Starship Asterisk*

The Moon clearly shows us its best side! Its "softer" side too, which the early Earth kept warm… (while the other side was left in the cold, forced to grow a thicker crust)

Just in case this question was missed earlier (and if it wasn't but just inspired no comments, that's fine!) - are Wolf-Rayet stars the brightest of stars intrinsincally? Supposedly THE brightest star currently known is a Wolf-Rayet (R136a 1), but is it also the case with any Wolf-Rayet compared to ...

OK, so I ask: Why 85% of high mass stars are part of binary systems? One answer probably has to do with the formation process of high-mass stars. https://media2.spaceref.com/news/2013/oodualbinary.jpg Spaceref.com wrote: Thanks Ann. I have hard time understanding what are the possible causes for a ...

If you compare a Wolf-Rayet with an LBV of the exact same mass (leaving aside ejectae), which one would be most luminous? Would it be the WR by virtue of the burning core being more exposed so to speak, or could it be either one depending on various other factors?

Wolf-Rayet stars are so tumultuous and fiery, even when they look this adorable!

Thanks for this most interesting link! I wonder if another consideration that might support the idea of stars vanishing into back holes is that of supernovae (type II) as rebounds - what's there to rebound against when a star collapses into a black hole? (might the two even be related - no rebound,...

Thanks for this most interesting link! I wonder if another consideration that might support the idea of stars vanishing into back holes is that of supernovae (type II) as rebounds - what's there to rebound against when a star collapses into a black hole? (might the two even be related - no rebound, ...

First a total eclipse, then a historic sunspot leading to nearly global auroras, and now yet more! The Sun gives quite a show these days! The spaceweather link in the caption of the APOD shows this image of the same flare with the following comment from its author : "I have not seen an explosio...

I'm fascinated by the contrast between the two Galilean neighbours Io and Europa, one intensely volcanic with fountains and lakes of lava, the other frozen solid!
edit: I was responding to a post which now seems to have disappeared.

Euclid images have a soft dreamy feel!

Amazing aurora arch, amazingly not too far from overlapping the Milky Way arch!

Sparkling image! And here's another stellar "3" in the same orientation! (off the tip of Canis Major's nose) (from Stellarium)

Are red dwarfs particularly rich in sunspots, and is that why they are so active? They are more than rich I think, instead of flares occurring as local phenomena as on the surface of the Sun, with some M dwarfs it's the entire star that flares! I remember a funny excerpt from James Kaler's Extreme ...

...and by the way. The Horsehead Nebula is a Trojan horse with a snake inside, as you can see. :roll: To me the entire Horsehead itself is vaguely reminiscent of a snake! Had it been called the Cobra Head Nebula at first, the name might have caught on! (and that is YET another great image from you ...

On the topic of visualizations, Jean-Pierre Luminet is a French astrophysicist who made this image of a black hole 45 YEARS AGO! The first one ever apparently. Using maths, and a 1970’s computer… He’s still alive and still studying black holes today, he deserves a mention on this black hole week! (I...

I thought that a visualization such as this one only shows the theoretical anatomy of a black hole, but if we sent actual observers all around the black hole and asked them what they saw, they would all report the same thing! No matter where you stand around a black hole, it will eerily appear as fa...

Is a black hole the brightest thing in the Universe because it keeps its light? In a black hole, things go to infinity, things go to zero, things go we know not. What does light do? Is there a limit to the number of possible photons, or is brightness theoretically infinite? Photons are just packets...

From the link posted just above: "You can roughly think of a black hole as a star that traps all of its light" . I like the " its " light. We normally read that "even light" can't escape a black hole, but saying "its" own light makes me wonder further. For in...

From the link posted just above: "You can roughly think of a black hole as a star that traps all of its light" . I like the " its " light. We normally read that "even light" can't escape a black hole, but saying "its" own light makes me wonder further. For ins...

Black holes are often depicted as devouring cosmic cannibals that destroy everything, even equations! In my book however they are of an all-mighty beauty. Black holes are the ultimate objets, the ultimate manifestation of gravity, the ultimate evolution of stars (leaving aside galactic ones), we cal...

Roy wrote: ↑Mon May 06, 2024 11:40 am Superb. Magnificent. Appropriate music, never heard it before.

The caption credits some guy named Strauss for the music but due credit might belong to someone else.
Who knows, maybe a total eclipse seen sideways looks like this:

If a black hole is, indeed, a singularity, then by definition it has zero volume. No matter what its mass. As we have no physics at this point that can describe the details of the actual black hole, though... who knows? I appreciate your answer! I imagine mathematicians being comfortable with singu...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_240505.jpg A Black Hole Disrupts a Passing Star If the star directly impacts a massive black hole, then the star falls in completely -- and everything vanishes . I suppose the "everything vanishes" part is a manner of speaking. Everything falls out of...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_240505.jpg A Black Hole Disrupts a Passing Star If the star directly impacts a massive black hole, then the star falls in completely -- and everything vanishes . I suppose the "everything vanishes" part is a manner of speaking. Everything falls out of...

DJE44 wrote: ↑Thu May 02, 2024 4:53 am I am blessed with Bortle 2 skies in Northern Arizona.

And we're blessed with the fruits of your hard work! Beautiful image...