Starship Asterisk*

Keep in mind that this is a pseudocolor image. That is, it is a grayscale raw image which is presented here with the different intensities mapped to different colors. The colors here have no relationship to actual color of the objects. I was going to ask about that! Thanks for anticipating my quest...

I took my spaceship and flew up high; I wanted to know, what was up in the sky! When I got up there, I followed a Star; At first I figured, It's not very far! The Star I followed was a huge planet; I wondered if my spaceship could man it! I landed my ship on the planets crust; On this strange world...

It is certainly " affecting my emotions or affections, moving, stirring ." (I would even go as far as to say that you were pretty pathetic "back in the day.") << pathetic (adj.) 1590s, "affecting the emotions or affections, moving, stirring" (now obsolete in this broad...

orin stepanek wrote: ↑Sat Sep 05, 2020 12:35 pm Aww! The best I could do was a square picture!


I could tip it; but that didn't look right! Falcon9MoonKatieDarby1200.jpg

I was about to suggest tipping it, because in space there is no up or down. Maybe tipping it the other way will look better?

How many of you can spot the M33 galaxy in this image?

Wikipedia wrote: IC 1101 is a supergiant elliptical galaxy at the center of the Abell 2029 galaxy cluster and is one of the largest known galaxies. Its halo extends about 600 kiloparsecs (2 million light-years) from its core, and it has a mass of about 100 trillion stars. The galaxy is located 320 ...

I would also have liked to see a comment on the bright flashes of colored light between the Moon and Jupiter in the APOD. What are they, and what caused them? Could they be a Moon halo? These halos can be quite colorful. On the other hand, I expect them to be very round in shape, not "tattered...

BDanielMayfield wrote: ↑Wed Aug 19, 2020 2:46 pm Like the Ringworld it would be unstable, methinks. What was Dyson thinking! It would never work.

Dyson was thinking it would be unstable. His vision was of large orbiting solar panels. But there was no controlling what sci-fi authors did with the concept.

Ann wrote: ↑Wed Aug 19, 2020 6:48 am And finally, an aside from the Color Commentator. All the images of the Sun in today's APOD are false color. You think the Sun is that yellow-orange color as it is portrayed as being in the visual-light image?

I’m glad you pointed this out.

An alliterative osculation!

I was out looking at the sky about 1am... I had gotten an earlier shot of the Moon with Saturn and Jupiter on either side... but around 1am went out again... and in the east was startled to see a big red star... and I wondered and wondered what it could be... so checked with software and it was MAR...

Earth: blue sky and orange sunsets.
Mars: orange sky and blue sunsets.

How poetic! Or is it contrarian?

My theory on the blue sky is Earth has clouds, water and with our atmosphere is orange while Mars has no clouds and no water (moisture)? The reason for our blue sky on earth is Rayleigh scattering. It has nothing to do with water or clouds. Our sky turns orange at sunset because, with a longer path...

The photographer has a picture of a couple of grizzly bears on his website. I don’t have that kind of bravery.

I saw comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE tonight. I needed binoculars to find it, but once I did, I just needed averted vision to keep up with it naked eye. I wasn’t able to make out the split tail. Six other people showed up on the same quest, so I got in an impromptu sidewalk astronomy session, my first sinc...

I’ve never seen this sort of photo during the annular phase. Does anyone know of any?

I have seen an annular eclipse, but I didn’t think to look down while it was happening.

Ladakh: the good, bad and ugly sides to India’s ‘Little Tibet’, high in the Himalayas Tim Pile, Post Magazine, 1 Aug, 2019 The ugly: Fly, rather than take the bus, to Leh (3,500 metres above sea level), and the thumping headaches, dehydration and general lethargy that accompany altitude sickness wi...

I came just to say it, but johnnydeep beat me to it:

M78 (which I call the “Pac-Man Monster Nebula”) and NGC 2071 get no respect in the annotations.

This image is beautiful!

universe has started 13.8 bil years ago. if it has a beginning, there must be an end. that means universe is finite. then why not other universes? Unestablished premise, non sequitur, non sequitur, and non sequitur. The universe as we know it began about 13.8 billion years ago. We do not know if th...

Daytime view.

Ann wrote: ↑Wed May 27, 2020 5:37 am And to think that the bright white little disk in the APOD encompasses 100% of the history of humanity, with the exception of the 12 men who have walked on the Moon.

Do Eugene Shoemaker’s remains count?

Yes, I see three "streaks" in the image. Two bright ones, and one fainter one nearer the LMC (visible in the linked higher-res image). And now that you've pointed out that one that I missed, I see an even fainter, shorter streak about three inches down and to the left of your faint one in...

Very interesting point. I didn't consider It! My point is that even being steady there without a light enhancement device the naked eye will only see something similar to a starry night here. In some way I consider colourfull amazing deep space images as misleading. Even a black shoe whith enough l...

Ann wrote: ↑Fri May 15, 2020 2:55 pm I'm also very glad to see that the picture was taken by a woman, Hypatia Alexandria!

Our own Geck has done quite a few images herself: Geckzilla.com