Starship Asterisk*

Typically it would gain mass from a companion star.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova#Normal_Type_Ia

Talk about a bad day in the neighborhood!

It's now Sept 5 and today's APOD isn't up. I hope everyone's ok.

For decades too much thought and effort was made to prevent fires, leaving a century's worth of fuel on the forest floor. That fuel should have been disposed of in more frequent, small fires. And of course global warming with the hotter, drier summers in the west, is involved. We must work on that o...

Just to let you know, the "Tomorrow's APOD" link from yesterday doesn't work. Fortunately there are alternate routes to get here from there.

Great picture! I can see how it could win that contest.

I enjoyed it. And there's information there, maybe not on a deep level. Or maybe we're not deep enough to see whatever's there on a deep level.

"Mythology"; an interesting word. I guess it gets used when the subscribers to the religion-become-mythology are few enough or civilized enough to not react wildly. I can't imagine getting away with a public reference to "Christian mythology" or "Muslim mythology". Mayb...

Does it rotate 'in one piece' rather than as a swarm of stellar bees? John The stars orbit the center of mass, with no doubt a lot of perturbations. Apparently there's still enough room between stars (a light week is still a long way) that they don't collide very often. So from a distance it may se...

Danilo wrote:I just spotted this white thingy and I'm wondering what it may be

It's clearly a tooth.

10% of the speed of light is an immense speed for anything with mass, which ionized air certainly has. And it would take a LOT of force to accelerate that air to that speed that fast. If that kind of force is generated in our upper atmosphere over thunderstorms, that sounds like a dangerous place to...

An enigma wrapped in sand.

John had you looked a little closer you'd have seen our comments came in at virtually the same time. While yours went up I was hitting "Submit". What's your problem?

Clicking "Diuscuss" takes me to yesterday's discussion.

Nice APOD.

Two housekeeping comments: 1. The link at the top that should take us to the APOD just keeps us here. 2. A day or two ago I posted the APOD permalink to Facebook because I liked it especially and there the preview had a small version of the picture. I did it today and only got the URL. It would be n...

It's interesting that we think of red as a hot color and blue a cool color when the opposite is more true. But not in our physical experience.

And it's great how our scientists can use the whole spectrum to learn SO Much about the universe around us.

Well, inside the book they wore no clothes. For they cover they covered.

The movie was sartorially inaccurate. As every reader of those books knew, the characters wore no clothes. (For a kick Google images of Dejah Thoris.)

And Burroughs was right! To this day there are no clothed Martians.

Ok, third time I kept an eye on the legend, lower right. It was the parachute shadow, the waves were a heated air effect and it was a "simulated area". Which still leaves some of my questions.

1. I presume the shadow soon after landing was the parachute. Did they have a method to insure it wouldn't drape over the lander? 2. There was a momentary wavy effect; I'm assuming that was real and not a result of processing. ? 3. Apparently this was put together from the 350 pictures received from...

It's a fine looking galaxy and its residents should be proud of it. Of course a lot of its residents surely don't realize it's a particularly fine looking galaxy, or even that it's a galaxy. And there doesn't seem to be anything to do about that. .

Very cool picture. Well done!

This is a great APOD. Again.

Thanks rstevenson. I think I read the first of those long ago. I'll look into them.

I was thinking of buying real estate on Mars (not me buying it, but whomever might buy it). Clearly the prospect of moon parts falling on one's estate would eventually depress the market (hurtling moons are one thing, descending moons another). I see Phobos's orbit is within about 1 degree of Mars's...