Starship Asterisk*

Thanks for the heads-up, Dr. Nemiroff! I think I shall try to audit this course in my free time. Will I have troubles accessing lectures if I don't keep relatively close to your schedule of new releases?

I learned the visible-eye night sky with HA Rey's wonderful books. I called it "The Andromeda Nebula" for many months before I picked up on the new information. :) Interestingly enough, I was also curious about trying to make further investigations with "field glasses" before I f...

Thanks, Fred. A very nice explanation. I missed the hint in the last link in the caption text, but I concur that it must reference our nearly 2x in 55 day phenomenon. The moon should move Eastward referenced to the background Gamma Ray sources, but there are conceivable explanations for why the imag...

I, too, am curious about what that object is.

~Neal

You can track the earth-orbiting satelites (enter your latitude and longitude) over on http://www.heavens-above.com . That should tell you whether this is a geosynchronous orbiter or not.

~Neal

Today's (2/2/05) points to tomorrow (2/3/05).

Also, in today's text, the word linking to this page: http://www.aip.org/history/electron/ is "elections" not "electrons."

~Neal

The > link below the 31 Jan 05 takes the reader back to the 26 Jan 05 APOD as opposed to the 1 Feb 05.

~Neal

Buy more hard drives! Lots and lots and lots and lots of 'em!!

~Biased Neal

Is it not the irregular dwarf galaxy UGC 11583?

~Neal

That *is* a beaut! Great shot! I wouldn't be surprised to see that one make it to the front-page.

~Neal

Heh. I spent most of yesterday researching the various online places for the Voynich Manuscript (I'm sure all the links Dr. Nemiroff's description access will already appear visisted on my browser!), and probably the best one I came acrossed was actually (and I doubt fellow webnerds would be surpris...

Ayi, that's fantastic! I really enjoyed that article on the dating of the original marathon. And Dr. Nemiroff, I think this is a fantastic discussion topic. I've always been intrigued by the Voynich Manuscript, yet never could identify what I thought was the logical conclusion. I'm interested to see...

If they weren't seen until Mohammed went to the Mountain (so to speak) in '79, I'd guess that they're going to be pretty tough to see with earth-bound technology for quite a few more years into the future...

~Neal

The obvious first appeal of the APOD site is the picture - but I believe the real value is the hyperlink text. I very much appreciate the time that the APOD authors put into the text. The hyperlinks have taken me to some wonderful side trips that are fascinating, beautiful, intriguing and many time...

Just got December's Alumnus magazine and I'm blown away by Adam Johnson's (Tech '98 ) photo atop the Quincy mineshaft from last July.



Available for purchase in print form here: http://www.brockit.com/

Name those constellations!

~Neal

No. That APOD only shows an image of the comet, not the path it will be taking through the solar system. About the closest example of what I seek is http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/cfa/ps/plot/1996B2.gif Respectfully, I didn't just link to the APOD, but to a page with the prominent title near the top: &...

After seeing what the last couple of links on the APOD have done to The Asterisk, I hereby unsuggest my code additions, above.

~Neal

This page was referenced in 13 December 2004's APOD: Announcing Comet Machholz. Is that not what you're after?

~Neal

APOD under comment . Could the question of where the craters are, be addressed by the link to the APOD from last August ? Is it possible that a thick atmosphere (and a nearby large gravity well) does an effective job in diverting/burning up potential impactors? I know, I know, growing organic bioma...

Thanks, Dr. Nemiroff. I understood the different goals of the projects (I was unaware of the longterm NSL goals, however), but thought the STARE dataset could be "unintentionally" useful to your own efforts, say correlation of magnitudes (or any other multitude of things I hadn't considere...

Not sure if I'm placing this in the right forum or not, please feel free to move as appropriate. I sat through Dr. Tim Brown's presentation on the Transient Method for detecting Extra-Solar planets during last night's Longmont Astronomical Society meeting last night (a reference to this work can be ...

FWIW, Dr. Nemiroff, I really like the style you employ in writing the blurbs. /buttkisser

~Neal

HA Rey describes the motion of the stars as such: Imagine the portion of the sphere of stars is painted inside an umbrella. The stars rotation through the sky as if the umbrella is pointed directly at the North (or south) celestial pole (us North Americans would imagine this huge umbrella is pointed...

The Big Bang is not an explosion in the conventional sense. There is no "center" from which we're all expanding. In fact, every point is expanding away from every other point (on the cosmic scale, Mr. Newton and the little theory I like to call gravity will show us that objects with mass a...

source If astronomers made the Hubble Ultra Deep Field observation over the entire sky, how long would it take? The whole sky contains 12.7 million times more area than the Ultra Deep Field. To observe the entire sky would take almost 1 million years of uninterrupted observing. How wide is the Ultr...