Starship Asterisk*

We now have another horse asterism: A leaping horse

[attachment=0]Leaping horse asterism.jpg[/attachment]

In the lower right there is a rather interesting warped dust cloud. Is there more to be said about this object?

Really? One of the moons of Jupiter is "Europe" ?!

There are quite a few stars that appear to be surrounded by something red. Is this an illusion created by the optics or something real?

Very interesting -- thanks! It hadn't occurred to me that there could be melt as well as debris.

Perhaps a naive question but how did the centers of the oldest craters become flat? Tycho seems bowl shaped with a central peak but most of the larger ones don't appear to be like that.

Jupiter's rabbit. (Well, probably just my imagination.)

I too think it's an amazing picture and well composed with the ship!

But I must admit, at the risk of some ridicule (at my age of 76), what comes to my mind is it's a giant Sun bra.

Thanks! My father's field was organic chemistry. He would have been fascinated by the wikipedia article.

I curious if there is speculation about what constitutes the rust colored material filling the cracks. I would presume it is from the interior ocean but perhaps its a reaction between the rising 'slush' and solar radiation.

Is there any way to estimate the mass of the original star relative to our Sun? I'm just musing about whether our star might produce something that beautiful sometime in the future.

Is it possible to estimate a maximum angular velocity within these galaxies? Stating that "UGC 12591 spins at about 480 km/sec" doesn't give me a sense of how fast it is spinning.

Yes - that is why I suggested exactly that in my post. However, there are at least 10 "clouds" with glowing edges in that image. It would seem unlikely that each has a bright star directly behind it from our vantage point.

Thanks for that explanation but it begs the question (in my mind) -- why is the illumination just at the edges from our perspective? If the recombination with the ionized boundary layer causes the glow, why doesn't the entire "cloud" appear to glow? Simplistically, it appears that a very b...

What causes the bright rims? Seems rather odd.

Beautiful image!
FWIW I noted a very cute little (apparently) barred spiral galaxy near the right edge. Presumably much farther away than M61.

Perhaps I'm missing something but I wonder whether the statement "a supernova that occurred in 1994" might more properly be "a supernova that was observed in 1994." Apparently it "occurred" some 50 million years ago.

Perhaps a naive question: is that yellowish object at the visual center of the Ghost the star that is dying or merely a fortuitous foreground object?

What is the "bubble" near the left edge of the Carina image?

I always learn something new here!

Thanks!

Yes -- stretched by the rippling water...

[attachment=0]Aldebaran.jpg[/attachment]

Might that red streak reflected on the lake be a meteor from behind the clouds?

The dolphin is being chased by a sea monster !

The issue of "ball" versus "disk" is still somewhat a puzzle to me. On the one hand, we're used to things like planetary motion being more or less like a disk around the gravitational center. But galaxies aren't flat so matter would be falling towards a BH from all directions. If...

There's an interesting object just to the right (2 o'clock) of NGC 4567. Looks like a very small spiral galaxy. Of course it might be very far in front or behind the Butterfly.

FWIW: