Starship Asterisk*

I was in north eastern Illinois during last September’s equinox. While I was riding the El near sunset, it occurred to me that it was the day after the equinox, and Chicago’s streets are laid out NS and EW, and sure enough, I got to see Chicagohenge. The only place I’ve ever lived with a NS-EW grid ...

NGC 2023 is surprisingly dim, and Alnitak is missing completely. I suppose a reflection nebula would be largely suppressed in a narrowband photo, but what accounts for Alnitak’s absence, especially since there are other stars in the photo, notably Sigma Orionis?

My first thought was, That’s too big to be a prominence!

I was never able to picture a face in the Moon until I saw it explained in detail in a book, meticulously matching lunar maria to facial features. And now, in the years since I read that book, I just can't see the face any more. Higher contrast plus lower resolution helps: https://upload.wikimedia....

The colors are determined by spectral index, so I tried finding out what a spectral index is. My brain started hurting immediately.

I was never able to picture a face in the Moon until I saw it explained in detail in a book, meticulously matching lunar maria to facial features. And now, in the years since I read that book, I just can't see the face any more. Higher contrast plus lower resolution helps: https://upload.wikimedia....

I was never able to picture a face in the Moon until I saw it explained in detail in a book, meticulously matching lunar maria to facial features. And now, in the years since I read that book, I just can't see the face any more.

I see a dancer mooning the Moon.

neufer wrote: ↑Mon Dec 06, 2021 5:35 pm

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

Even in outer space, photographs of crypto-objects are grainy and indistinct.

Oh, for goodness sake! May we - and this astronomy website - please stop using terms such as "Blood Moon". As shown, APoD is perfectly capable of describing the colours of an eclipsed Moon, without pandering to zombie and vampire fantasists. Nice pic, by the way! John I made an account to...

This image really shows just how diaphanous galaxies are.

orin stepanek wrote: ↑Sun Oct 24, 2021 11:47 am Always curious how Halloween; All Saints; and All Souls day followed
each other on the calendar!

It’s not a coincidence. It’s the ancient Celtic harvest festival of Samhain that was adapted by the Catholic Church for the purpose of honoring the dead.

I’m impressed that they used a realistic color for the Sun and showed Venus with its clouds.

During 40 minutes of looking up last night, I saw one (1) meteor. It had a Perseid trajectory. The sky was really turbid; so much so that I could barely make out the Pleiades as an indistinct fuzzy blob. I drove out to a dark lookout point, because the new neighborhood streetlights are so bright tha...

I envy Rolf, being able to use an unshrouded truss Dob. I can’t get away from city lights.

Those tree branches against the sky look like cracks in the fabric of spacetime.

Nowhere in the description does it say that the photograph was taken in mid-May. Are we reading the same description? It’s right in the middle of the text guys... “What's happening behind Uluru? A United Nations World Heritage Site, Uluru is an extraordinary 350-meter high mountain in central Austr...

hypatia wrote: ↑Tue May 11, 2021 7:40 pm Mid May? What year?

Nowhere in the description does it say that the photograph was taken in mid-May.

In images of the complete Veil Nebula, even studious readers might not be able to identify the featured filaments. Okay, that sounds like a veiled challenge to locate today's APOD in the APOD from 2019-10-31 (https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap191031.html). Capture.png And it does seem rather challenging...

APOD Robot wrote: ↑Mon Apr 05, 2021 4:06 am In images of the complete Veil Nebula, even studious readers might not be able to identify the featured filaments.

I’m guessing the Witch’s Broom.

Ingenuity has a weight of 1.8 kilograms or 4 pounds on Earth. That corresponds to a weight of 0.68 kilograms or 1.5 pounds on Mars . On Mars, Ingenuity will have a mass of 1.8 kilograms. Even your links make that clear. I don’t know that “weight in kilograms” has any meaning outside our informal us...

Forgive me for being so imprecise here. I'm not much into black holes That's alright, Ann. None of us here are into black holes. If we were, there'd be no way to communicate with any of you outside the hole! Touché. By the way, this is just my thoughts that aren't based on any science article, but ...

I haven’t seen Geck a lot here lately, but I am noticing her images around the Web.

I try to guess what I’m looking at before I read the title and description. For this one, I thought this looks like the Lagoon Nebula, but there are too many stars and not enough nebula. Then when I saw “infrared,” it became clear.

I’ve never seen a Venera image with that much sky visible.