Starship Asterisk*

Wow, thanks for the prospective. There was an essay in the Wall Street Journal or some similar publication a while back about this sort of thing - how we used to refer to really big numbers as "astronomical." These days the astronomical numbers are yielding in their impressiveness to econ...

But I'm curious - 1/5000 second is beyond human reflexes (at least it is beyond mine) - is this photo taken with some kind of ultra-high-speed video camera and then a specific frame selected for display? It was taken with an ordinary DSLR. The shutter time was 1/5000 of a second, but the photograph...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c5/Newgrange%2C_Ireland.jpg/800px-Newgrange%2C_Ireland.jpg Careful...you're going to get the 2012 folks all excited again. I wouldn't be remotely surprised if that picture and today's APOD start showing up alongside claims that a photograph of N...

I like this photo. It shows the great height difference between the orbiter and the great fuel tank in the background. I have one question: What are the dark spots left of the yellow retrainer? I don't think they are windows^^ Depending which spots exactly you're talking about, I see two possibilit...

Hi! We all know that there are financial problems nearly all over the world. The shuttle was thought to be cheap because it's reuseable. Indeed, it did not work as planed. That's the reason why the USAF joined the project - because NASA had not the money to pay the expenses. In my opinion, the shut...

The idea of a microscopic impact crater on a dust grain that itself is for all practical purposes microscopic is fascinating.

Great choice for an APOD.

The caption is correct. Launch Pads 39A and B are the only ones at the Kennedy Space Center. Unmanned rocket launches take place from neighboring Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Precisely. Atlas V, Delta IV and Delta II, and previously Titan IV all fly from the Air Force Station. I've got to say,...

Personally, I expect a low water presence, which will be disappointing for habitation requirements. As comets are exactly the same composition as asteroids (comets are NOT dirty ice balls) they contribute no water to the Moon when they are accumulated by the Moon. Solar wind particulate is likely t...

For those who plan on trying to view it, I found a visualization showing the context on the moon, and I believe it ends with a projected plume shown to give you a sense of scale:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn9LMyrW ... r_embedded

The plumes are expected to be visible in telescopes about 10 inches in diameter or larger, with the timing favoring Moon watchers in western North America and the Pacific. Anyone lucky enough to have access to a 10 inch telescope and planning to catch the impact? I wonder if my paltry 4.5 Newtonian...

They didn't shoot back the last dozen or so times we've hit the moon.

The relevant APOD link:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091008.html

'Genesis'? Instead of promoting knowledge of outer space with athe APOD website, Is NASA's mission secretly the conversion of heathen populations to belief in Judaeo/Christian/Muslim scriptures? I can't say the world doesn't need more genuine belief in the Almighty. First of all, NASA shouldn't com...

Why didn't the capsule burn up like a meteorite would have? It entered with the proper orientation, so its heat shield protected it. The heat shield is made of a very highly temperature resistant material that ablates as it heats. Ablation, or the spalling away of small pieces, carries away heat th...

Wow...another classic shot of stars and ground together by Mr. Pacholka.

If you do a search on his name, you'll see he's had quite a few shots reflecting a similar idea featured on APOD over the last decade or so.

A minor nit to pick... isn't this the 5th mission to repair Hubble? Mission #3 was split into 2, so called 3A and 3B missions. Yes, Hubble Space Telescope - Servicing Mission 4 (HST SM4: STS-125) is kind of a misnomer. It's the fifth STS mission to service the Hubble, but it's the fourth servicing ...

I should add: one other thing seen in this image that isn't commented on in the caption is radiant drift . Some showers last several days or longer, and depending on the orbit of the parent debris, that is long enough for the radiant to move substantially during the time the shower is active. Such ...

It's currently operating, but not at full capacity. It was offline for several weeks in the past year because it's primary science computer (which handles data TX) failed. Migrating to the backup computer, which is identically redundant, but booted down, took a large part of that time. That failure ...

Serious questions this time. On the eclipse diagrams on the manuscript, the moon is shown on a double orbit. Since the moon is shown at the intersection of these orbits in the solar eclipse diagram, I thought maybe one orbit was to suggest the ecliptic plane and the other the moon's orbital plane s...

What do the blue areas represent? Lower energies of gamma ray? If so, what could be the sources? Gas? Globular clusters (like 47 Tuc which also appears blue)? Other galaxies? The short translation of neufer's answer is high energy cosmic rays, mostly electrons and protons from beyond the galaxy mov...

The SBX X band ABM fire-control radar is stationed in Adak, it can track an object "the size of a baseball over San Francisco from the Chesapeak Bay." No reason to believe the Russians are too far behind. Size isn't the factor, but rather accuracy. And the radar fence system used to maint...

Direct human heat production is currently a very tiny fraction of the earth's total heat balance. It's about 1/10,000 as much as the sun, if I remember right. That's all heat mind you, accounting for efficiencies. It's a much bigger concern at the present time whether or not we're trapping extra hea...

I was under the impression Russian satellites are manueverable. If so, how do you know it was out of fuel? I woundn't discount the possibility of either side making a statement. The satellite has been out of commission since 1995. That doesn't necessarily mean it couldn't be maneuvered, but that is...

Jlfolnz - There's two issues I see with dismissing greenhouse gas based climate changed based solely on the explanation that it's due to changes in the sun: 1.) No appropriate changes have been conclusively identified. There have been some proposed, and those ideas are being looked into, but there i...

... so are you really sure that you want to spend money on BOTH? I'm sure I don't want to spend money on a sclerotic bureaucracy no longer capable of "moon-shot" projects, whereas the biotech industry is capable of such advances in science and technology. The only similarity between NASA ...

" an ISS that's little more than a tourist destination for the Russians, and a management willing to silence its scientists during the Bush administration to suit its political purposes." You are crediting the ISS to NASA when the U.S. didn't have the technology to lift the main component...