Starship Asterisk*

Not even the LMC or SMC? Not even close. The Hubble is capable of a resolution of a bit better than 0.1 arcsec; larger ground-based telescopes using adaptive optics can do a little better than that. But that resolution, impressive as it is, only allows a few of the very closest, largest stars to be...

This nebula, like others I have seen here, has light emanating from the fringes of the dust-gas cloud. I have assumed that that light comes from stars that are hidden by the nebula but their light shines at the edges of the cloud. My question is, can light be emitted from a celestial body that has ...

I believe that Betelgeuse is appriximately the same diameter as Jupiter's orbit. If we were capable of imaging its surface with any clarity, we should also then be able to resolve Jupiter sized planets in jupiter sized orbits around closer "sun sized" stars. It's still very difficult. 2M1...

It's amazing that we've never actually seen a star other than our own Sun. That depends what you mean by "see". We have learned vast amounts about other stars by studying their light. However, I assume you mean "resolve"? In fact, a few stars have been resolved telescopically, a...

The HST is just about capable of resolving individual stars at this distance... More precisely, it is capable of detecting individual stars at that distance if they are bright enough, and of splitting them if they are sufficiently separated. It is quite incapable of resolving any stars in other gal...

More questions. Oct 12 APOD http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap071012.html States that the galaxies there have had close encounters in the past. Well, now they are far apart, so gravity did not cause their motion to halt when they were close. Why? If gravity is responsible for their motion towards ...

Is it a matter of luck there is a " before " image at the exact spot this thing blew up ? Were there hints there was going gto be an event ? There have been many photographic all sky surveys. For the most part, there are images of the entire sky available, so there are "before" ...

Does anybody know where one can aquire a high resolution version of the APM galaxy map? I assume the images linked at the APM site are the highest resolution images available. The image was made by binning the scanned area into 0.1 degree squares and counting the galaxies in each, which works out a...

I am wondering, what percent of sky does this image represent? I tried to figure it out, but the result doesn’t seem to make sense to me. This is what I did: The height of the image is about 71% of the width of the image. If the width of the image is about 100 degrees, then the height of the image ...

What I want to know is why, if the universe is expanding, are there any collisions between the galaxies? Should there not be more space available? The expansion of space is nowhere near strong enough to overcome the local effects of gravity. That's why the Earth isn't expanding with the Universe, a...

In the enlarged version of Schirmer's image, similar complex, multiple layers are visible around another galaxy that is cropped out of view on the right side of the smaller version. Is there a possibility that this appearance is artifact due to his image processing techniques? It just seems odd tha...

There is a huge image they seem to use with lots of galaxies on it but it seems as though the image has multiple levels of jpeg artifacts on it. I looked at a number of images served by Galaxy Zoo, and didn't see anything I'd call an obvious compression artifact. I don't think images are rotated; t...

How did they count the 2 million galaxies in the image? Did they count in a small square and extrapolate to the rest of the image? No, they actually counted them individually. Astronomical images are routinely analyzed with special software tools that extract a list of all objects, and which can di...

A stupid question perhaps - but the center star of "the Belt" has a blue dot in the center of the corona. None of the other stars has that. Is it because the star is so much brighter that it's burned in, or because there is a fortuitous eclipse happening, or am I missing the point? It is ...

What are the three vertical lines? I don't think they could be satalite tracks due to the position of the STEREO A spacecraft that took the picture. Are they artifacts from the camera? They look like blooming artifacts. These result from electrons bleeding along CCD columns from oversaturated pixel...

I think the sky in that photo is orange from the setting sun in the western sky, which means that the sun is in front of the camera, so what's shinning on the moon to make it full? When you are facing a full Moon, the Sun is behind you. If you think that a sunset (or sunrise) can't make the opposit...

Chris Peterson: Thank you for a reasonably clear and explanatory response. I have only done a little work with optics, I know my understanding is minimal. Why do they have to be point sources? Or is that just a relative term? Why do you say a gravitational lens is so different from an ordinary one?...

Suppose there were a neutron star, or maybe even a black hole somewhere near the visual center of that group. Then, suppose there may be some other objects between us and that thing. Wouldn't an observer see something much like that? No. Gravitational lensing doesn't produce point sources. Opticall...

I find this very interesting, if this cosmic radiation is deflected around us by our planets magnetic field(protecting us from being burnt to oblivion, but also putting on a spectacular light show in the northern regions of our planet),I always wonder, is it possible to harness this tremendous powe...

According to a wiki entry on the topic it can happen both during spring and autumn, signots. In spring it happens after the evening twilight while in autumn it happens before the morning twilight. From a dark site it is visible year round. It's simply more prominent near the equinoxes. The bottom i...

Think of ALL the smaller objects that are so heavily cratered, but they have very little gravity to cause the hyper velocity speeds. The gravity of an object doesn't determine the collision speed, but the minimum collision speed. The dynamics of the all the objects in the Solar System mean that col...

craterchains wrote:uh huh, , , :roll: explain Hyperion then, , FOCLMAO :P

Explain what?

Personaly I think these craters, for the most part, are caused by weapons. You're joking, right? The craters are just exactly as you would expect for high velocity collisions, which are the only kind of collisions possible on a body with any significant gravitational field. Very little of the origi...

“Explosion-like” only if there is something to make it explosive, impact is just that, an impact. There's nothing wrong with calling it an explosion- that's what a high speed impact produces. An explosion is just a rapid release of energy; it doesn't matter if the cause is chemical, nuclear, or kin...

sniezynka wrote:Anyone have more photos of this event?

http://spaceweather.com/meteors/gallery_01sep07.htm
http://www.cloudbait.com/science/aurigid2007.html