Starship Asterisk*

I don't think it was so easy that the photographer got a second Massai warrior a week before the eclipse. I think the photographer got special permission from the funeral house, and he got a mannequin stand from a department store. An hour before the eclipse the photographer propped the corpse up on...

Now we know that one day on Mercury is two years long. Has there been new statistics about Mercury? I thought Mercury's day was 59 Earth days long and a Mercury year was 88 Earth days. In other words there is a sunrise on a given spot on Mercury about every two Earth months, and there are 1 and a h...

I was thinking as I look at this scene, you suppose this will be an historical shrine. In 50 years or a hundred years when people colonize the Moon, the authorities will have to put up a museum rope or fence around the perimeter to keep Moon tourists from walking on this sacred ground. I wonder wher...

Here's my layman's theory. At the base of the hill I see light brown colored rock, similar to the color of the horizon and atmosphere. These are more or less layered and even. I would think they are Mars bedrock. Then we see dark grey sand. Wind born of course. On top and scattered haphazardly are d...

So that is the Moon shadow that had been following Cat Stevens. I had thought he was referring to the dark side of a New Moon or a First Quarter. But that would mean Cat Stevens would have had to been on the Moon for that shadow to follow him. This makes more sense.

Good news and bad news. Really great to see images of the GRS up close. Darn it all that it is shrinking! I guess I can no longer say that at least two Earths can fit inside the GRS. I can remember an essay from Issac Asimov back in the sixties or seventies where he said that three Earths can fit in...

I'm from Canada and I'm puzzled by the massive light comment in northern Canada. Perhaps you mean Goose Bay, Labrador in the east, or Edmonton, Calgary in the west. As to the massive light in northern Alaska. I watched a show a few years ago called Ice Road Truckers, where they drove up the Dalton h...

But think of a civilization in that galaxy looking at the Andromeda Galaxy. Andromeda is close to Camelopardalis in the sector of space, just not in line but across from the rim of the Milky Way. M31 is about 2 million light years away, so it would be about 8 million light years from IC 342, not con...

I am not sure about the unpleasant records. If the position of the sun is based on the elliptical orbit, then the precession of the equinoxes means that some 13,000 years ago the Sun was farthest away in the Northern Hemisphere in the winter. 13,000 years ago was when the last Ice Age began melting ...

Don't claim to be an expert, but the Summer Triangle would be rising in the spring north in the evening. That way it would be in the zenith around midnight around the start of summer. It would be setting earlier and earlier as autumn passes until it sets with the Sun.

Otto Posterman - " noctilucent clouds ... are formed as water vapor in the cold upper atmosphere condenses on meteoric dust or volcanic ash near the edge of space. " If the APOD professors are quite confident there is water vapor in the cold upper atmosphere, why do you doubt their authori...

I don't consider 'snapshot' demeaning. Basic definition of snapshot is a photograph taken on the spur of the moment without any preparation, or thought to composition. Basically photos taken at a party for example. Now the apod photo taken at the exact time of the Full Moon assumes that there was pl...

I am guessing that the hole is not a crater, but an accumulation of CO2 sublimated gas that became explosive and acted as a geyser. The south pole is a combination of water ice and CO2 ice. During spring heating sunlight penetrates the still relatively clear water ice layer and heats the dry ice. Bu...

Beautiful picture. But is it Firefall by Moonlight or Firefall by Sunset light? Because the last link of Firefall by Moonlight looks exactly the same complete with the stars in May in exactly the same position.

I might have an idea why picture 7 and 8 are more blurry. First, Juno must be traveling at a speed in the thousands of miles per hour in order for it to stay in orbit and not to fall down to Jupiter like a stone. Now, consider a phenomenon of motion and perspective while riding in a fast car going s...

Superman wore a red cape, although he also wore blue and yellow. But the big point is, have you ever seen Superman wear a green or any color mask?

What exactly is the remotest galaxy in the Local Group? In the Local Group link, it would appear that WLM is closer to M33 than M33 is to the Milky Way. (An astronomer in M33 would think Leo 1 is far more remote than WLM.) Even M31 looks about the same distance to WLM as M31 is to the Milky Way. (An...

Nitpicker wrote:They'll be back in easterly pre-dawn skies, in a few short months.

That's one short month, June, and one long month, July. I don't know the exact day that Castor and Pollux will be seen rising in the east, but I guess it will be sometime around mid August.

With the wide open laughing mouth? I see him. At first I thought it was Zimba the Lion King because his nose is more catlike. Also the white band you say is a hat could be the lion's mane. Just a slight flaw, the chin is pointing outward instead of inward, as if he has a goatee beard.

To put this size in perspective. The Milky Way is only half the size of the bay wave at the bottom. But to imagine there are some 1,000 galaxies in the Perseus Cluster. The Apod link to the May 20009 image says the cluster is some 1.5 million light years across. So today's image is just some two thi...

Yes, John, the perplexing conundrum of the finite speed of light in a vacuum. The star did supernova 11,300 years ago. But since it is (or was) 11,000 light years away from Earth, an observer on Earth couldn't see the explosion happen until 300 years ago. ( If Flamsteed did see the explosion in 1680...

Interesting that the Sea of Azov, to the right of the Black Sea in this picture, is different shades of green compared to the blue of the Black Sea. Is this because it is so shallow that it is filled with green algae? I also wonder what the pink area is just above, which appears to be around the bor...

I Googled NGC 4302 and NGC 4298 and the first hit that wasn't this Apod page or a youtube page that zoomed in on the Hubble Image, was the Deep Sky Object Search. According to them the distance of NGC 4302 is 53 M light years, and the distance of NGC 4298 is 52 M light years. So NGC 4298 is 1 M ligh...

So has anyone/anything tried this hydrogen diet yet ? It might be just me, but it sounds a bit thin. I think that is a typo. I read on another site, space dot com, I think, that the gases hydrogen AND carbon dioxide were detected in the plumes. Those two gases can form methane which is the viable f...

IS that title right with the commas? Judging by the oversized sun, shouldn't it be Sun dog, man, and his dog?