Starship Asterisk*

Does anyone know which part of the earth are we seeing in that sunlit crescent?? Or which side is north? If I may offer an unscientific guess we should consider the calendar date. Apollo 17 lunar lander took off from the surface of the Moon on December 14. Then the command module rocketed to Earth ...

Looking at Stellarium for May 4th 2022, You can see that the constellation Pisces is to the left of Venus and Jupiter. Pegasus is next to Pisces. Also noticed that in between Mars and Saturn is the constellation Aquarius. Probably explains why songs back in 1969 wrote about the dawning of the age of...

That's an impressive photograph and I compliment the photograph-ee for posing so still and un-moving for the entire 3 day length. Although I presume they only had to pose for 8 to 10 hours at night in the darkness. What puzzles me though is because the Earth spins why are the stars not blurred over ...

The explanation leaves me a little confused. The white arrow is pointing to Shackleton's Crater and says that its diameter is 21 kilometers? Yet the scale at the bottom says 100 meters and anybody can tell that the 100 meters scale looks far huger than the 21 kilometer diameter crater! Why even if y...

Why do you call this "Astronomy Picture Of the Day"? Well as I see it, yesterday was 'Earth Day'. You were supposed to celebrate being on the Earth yesterday. Apparently the executive in charge of choosing the pictures of the day must have forgotten. Too late. He or she slapped their fore...

There looks like on April 8th in Niagara Falls that there will be a really cool time to have a Newlywed Honeymoon. "Oh baby, I love you soo much that I can make the Sun stop shinning and cause the stars to come out in the day time for you!" I wonder if the park commission will turn the rai...

I'm trying to wrap my head around of how the 300.000 ly tidal tail was formed. The description says that likely gravitational forces from its two neighbors in the Leo Triplet created it. Yet looking athe the Leo Triplet link we see that NGC 3628 is perpendicular to the two others and they are below ...

If this globular cluster, pictured, is considered 'mostly stealthy', I can't wait for you to show me a globular cluster that is considered a 'big showoff.'

Ahh! Thanks Ann and Dylan for the outline. I was wondering why it looks like a running chicken. Apparently the head of the chicken has been cut off from the main nebula body. At first I thought the head was at the bottom right and the head with the bright star for eyes looked more like a vulture's o...

Speaking of mistakes in the description (possible mistake?) it says that M100 is 56 million light-years from Coma Berenices. I would rather like to know how far M100 is away from the Solar System? Wiki says that the nearest star in Coma Berenices is some 27 ly away. Would that mean that M100 is 56 m...

This is a coincidence. Although no where near as bright or severe, I get the occasional blue flash like that out of my propane fork lift. I guess it needs a tune-up. It burns gaseous propane. (But I guess that is cryogenic as well because if you don't tighten the connecting hose line properly the le...

Wow I have never seen such a clear picture of Olympus Mons. This raises a question. I can see that it would be easy to climb the slopes starting at 12 to 1 o'clock, and then again at 3 to 4 o'clock but what about between 7 to 10 o'clock. There seems to be shear vertical cliffs maybe more than a thou...

It is amazing that happens when conditions are right. I suppose it would be EVEN more amazing, even astounding if the green flash happens when conditions are wrong.

That makes sense. We know a star's distance away when they change their brightness. Just like when you are out driving at night on a highway and an oncoming car with low beams suddenly flashes their high beams at you. You can then assume that car now is much closer to you since high beams are a sudd...

It's amazing how a nebula called the Soul actually looks like a dog or a baby or a little man. If I may add my impression, the left half looks like the body of a running bison in the Old West. Even has the high hump on the back near the shoulder of a bison or buffalo. But yet the face looks like a b...

"astronomers have also identified what appear to be numerous infant solar systems." I am curious. By definition the solar system are 8 planets and other objects such as asteroids and comets that are orbiting the Sun also called Sol. So how can our Sun produce numerous infant solar systems ...

"The Large Magellanic Cloud lies only about 180,000 light-years distant." This is a "What if" exercise to ponder. What if this wasn't the Milky Way, but the Andromeda Galaxy in this place and the LMC would still be the same distance away. Since the Andromeda's radius is 110,000 l...

This kind of reminds me of an old folk song circa ? 1950s called "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." Except for one slight difference. The daughter in the photo has literally "She's got TWO WHOLE WORLDS in Her Hands! Two whole worlds in her hands ..."

I think I remember reading some time ago that the dark half is on the leading side of the satellite in its orbit. So it's most likely material shed off from a darker moon.

You could if you like call Jupiter an evening star this week. But Venus is also out and so we have TWO evening stars this week. They are actually getting closer the next few days, and in the night of the 28th or March 1st, (I am not sure which night it is) they are practically going to touch! Then t...

How can you forget this sweet little poem that started all your little careers in astronomy. Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star By Jane Taylor Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are! Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky. When the blazing sun is gone, When he nothing shi...

After my mind marveled over seeing the clouds, another thought made me think; What kind of building is that? It reminds me it could look like a train or bus depot, with the trains pulling in on the other side of the long wall. But then the huge parking lot in the middle of the day with not a single ...

The long thin crack(?) near the edge on the upper left, from about the 11 o'clock position running down towards the 9 o'clock position looks peculiar, almost a perfect line from our perspective. I'm assuming a sub-ice slush be more likely than a liquid ocean, possibly dragged about tidally by Satur...

Speaking of astronomers ignoring the 1970s, I'd be more interested to see where NGC 1976 is? It is the year I graduated from high school, and it was also a bicentennial year in the USA. What is the reason that 1975 and 1977 got a reflection nebulae but why was 1976 ignored?

Something to think about. The interior which is only half a light year across is the most isolated place in the universe? Even more isolated than the intergalactic space between two galaxies that are far apart? Even though the gas must be thick in the center in order to block background light from s...