Starship Asterisk*

Alright, I'll ask: why aren't the two "diamonds" on the same line through the center of the eclipse? The centers of the Sun and Moon are coincident at totality, so why aren't the two diamond colinear with the center? The centers of the two bodies are only coincident at mid-totality if you...

But I suppose even if there are only two bodies in a system, like, say, the Sun and Jupiter, the Sun may - and will - change mass over time through its evolution along the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram due to changes in its nuclear fusion processes. So I'd think that could also eventually perturb Jup...

I wonder what makes the comet get too close to the Sun ? I'd imagine gravity pull .. but then, how long it must have taken that comet to reach that stage (i mean how many times it must have made rounds around Sun and how many years it must have been doing it before finally getting too close and get...

I wonder what makes the comet get too close to the Sun ? I'd imagine gravity pull .. but then, how long it must have taken that comet to reach that stage (i mean how many times it must have made rounds around Sun and how many years it must have been doing it before finally getting too close and get...

Superb image, particularly the corona which extends further than in many other images. That's right. But you should always be aware of the spatial conditions. It looks like the corona extends almost to Mercury. In reality, Mercury's orbit is still quite far away... https://live.staticflickr.com/655...

florid_snow wrote: ↑Wed Apr 17, 2024 3:10 pm You missed the "Of these" reference at the start of the sentence. I think the writer was just trying to point out that the comets and Mercury were not visible to the unaided eye. But yes, Jupiter was bright! It must be just out of frame in this image.

Ah. Quite.

Also visible in the image is the sprawling corona of our Sun and the planets Mercury (left) and Venus (right). Of these planets and comets, only Venus was easily visible to millions of people in the dark shadow of the Moon that crossed North America on April 8. Huh? Jupiter was absolutely brilliant...

Does anyone know of a way to display powerpoint slides from the Classroom directly on web pages, without having to download the entire PPT file Candy Crush ? I don't think you can. There are online PPT viewers if you don't have PowerPoint that let you view the slides in a browser, and you can use t...

"shows, unexpectedly, that this red-glowing dust is associated with hot plasma." Is it unexpected because there is plasma inside stars, but this is plasma dust in between stars, as if chunks of plasma were blown out of stars? Plasma is just highly ionized gas. That is, a mix of neutral at...

I can see that the mixture of red and blue light in the sky under certain circumstances will make parts of even in the cloudless dawn or dusk sky look purple (because the atmosphere itself will reflect light and provide some mixing of the colors). I know I have seen clouds reflecting the dawn or du...

<r><QUOTE author="johnnydeep" post_id="338347" time="1713128783" user_id="132061"><s>[quote=johnnydeep post_id=338347 time=1713128783 user_id=132061]</s> <QUOTE author="Guest" post_id="338345" time="1713121809"><s>[quote=Guest post_id=338345 time=1713121809]</s> <QUOTE author="Chris Peterson" post_i...

I had seen several partials but never a total eclipse. I brought cameras along but after about 20 seconds I decided that I wasn't going to live this experience through the lens. There are countless other photographers more able than I to document this. I needed to see this in person and more import...

Once again, the digital sensors just plain maxed out as the sun re-emerged, while in person, the reappearance of the bright disk of the sun, while causing a person to avert their eyes from the brightness, was accompanied by a spotlight shaft of light shooting down from the sky into the circle of da...

Interest - thanks. At times I've often wondered - briefly - why a PNG format file is so much larger than a JPEG and now I know! Never took an interest in the particular formats used in the APODs though. I guess my connection speed is fast enough. 😊 PNG is also the default format that the MS Snippin...

Hello! Today's APOD image is considerably larger in file size than it needs to be, as it's been saved using the PNG format. It should likely be using JPEG instead. I am referring to the image at this path: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2404/pinholepalm1024.png I have confirmed I can download the...

Very nice. So, that would mean that the total time represented in the APOD is about 4.5 minutes, which I believe is - probably - the length of totality here? But are Bailey Beads considered part of totality? Also, I'm confused about the time order of the frames shown in the APOD. They certainly are...

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.) _ prom_stack.gif Indeed, that's kind of fun, Chris. I must admit that the hydrogen alpha-bright lower right limb turns i...

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.) _ prom_stack.gif Very nice. So, that would mean that the total time represented in the APOD is about 4.5 minutes, which ...

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.)
_

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...