Starship Asterisk*

I never realized it was so dusty in that direction.
Which makes me wonder how far away the Galactic north is from our own Earths geographic North?
I always kinda assumed that in the direction of Galactic north and south the number of stars and dust would diminish significantly.

And then there was this: http://www.sci-news.com/astronomy/science-type-ia-supernovae-02688.html It may well be that Type Ia supernovae do not all have the same brightness. In which case the expansion rate of the universe may be far less then previously thought. Science! She is a fickle mistress.

Who stole my red-green glasses? Can't find them.

We are viewing a galaxy that is 13 million light years away, in other words the image is 13 million years old. My question, what exists of the galaxy today? Shouldn't our remarks on it's appearance be in past tense, and our observations reflect the time differential? For instance, just how accurate...

Is it me, or is this galaxy slightly distorted?
It's like the tips are curving upward on the right and downward on the left. It is slightly easier to see on a negative, but still very faint.

If so, is there another galaxy nearby causing this?

not quite ready to let go just yet. I saw a vid of an SR71 buzzing a famous Calivfornia airbase and then they showed the airplane go a max speed simply by speeding up the video. I was wondefring if the same could be done to speed the sr to 30000 mph and if the human senses could see that ? It's not...

hoohaw wrote:The resemblance can't be coincidental --- it is clear that there are interstellar tree branches!

Yggdrasil.

Very nice image. Always loved the shuttle. I had the good fortune to be at KSC for the last launch of the Endeavor, although I was under the clouds. If you would like to see what it was like when Endeavor pierced through the veil of thick clouds from below check out the series of images I took. The...

The above image was taken from a shuttle training aircraft by NASA and is not copyrighted. ok... who or what shot? // ok... quién o qué disparó? With most launches from Cape Canaveral there are several air planes around monitoring the launch. Especially in cases like this, with a closed cloud cover...

What is the elevation of the cloud deck? I notice a trajectory change after exiting the cloud deck. Wind speed above and below? Not sure, maybe the early stages of a roll maneuver. But keep in mind that most of the fuel spend by a Space Shuttle is for the horizontal speed needed to obtain orbit. Th...

Boomer12k wrote:Great image....
Bit expensive for a Sundial....
:---(===) *

Not a sundial. Somebody ate too much Taco Bell.

I am guessing the authors included the '40 light year' measurement to give an indication of the size of the cloud complex. A measurements in degrees of arc would give an indication of apparent size in the skies. Sorry...but I am too tired to do the math right now.

FYI: Part of the center of this image, shot in infrared, was an earlier (and rather spectacular) APOD:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap141201.html

"Dark and dusty, painted on the sky
Misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye"

From "Country Road" by John Denver.

There are simulations of what will happen when our own Milky Way will collide with Andromeda. For instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q0Hkea8bXU For non-professionals I'd recommend the Universe Sandbox simulator. You can play around with all kinds of things, including galactic mergers. http:/...

Black holes merging. Not something you see every day. They happen pretty often. Every day, in fact. Estimates are from one to a hundred every million years for a Milky Way size galaxy. When Advanced LIGO comes on line, the nominal estimate for detections is 40 per year. That's news to me. I thought...

When Advanced LIGO comes on line, the nominal estimate for detections is 40 per year. Gravitational waves remain elusive though. As tricky as it is, the existing detectors should have found something by now. What if even aLIGO can't detect gravitational waves? That's going to cause a few headaches.

Some more coolness around black holes merging.... Black Hole Merger Simulation showing magnetic fields and gravitational waves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVds0q0y5RM Gravitational Lensing, including Black Hole merger video: http://www.black-holes.org/the-science-numerical-relativity/numerical-...

Can any of our celestial physicists post the mechanics of two black holes colliding/merging? I would think the density of the objects would make it prohibitive? Einstein's theory of General Relativity predicts that gravitational waves caused by the interaction of these two black holes will graduall...

I was wondering about the light colored stuff on the left side of the image. It looks like snow on the surface but I don't think that is possible. Snow flakes grow as six pointed ice crystals from moisture in the atmosphere, but that cannot be the case here. Is this some form of ice pellet or ice f...

Markus Schwarz wrote:The drawing by Escherr reminds of a talk from one member of the Rosetta team. Since the comet is irregular shaped defining an equator etc. is non-trivial. Here is a map of the comet they came up with.

Anybody up for a game of Risk?

That cliff may be massive...but it weighs little in that low gravity. I seem to recall a number of ~1/10000 of Earths surface gravity.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apparent_m ... al_objects on Sedna at aphelion our Sun has an Apparent Magnitude of -11.2, far brighter then Venus at ~-4. And that is at 936 AU. So, yeah...lotsa stars in the day sky.

Can you imagine what the sky would be like on a (yeah I know, non-existent) planet in there?
Hundreds of those stars must be bright enough to be seen even during a nice sunny day.

Chris Peterson wrote:And yet, it's still almost entirely composed of empty space. You could zip back and forth through there in your ultrafast starship, thousands of times, and never come close to hitting a star.

I could, and I would, except for that FTL starship thingie. Minor hiccup there. I'll get right on that.