Starship Asterisk*

Thanks Chris. Good explanation.

Rob

Okay Ann and Chris, now I’m confused (not for the first time.) I took the 30 Mly figure from the Wikipedia article on NGC 4631. (The APOD description gives 25 Mly.) Then I found the SIMBAD distance in Mpc for NGC 4627 and converted it to Mly and got the difference of 6.4 Mly compared to the 30 Mly f...

Hi Ann, You say, “ To me it looks as if NGC 4627 is about to dive right through the disk of NGC 4631. If that were to happen, it would have a tremendous effect on NGC 4631.” Yes it would, but… I was curious about how close that companion galaxy is to the whale of a galaxy. Their respective Wikipedia...

I think you have an error at UTC-4 as it says "CA". I thought the same at first. I thought CA meant California. Per wiki: "Eastern Passage is an unincorporated suburban community in Halifax Regional Municipality Nova Scotia, Canada." You think that’s confusing? I grew up in Onta...

Thank you for the explanation sir, and for the reminder of your other APODs. I particularly like the 2020 one.

Rob

... Maybe if you take the picture every year + about 12 days, you'll have consistent results. So, we could take a shot tonight, then on August 31, 2023, then September 12, 2024, etc. If you go for this approach, of course, in 30 years you'll only get 29 images. And there are just 29 images in this ...

I’m wondering why there’s just one image of Saturn labeled 2003-4, near the left of the top pic. (See attached screen grab, which is now a kinder, gentler file size.) Maybe that’s where it does its little back and forth jig in its orbit as viewed from Earth? Rob Screen Shot 2022-08-19 at 1.17.55 PM...

I’m wondering why there’s just one image of Saturn labeled 2003-4, near the left of the top pic. (See attached screen grab, which is now a kinder, gentler file size.) Maybe that’s where it does its little back and forth jig in its orbit as viewed from Earth? Rob Screen Shot 2022-08-19 at 1.17.55 PM....

This is an intriguing image. There seems to be no exterior crater wall. Perhaps this is due to the low gravity on Mimas, resulting in permanent ejection of all material which was blown out at the impact? Also, the crater has a steep, smooth wall. Is the reason, that the inside of the crater at some...

Way back in my youth, my first real job was at the Department of Highways of Ontario (Canada). Briefly I used stereo pairs of aerial photos to look at planned highway routes in 3D. The process was pretty simple and quite effective. But the photos were taken very carefully from a known height, so the...

Puzzling. If this 100 light year wide nebula is a bright star forming region but as yet no stars have formed, wouldn't that really be astronomically rare in the universe? And if there are no bright stars within 100 light years, what is causing the central region to glow blue? As the description say...

Today’s APOD has a gauzy curtain of white over it. What is that? Presumably an image artifact, but I haven’t seen it in other JWST images. Rob it was even worse in the 2 frames used for the posted image, 2.12 and 3.23 μm https://blogs.nasa.gov/webb/wp-content/uploads/sites/326/2022/07/side-by-side-...

Today’s APOD has a gauzy curtain of white over it. What is that? Presumably an image artifact, but I haven’t seen it in other JWST images.

Rob

Nice. What surprised me most is that the James Webb's images from its hexagonal mirrors still produces rectangular images with perfect 90 degree corners. Unlike my binoculars that has round lenses and it produces a round image. The explanation was for the old round camera lenses producing square im...

Would the reflectivity of the clouds fully offset the CO2 released by the ships' diesel engines? Is this just another example of perpetual motion-like wishful thinking?

Rob

To the trained eye, it's quite obvious. I've used Topaz AI for the sharpening of DSO images before and it yields the exact same results in terms of the detail on dust lanes. Just because the metadata editor says it's last been opened in PS, it doesn't mean that Topaz wasn't used. My processing rout...

I have two particularly handy towels, one in the rear bag on my bicycle and one near my tools in the car. Every once in a while they need washing, but once dry they go right back where they belong. If I ever have to hitch a ride to Tralfamadore, I’ll grab at least one of them on the way out the door...

I wasn't questioning the veracity of the image, and I understand that the ISS is in sunlight. I was trying to suggest that the wording which laboriously tried to hint at when the picture was taken was less than helpful. It would have been far simpler and clearer to simply say the series of pictures ...

I’m trying to understand when the picture was taken. The hints in the description don’t seem to gel well. “During the early morning hours” could mean early as in shortly after midnight, or early as in just before dawn, a range of about 6 hours. The total eclipse phase “had begun before moonset.” Moo...

I think the singularity named the Big Bang is more a function of the mathematics used to try to understand the early universe than a real thing. In a sense, once the math reaches a singularity it stops being descriptive, because not even math can say anything about nothing. No matter how elegant an ...

I’m very sorry to hear about Art’s passing. What will I do now with my “Art is inscrutable” pun? I’m a little worried that he was just two years older than me when he passed away, but his candle burned much brighter than mine so I’ll just console myself that my fuel will last longer—maybe. Although ...

Thanks Ann. I came here to ask why the equinox day was clearly larger than the night in this image, but including the blue hour evens it out nicely.

Rob

No pressure, but I’d love to have the dull brown interface back. The default blue is far too bright for my eyes.

Thanks for all the work you do behind the scenes!

Rob

This is a rare case of an APOD I dislike. Removing the stars leaves an image of roiling gas and dust with no apparent reason to roil! The stars give meaning to the mass of gas and dust as well as to their colour. Without the stars this is just random brush strokes. It doesn't do anything for me. Bu...

This is a rare case of an APOD I dislike. Removing the stars leaves an image of roiling gas and dust with no apparent reason to roil! The stars give meaning to the mass of gas and dust as well as to their colour. Without the stars this is just random brush strokes.

Rob