132 lb, which is more than I weigh! There's no way in hades that each of the 6 wheels is anywhere near that. And I doubt that even including the drive train and axels would approach that weight. Hmmm ... That 6% figure, I can't seem to find it anywhere now that I look back, excep...

... It's also surprising to me that the article said that each of the 6 wheels was to contribute no more than 6% of the total weight. That means all 6 wheels could be up to 36% of the total weight?! The wheels don't LOOK like they're very heavy. I wonder if even the humongous wheels on those massiv...

Pilgrim36 wrote: ↑Fri Apr 15, 2022 10:23 pm Are those wheel tracks in the small crater at the lower left of the image?

I don't see any wheel tracks in the image. Just some ridges in the dust that I think are wind-sculpted and some very interesting rocks, some of which appear long, skinny, and linear.

DL MARTIN wrote: ↑Sun Apr 17, 2022 6:14 am If the Space Shuttle and Space Station remain in the mesophere, is it inaccurate to refer to them with the 'Space' label?

Then there's those "Starships" that fly from the "Starbase" in Boca Chica. Now that's what I call hyperbole.

I note from one of the links that the treads on the wheels of Curiosity are made of aluminum. Why wouldn't they have made them out of something harder and/or tougher? Was brittleness more of a concern than softness? This was a fun article you inspired me to find: https://www.sciencefriday.com/educa...

Thanks again, alter ego and chris. I'm still expecting that with the benefit of the JWST having a larger mirror and one better suited to infrared than anything we've been able to look through (from space) before, that it will detect serious galaxies, whose spectra indicate a larger redshift than eve...