Starship Asterisk*

The Man in the Moon got a bit of a haircut last night!
_

On my iPad anyway, if I long press the image, the hover-over image shows up. Ditto for my Android phone. I don't on my Android phone. Just a context menu. Which is what I'd expect unless some very specific coding on the website isn't done. Odd. It only works if you long press on the image on the pa...

Ooop! Sorry, I failed to see that this is a "roll-on-roll off" (RORO) image showing different images depending on whether the cursor is on the image or not. Will all viewers have access to the RORO feature? I'm not sure if that works on touchscreen devices. Hover operations generally don'...

Ooop! Sorry, I failed to see that this is a "roll-on-roll off" (RORO) image showing different images depending on whether the cursor is on the image or not. Will all viewers have access to the RORO feature? I'm not sure if that works on touchscreen devices. Hover operations generally don'...

smitty wrote: ↑Sun Sep 15, 2024 1:58 pm Come on here! The text does not state clearly that this image of the moon has been digitally manipulated to accentuate the point being made! It comes across as dishonest! Please!

What manipulation? It looks like a very natural lunar image to me.

On the lower right, is this a planetary disk seen edge-on ? It is clearly a disk of some sort. APOD 12 September 2024 detail.png I'd say it's the the accretion disk, or the remnant of the accretion disk, around a young star. No obvious signs of planet formation can be seen at this resolution and ma...

[...] As Newton claimed, he considered that "the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me", and Feynman claimed that anyone who claims to understand quantum mechanics does not understand quantum mechanics. And, of course, we need to remember that these mathematical models of 'r...

"I think you've missed my point, which is just that there aren't very many fundamental natural laws, and we appear to understand most of them." Well, maybe, but how do you know "that there aren't very many fundamental natural laws", and what do you mean by "aren't very many...

It depends on what you mean by "almost everything". There are lots of things we do not know. There is currently no analytic solution to the three body problem in either Newtonian Dynamics or General Relativity, and as for many-body problems, we can simulate using computers, but these brea...

In the past (300 to 30 years in past), I'm sure people felt same as what you are feeling now. Someone thought they knew Earth was flat. Someone thought they knew Earth was center of universe. And as recently as 30 yrs ago, before someone "discovered" dark energy and the impact it has, peo...

Ann wrote: ↑Tue Sep 10, 2024 6:19 am What I like about this APOD is all the details in the surrounding dust.

I don't think we see much dust in this narrowband image. Most of the surrounding structure appears to be ionized hydrogen.

the largest volcano in the Solar System One hates to be pedantic, but shouldn't that be "The largest known volcano in the Solar System" ? Or are we really sure about this? I think we're pretty sure. We've mapped the surface of all the terrestrial planets, and all the large moons. The poss...

Chris, i respect your knowledge and you are entitled to any opinion (including your above prediction). I'm no Aristotle or Einstein but they both seem to be in agreement with me. Their own quotes = Aristotle ("The more you know, more you know that you don't know") and Einstein ("What...

I checked the link for "passes right" (https://www.science.org/content/article/milky-way-may-escape-fated-collision-andromeda-galaxy), I'm glad many scientists openly said we don't know many things and so it's impossible to simulate and predict any deterministic ways. I absolutely agree. ...

I checked the link for "passes right" (https://www.science.org/content/article/milky-way-may-escape-fated-collision-andromeda-galaxy), I'm glad many scientists openly said we don't know many things and so it's impossible to simulate and predict any deterministic ways. I absolutely agree. ...

Neptune and Uranus are much the same pale cyan hue, and the processes that cause this color - atmospheric methane that absorbs infrared light - are much the same. Absorbing IR cannot make anything look blue. That requires absorbing longer visible wavelengths, like red and yellow. We are seeing all ...

So, Neptune's atmospheric methane both absorbs infrared (getting warmer I suppose), and then also emits infrared that is visible to JWST here? Or is it only the "High altitude clouds that reach above most of Neptune's absorbing methane" that we are seeing here? (And that also must be emit...

Guest wrote: ↑Fri Sep 06, 2024 2:12 pm All elements are explained at dcwalley.com/sky-disc. Seems convincing.

Not at all. It seems like one plausible hypothesis, of several.

Guest wrote: ↑Wed Sep 04, 2024 4:45 pm The arc on the Nebra disk is not a boat, it is the path of the star Vega near the winter solstice.

Nobody knows exactly what all the elements on the disk are.

The Iris Nebula NGC 7023, the aptly named Iris Nebula, a beautiful reflection nebula in Cepheus (although I have detected some faint H-alpha emissions when imaged with a narrowband filter). The illuminating star creating the reflection is magnitude 7.4. Imaged 2024 September 1-3. Details: QSI 660 c...

I expected the link in the text to “eight successive” exposures to show those eight individual images instead of a picture of eight cats. Any explanation? And of course, then there is the Moon and the Pleiades, minus any cats. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e9/Nebra_disc_1.j...

I think of it as although it's face is half lit from our perspective, it's deemed a quarter moon since it's a quarter of the way through a full cycle of phases: https://c.tadst.com/gfx/750x500/moon-phases-explained.png Except in this case it's three quarters of the way through a full cycle. It's a ...

Isn't that a half moon? It was a "third quarter moon". Not "quarter" by itself, and certainly commonly called "half". I think of it as although it's face is half lit from our perspective, it's deemed a quarter moon since it's a quarter of the way through a full cycle o...

SeedsofEarfth wrote: ↑Tue Sep 03, 2024 4:17 am Isn't that a half moon?

It was a "third quarter moon". Not "quarter" by itself, and certainly commonly called "half".

The Wizard Nebula Sharpless 142, an emission nebula in Cepheus energized by open cluster NGC 7380. This narrowband image of the central nebula is rendered in the Hubble palette. Imaged late August 2024. Details: QSI 660 camera on 250mm RC, Astronomic SHORGB filters. 3.5 hours each H-alpha (mapped t...