Starship Asterisk*

As we begin to zoom in on the solar system, there is a faint number in the background stars: 3796072587910775936
What is this number and why is it there?

Would I be able to view the August 31st daytime occultation of Saturn from New England with a cheap ~2" refractor? I'm having a hard time understanding the chart at http://asa.usno.navy.mil/cgi-bin/occnwdo.cgi?dir=2014/occns&file=occn.2014Aug31.Saturn&body=Saturn . Does it mean the the ...

Planets and Sun are rotating in reverse. Either that or they're upside down :) (well, in the apod video today, they also rotate correctly, if viewed "upside down" with the south pole at the "top", where top/bottom make no sense in space anyway) I thought about that, but no, that...

Hugo, By definition, a Black Hole has no size. It is a point in space with no diameter at all. Perhaps a BH should be the focus of a similar size comparison video going smaller rather than larger. This video ends at the Plank length - a BH should be smaller than that! https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Why is the lensing galaxy not visible?

Is it really accurate to say that the north pole "precessed" into sunlight? I would assume it came into sunlight due to the tilt of the axis and its position in orbit. Precession is a different phenomenon, isn't it?

Why does Lutetia appear not to be rotating (at least with respect to the sun). The shadows never shift. Were the frames compiled from images each taken at the same time of Lutetian day, or was the flyby so brief that no noticeable rotation occurred?

That's no moon... It's a space station.

I'm not on reefer, crack, blow, etc... but I can see what he's talking about. Eg, where one would find Logan airport. Somewhat like clouds, the human mind can find any sort of pattern or resemblance in something rather random (Man in the moon (or rabbit in the moon for Korean/Japanese), hunters, hor...

I also suspect that due to the size and brightness of the 'pseudo-nova' in the original image, that it is a foreground star (in our galaxy), and not something in M51. This make it much more susceptible to transient atmospheric effects, and rules it out as a supernova candidate.

William Roeder wrote:If the 100.000 diameter galaxy rotates every 200.000 years, (our galaxy takes 220.000,) .

I think you meant 220,000,000 years.