Starship Asterisk*

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/13/the-death-toll-would-be-enormous-fauci-says-of-herd-immunity-to-coronavirus-in-the-us.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/14/health/us-coronavirus-friday/index.html Who Knows? Dr. Fauci has factual, solid, historical data about exactly how diseases spread and the effect...

Interesting geometry here. We’re seeing an unlit side of ISS in front of a sunlit part of the Moon. ISS must have been inside the Earth’s shadow at the time.

I wish we had somethinng better than GAIA to gauge a star's distance from us. Say some way to imply a star's angle diameter from weak blinking caused by interstellar gas fluctuations or rogue planetoids nanolensing The main reason why Gaia can't measure the distance to Betelgeuse is that Betelgeuse...

Thanks for pointing this ambiguity out Art. We've heard since our youth that the Milky Way contains "about 100 billion stars", but with advances in telescopes we've learned that the true number is likely to be closer to 1 trillion, which is probably what the writer of the first article int...

Aging is tough, but it beats the alternative.

(I don't know who made this statement, but it seemed appropriate.)

No doubt. I doubt. Pardon me, but isn't this pessimism toward interstellar travel by humans biased on a supposition that human frailties will remain such as they are for the indefinite future? What if humanity is somehow able to overcome its existential threats as well as the aging problem that so ...

The possibility of airborne microbial Venusians is certainly exciting, but currently controversial. That's the last sentence of today's explanation. The last link in that sentence to the word controversial brings up a paper on a study looking more carefully for the supposed biomarker PH 3 in the Ve...

Inter stellar travel will never be undertaken by humans. Maybe by robots, but only if they're all that is left of us, or we've changed ourselves to the point that we are willing and able to take on projects that last for thousands of years. No doubt. I doubt. Pardon me, but isn't this pessimism tow...

The possibility of airborne microbial Venusians is certainly exciting, but currently controversial. That's the last sentence of today's explanation. The last link in that sentence to the word controversial brings up a paper on a study looking more carefully for the supposed biomarker PH 3 in the Ve...

I started to get involved in astronomy quite recently. My main hobby is my home. I try to do everything with my own hands. I learned how to make simple furniture, make shelves and shelves to free up space. I hope that one day I will be completely satisfied with the comfort that I have managed to cr...

I beg your pardon, I was sealed. I was referring to the area of blue. The question is whether there will be a new celestial body in the place of the dying star. Or will it remain a cloud? This question is very interesting. As a beginner in astronomy, I ask stupid questions, but I want to get explan...

The two planets will be closest on Dec 21, at which point they will be halfway across the sky from the first quarter Moon. Around Dec 16 the very new Moon will be about 5° from Jupiter, and the planets will be about a half degree apart. Might be a pretty triple conjunction. It would be interesting ...

Jake and the Fatman? No, it's Pancake and the Flatman.

It appears that colliding neutron stars are not the source of the unexplained abundance of gold in our observable universe. I’ve been seeing news reports to that effect too. The suggestion is that neutron star mergers are too rare to have produced all the gold at its observed universal abundance. D...

Glad to see that GAIA is now providing results that are clearing up distance questions. This is from the Wikipedia article Cygnus Loop: Distance Until 1999, the most often-quoted distance to the supernova remnant was a 1958 estimate made by R. Minkowski, combining his radial velocity measurements wi...

Just wondering. What would be the effects on our Solar System should our dear Sun become one of the stars "interacting" with such a shock wave? Reasonable question. Since the Cygnus Loop's diameter is now "about 130 light years" that would put the SN at about 65 light years from...

Note that in most of these images the Moon is reddened, which is fine, as it adds variety to this composition. I wonder, since these shots where made from Sicily, was Mt. Etna erupting ash during this period?

Ann wrote:... actually - there were no humans around when the Moon looked bigger in the sky than Andromeda.

Certainly true.

It's fascinating that the Andromeda galaxy is so large in the sky, and the Moon is so relatively small. It's all about distance and timing. Well, it's a composite image, so timing is not that important. :wink: Ann Well, I knew that Andromeda isn't on the ecliptic and so the Moon never enters that c...

Ann wrote:It's fascinating that the Andromeda galaxy is so large in the sky, and the Moon is so relatively small.

It's all about distance and timing.

Speaking of the ISS, they've needed to make several collision avoidance maneuvers recently: NASA admin warns ISS space junk problem is getting worse after 3 near collisions CNN Published Wed Sep 23, 2020 11:48 AM MDT The International Space Station (ISS) narrowly avoided a collision with space debri...

DistantSpectra_ESO_960.jpg

Ah, the awesome splendor of majestic galaxies, reduced to something only a barcode reader can appreciate.

Wouldn't it be interesting To see Orion's stars in 360 degree rotations? 8-) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD-5ZOipE48 Wow! Thanks Chris; that's just wonderful! How things look out there's a whole new ballgame :clap: :rocketship: ! Yes that is a very nice little vid. Thanks for sharing it Chris.

Consider the parallaxes of the stars of Orion's Belt. The Hipparcos parallax of Alnitak is 4.43 ± 0.64 milliarcseconds. The Hipparcos parallax for Alnilam is 1.65 ± 0.45 mas, and the Hipparcos parallax for Mintaka is 4.71 ± 0.58 mas. These parallaxes would put Alnilam, the middle star of Orion's Be...

Consider the parallaxes of the stars of Orion's Belt. The Hipparcos parallax of Alnitak is 4.43 ± 0.64 milliarcseconds. The Hipparcos parallax for Alnilam is 1.65 ± 0.45 mas, and the Hipparcos parallax for Mintaka is 4.71 ± 0.58 mas. These parallaxes would put Alnilam, the middle star of Orion's Be...