Starship Asterisk*

This is kind of fun, an animated version of what we see in today's APOD. Frames are 30 seconds apart. (Might have to click on it to see the animation... depends on your browser.)
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When I zoom in the APOD I do see the "pink" as intense red indeed; could the impression (shared by many it seems) of having seen pink instead simply come from a residual fraction of white light blending in with the deep red? Consider this image, which is exposed for the prominences, not t...

Christian G. wrote: ↑Fri Apr 12, 2024 4:23 pm

wilddouglascounty wrote: ↑Fri Apr 12, 2024 1:20 pm a fool's task, and falls short in the same way as, for instance, trying to describe a symphony to a mostly deaf person

I wonder what Beethoven would say about that!

Well, he didn't start out deaf. I'm sure he could "hear" the symphony simply by reading the score.

This is a fascinating discussion with so many things to consider ("consider" etymology, by the way, alludes to "looking toward the stars" con+sidere)! Perception emerges from the interaction between two or more objects, and as such is completely objective at its core and yet sub...

When I zoom in the APOD I do see the "pink" as intense red indeed; could the impression (shared by many it seems) of having seen pink instead simply come from a residual fraction of white light blending in with the deep red? Consider this image, which is exposed for the prominences, not t...

I saw this eclipse and the bright pink prominences were stunning, and it got me reading about H alpha emission. And after some reading, I feel betrayed by every "H alpha" filtered photo of the sun I have seen. Because the prominences appeared obviously PINK to human eyes, doesn't that mea...

This conversation about digital processing and imagery differences shrinking or enlarging high contrast components of an image brings to mind my experience of the eclipse only a few miles away from where this photo was taken. The eye, occipital lobe visual processing part of the brain and other pro...

What's the time separation of the photos here: 30 - 40 seconds or so? Also, there's the slightest hint of a pink prominence at 6 o'clock. Why can't we see more of it? I'd say 20 minutes between each image. The prominences are washed out by the corona close to the Sun. To capture both them and the c...

abgbpb00 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 11, 2024 1:59 pm I'm interested if anyone captured a picture of the Pons-Brooks comet during the eclipse?

I had a camera set up covering the area, but don't see it in the images. I also looked for it with binoculars at totality and didn't see it visually.

This conversation about digital processing and imagery differences shrinking or enlarging high contrast components of an image brings to mind my experience of the eclipse only a few miles away from where this photo was taken. The eye, occipital lobe visual processing part of the brain and other pro...

Or if they're just into shadow, they may still pick up the red light reflected from clouds even further west. Or they may be in shadow, in which case they are likely to look blue (which some people see as purple) because they are reflecting blue sky. Chris, I don't understand to which shadow you ar...

I think that if you see a color photo whose color balance seems surprising, chances are that it is the picture that is different, not the natural phenomenon that has taken on a strange hue. Very true... but possibly excepting flowers! The color of the petals of pink/red/blue/purple flowers is creat...

Peter, you wrote about the purple color of the upper sky. As I said, I have never observed purple color in the sky, except on those rare occasions when pink clouds at sunset or sunrise momentarily seem to take on a purplish-pink hue. Otherwise, I've never seen it. Ann, thanks for putting me in the ...

So, I'm too late to get either solar glasses or other eclipse viewing paraphernalia (I'm only in a 95% totality band anyway), but if I was interested in getting something to use with binoculars in the future, what's the best choice? I know there are specialty "solar-only" binoculars with ...

The dark spot is too small. At the time of the eclipse, the angular distance between Venus and Jupiter was about 45 degrees. I enlarged the photo on my screen until the distance was 45 centimeters. At that scale the sun/moon disk should be half a centimeter in diameter (5 millimeters), but the dark...

What does " scientific consensus " mean? The universe was thought to be 13 billion years old based on the dubious quality of the General Theory of Relativity equations. Ignoring that this is a far-reaching extrapolation of equations that have a questionable relationship to reality, in a s...

The red/pink is H-alpha. Is that to say that upon seeing the red/pink during totality, we are seeing with our own eyes the actual H-alpha colours of distant pink/red nebulae? The Sun is made of hot hydrogen. That hydrogen is emitting the same red light we see in emission nebulas. But where its gas ...

It is hardly a guess. It is scientific consensus, and therefore what most people should consider the likely answer. What does " scientific consensus " mean? The universe was thought to be 13 billion years old based on the dubious quality of the General Theory of Relativity equations. Igno...

The CMB is the edge of the observable universe, not the the entire universe. I doubt this is the case. There is no evidence that microwave background radiation was produced 13 billion years ago, when the universe was allegedly forming. These are guesses. In my opinion, microwave background radiatio...

Thanks. Are these "greater than total Solar eclipses" less common than annular ones? I don't know. I guess you'd have to look at all the average distances involved (Earth to Sun, Earth to Moon) and figure out whether the angular size of the Moon- on average- is larger or smaller than the ...

Another question about the upcoming eclipse. I know a big deal is made of how the remarkably coincidental almost exact same apparent size of the Moon and Sun allows for viewing the Sun's entire corona at once and provides the best opportunity for science to study it, but wouldn't any total eclipse ...

Another question about the upcoming eclipse. I know a big deal is made of how the remarkably coincidental almost exact same apparent size of the Moon and Sun allows for viewing the Sun's entire corona at once and provides the best opportunity for science to study it, but wouldn't any total eclipse ...

I suppose the Sun has no meaningfully permanent longitude map that would allow these two coronal un-wrappings to be matched up. Which makes sense since the Sun is just a ball of plasma! But I gather that the rotational north-south pole line should remain the same long term. Or does it? I know the r...

Can ths be done with a coronagraph image over time, so as to highlight changes in direction and latitude of emissions? To some extent, but no ground-based coronagraph can approach the dynamic range accessible during an eclipse. One tricky point is that what we're seeing here is transient. The Sun i...

Yes, Pons-Brooks is a nice comet! :D https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2404/12P_Pons_Brooks_2024_03_30_JuneLake_DEBartlett1024.jpg APOD 4 April 2024 annotated.png I still find it very interesting that Pons-Brooks is so "gassy", even though it has (or so I think) visited the vicinity of the...