Starship Asterisk*

Historical records do show that about 150 years ago Eta Carinae underwent an unusual outburst that made it one of the brightest stars in the southern sky. you mean to say: "Historical records do show that about 150 years ago Eta Carinae was noticed to have undergone an unusual outburst that ma...

... a (blue) marble floating in the middle of nothing ...

Nice

Bit of an embarrassment though that there are no women who have seen the earth as a circle, even more of an embarrassment that we are coming up on half-a-century past since anyone has done so.

Fascinating. Have it looping full screen on a third monitor.

For a one-off viewing though, it would be more effective had Mies's aphorism been kept less far afield.

Alexander Pope wrote as an epitaph on Isaac Newton: Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night: God said, "Let Newton be! and all was light." This did seem true for about a century and a half - until Einstein came along. Now all seems Dark Matter, Dark Energy with which one struggles to com...

Today's APOD is opportune for, on this date in 1887, Doyle's "A Study in Scarlet" was published, introducing Sherlock Holmes to the world.

Design, or serendipity?

Wonderful image.

Forty years ago I lived in Fairbanks (about the same latitude as Iceland), where aurorae were common and active, however I have never seen such an amazing auroral display.

Orionid Storms.

Magnificent!

Funny there was a photographer poised so ideally, at just the right time, on Veterans day, as military budgets are under debate in congress.... "Hee-haw" indeed. And if there were *not* this image of the event then it would seem "Funny that there were *no* photographers who were shoo...

Earth is visible. Earth is a planet. Si. Howsomeever, when one saw the sky this past week, it was Jupiter, Venus and Mars which were visually close to one another - so it is not clear why Luna, Spica, Jupiter and Venus can count as "the same" quadrangle. The (re)selection of this photo fo...

isoparix wrote:And what is the timescale of these events? Months? Days? Seconds? Thanks.

Yes. My very question.

geckzilla wrote:

DNH wrote:It's a great picture but why is it published for the third time on APOD?

It is a well-loved rerun and today is rerun day.

Yep

Even though one thinks it did not quite work out as planned...

I did have a moment of disorientation when looking at the annotated view and noting that the bigger of the two Nubeculae Magellani was labelled "LMC" This was puzzling to me, for, as a child I learned the dwarf galaxies as the Greater and Lesser Magellanic clouds. Consulting the fount of k...

The Iridium's flash is very pretty. However, I well recall the discussion after it was discovered that these satellites produced this phenomenon, about the adverse effects of this unwanted light pollution, as well as that of the interference occasioned by the satellite's radio transmissions overlap ...

Right after thinking how much this view is in concordance with my image of a base on another planet, I was stuck by this being the only structure in view. One does hope that there is another building somewhere off camera, else if the lab goes up in flames .... I lived in Alaska for a bit. Anyone who...

Same silly stupid crap as always. What is it with you people and you fascination with photos that are useless? With all the new and wonderful photos taken recently, you put up junk like this. The usual APOD I share with fewer than half-a-dozen people, this one I shared with several dozen. I shared ...

Thanks to Saint-Exupéry for the whimsy, to Ptolemy^(*) for the projection and to Bodrov for this wonderfully expressive image.

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^{*) Sic. Yes, scio. Please protervos non ostendant. Life is too short, just go with it}

Any thoughts on what gave this thing the mighty boot ? the Big Bang ? The Big Bang has nothing to do with it. Rather, NGC 4921 is on the outskirts of the Coma Cluster and it is "falling in" towards it due to gravitational effects. Or it might possibly just be in orbit around the center of...

Looking at this picture it is difficult for one *not* to imagine that this is actually an image of Luna and Terra from a different universe - one where Terra failed to hold on to her water. To have this perspective makes worthwhile to me however many of my tax dollars were spent on this mission to t...

The sense of time, and paradoxically of timelessness, is remarkable.

If that room still exists today ...

Thanks - and I did, as I hope many more will, make a donation to Friends of APOD http://friendsofapod.org/

In other words this is a lie. The sequence of data-based imagery presented is an admirable effort to answer the speculative question posed in the lead sentence "What would it look like to fly over dwarf planet Ceres?" Sorry if this is confusing. From the depth, and tone, of your comment, ...

Remarkable. One did not even know that such existed.

Merci!

Fantastic job, Chris! As an average viewer, I would have liked to see an inset showing a series of pictures taken with identical exposure times / filters. The two gorgeous views here force the viewer to read the information and understand that one image is 6 times fainter than the other. Steve Yes....

Another remarkable APOD! Though 'majestic looking' for the severely pruned and stunted oak tree is a jarring adjective to use when set against the natural majesty of the galaxy. The 'Angel Oak' in South Carolina is truly majestic: http://fineartamerica.com/featured/1-angel-oak-tree-drew-castelhano.h...

Peaceful Descent from Unity to Chaos.

Sad that the capsule will soon be bringing the occupants back to the ridiculous and artificial divisions which lie beneath this tranquil sea of clouds.

Amazing picture.

One cannot help but scale it up to see Seattle in the background viewed from SE of Rainier at some point in the future.