Starship Asterisk*

Well, there goes my plans for a vacation home orbiting Proxima Centauri!

I wonder what the night (?) sky would look like to an imaginary resident of a planet circling one of those stars in that cluster. Regards, Bill Lee I've asked a similar (the same?) question recently, and the answer was something like; Night sky would be as bright as a night with a full Moon, withou...

Ann wrote: ↑Thu Jan 23, 2020 7:03 am I didn't know that NGC 6752 is the third brightest globular of the Milky Way. That's interesting!

Ann

Another reason to add a Southern Hemisphere star gazing trip to my Bucket List!

neufer,
Was it GOES-5 that had "its lights burn out"?

I recall meteorologists (early 1990's) referring to a GOES satellite lost its IR capability because a carousel of Infrared lamps (needed to calibrate the camera?) used up all of its lamps.

Thanks again, neufer!
How are things in Tralfamadore?
(Not, how were things in Tralfamadore, or how will things be in Tralfamadore.)
B^)

Okay, After thinking about my previous response to neufer's response to my analemma/latest sunrise/earliest sunset question, and Chris Peterson's diagram of the Earth's elliptical orbit, I was wrong to think the elliptical orbit was responsible for the latest sunrise/earliest sunset question. The 23...

Thanks neufer! The maths are difficult for me, but the pictures help explain it. So... the "larger loop" is because of axis angle, the asymmetry of sunrise/sunset* is due to the elliptical orbit. (I didn't know the asymmetry of of the sunset was not equally "distant" from the sol...

I think this metaphor of "eating" for the process is quite strained and is being imposed onto this process by a competitive biological creature. Interesting that the name of the constellation is the river . When 2 rivers join, we don't really think of one as absorbing the other. They merg...

dlw wrote: ↑Mon Jan 06, 2020 8:41 pm Jupiter's rabbit. (Well, probably just my imagination.)

"It's just a bleedin' lil' bunny!"

- Monty Pythons "Holy Grail" upon seeing the Rabbit of Caerbannog
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_of_Caerbannog

This has me wondering, although not really on topic with today's APOD. I don't really understand how the latest sunrise, and earliest sunset are not on the day of the Winter Solstice (or so I've heard), and conversely; the latest sunset, earliest sunrise and the Summer Solstice. (local time, Norther...

I'm more interested in the white clouds at about 4 o'clock, halfway in from the visible horizon. It looks like a splash in a liquid surface, with droplets thrown upwards, but a gas surface doesn't behave like that. What might be causing that? Better to think in terms of "fluid" than "...

After rethinking... The Cygnus Loop is ~130 ly in diameter at an age of around 21,000 years. Simeis 147 is ~160 ly in diameter at an age of around 40,000 years. Once SNRs are this large they have already swept up at least a thousand solar masses of interstellar medium. Every time they double their ...

The resident "know it all" in my workplace has said that when Betelgeuse explodes, its cloud will eventually engulf our solar system reducing visible stars to about one third.

Has anyone else heard/read of that?

neufer wrote: ↑Wed Dec 18, 2019 8:04 pm
In this case the actual radius of this neutron star is ~1.8 times its Schwarzschild radius so perhaps ~10% of the neutron star's surface is unseen.

[jaw drop]!

orin stepanek wrote: ↑Fri Dec 20, 2019 1:15 pm I take it that the Mars calendar has 26 months? Just going by the 2616 Date!

https://www.planetary.org/explore/space ... endar.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darian_calendar

neufer wrote: ↑Thu Dec 19, 2019 4:15 pm

Here is a link about a tragedy when Kapton failed.
(this is in no way to be considered a criticism of Neufer's post)

https://hackaday.com/2018/04/04/kapton- ... c-history/

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Tue Dec 17, 2019 9:29 pm
Warning. Once seen, cannot be unseen.

Actually, I think that is a better way of looking at it.

It appears that the X-rays show M77 infested with intestinal parasites.

"Paging Dr. McCoy! Paging Dr. McCoy!"

The astronomical issue can be partly mitigated by changing the shape of surfaces on the satellites and by using materials and coatings that have low reflectivity. Or by the billionaire financier sending his security team (AKA: Bruno, Knuckles, and Tiny) to any complaining astronomers to "silen...

orin stepanek wrote: ↑Tue Dec 10, 2019 1:54 pm Well; I can still see the Orion: Luna; the Pleiades; Mars; & Venus! Oh; and the dippers!

"Before the breathing air is gone,
before the Sun, is just a bright star in the nighttime."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3gGn6t8Bog

Ann,
People who live in glass houses,
should also shower in the basement!
B^)

As I was looking at the description, I wondered "Okay, so what is the 3rd bright object in the picture?" So, as I scrolled down to click the "Discuss" button, it became quite obvious. It was a light colored speck on my monitor! B^) Happy Thanksgiving to APODders in the USA! (and ...

Note the rather ugly photographic defect near a bright blue-white foreground star seen very close to the center of UGC 1810. Those two orange "rings" to the upper right of that star mar the image, in my opinion. If you don't look too closely at that feature, it looks more like a boxing gl...

BDanielMayfield wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2019 6:23 pm

Ann wrote: ↑Thu Nov 07, 2019 3:45 pm Well, seven "planets" in the night sky - the Sun, ...

Ann

Seeing the Sun in the night sky, my oh my.

You just need to know where to look for it.
It is tougher to see when it is turned off.

Thanks Neufer,
I can always count on you
to shoot me out of the saddle!
B^)