Starship Asterisk*

The caption states "the frame includes the site of the closest supernova in modern times, SN 1987A, left of center", but this is not so; the site is well beyond the upper edge of the image ,,, And even if it was in the image, SN 1987A is not "the closest supernova in modern times&quo...

I agree that the apparent bridge between M86 and NGC 4438 may well be a foreground feature in the Milky Way. But that ginormous Hα halo around M86 must be a "real" feature, and it sure looks amazing to me. Ann All that I see is more galactic cirrus surrounding the whitish stellar halo of ...

I have noticed bridges between the cores of interacting galaxies, and even suspect the merging galaxies become barred spiral galaxies with center of the bridge turning into a new common core when that happens. In any case, the "bridge" in this picture has nothing to do with those bridges....

I have noticed bridges between the cores of interacting galaxies, and even suspect the merging galaxies become barred spiral galaxies with center of the bridge turning into a new common core when that happens. In any case, the "bridge" in this picture has nothing to do with those bridges. ...

I keep watching it. But I have more comments on the ending, and how it is not quite right: - It treats the cosmic microwave background as being the outer boundary of the universe, when it truth it is close to the center of the universe. (I consider the "Big Bang" to be the center of the u...

I keep watching it. But I have more comments on the ending, and how it is not quite right: - It treats the universe as being 90 billion light years in diameter. However, that is just the extent of the observable universe. The full extent of the universe (at this time) is unknown and must be much big...

Thank you for posting that APOD Team. This video is a nice addition to the various astronomical size comparison videos I've seen over the years. The addition of the solar system objects direct size comparison is a nice addition. It's the first time I've seen an asteroid included. The only thing I'd...

Overall a good video, but one which obviously has its flaws. What I will comment on is what happens when it gets beyond showing the Milky Way and Andromeda. What comes up next are galaxies selected from the Hubble Deep Field. Those galaxies are easily over a billion light years away, be they appear ...

I remember seeing a Hubble (or Chandra?) picture of a supernova remnant, and the caption said that we can be sure that this is the remnant of a massive star and its core collapse. And the reason why we can be sure of that is that the remnant contains so much oxygen, and oxygen is produced in core-c...

I am a bit annoyed with the caption. It indicates that the hottest features glow the brightest. So the hottest "features" are apparently the gaps between the storms. But then were did the cloud heights come from? Is that being inferred from the temperatures? Or has it been directly measure...

It looks like two roses to me, one behind the other. So how about the "Two Rose" (or "Double Rose") Nebula?

... s the white synchrotron radiation really pushing the nebula outwards, thus making it expand? Or maybe the synchrotron radiation has little to do with the expansion, and it is instead the jets that are responsible for that? ... The nebula is expanding due to the kinetic energy the gas got in the...

Are you all sure that the colors are labeled properly? It shows low-mass stars contributing to everything between Strontium and Lead, while the exploding massive stars are only credited for elements as heavy as Zirconium. That does not look right. I thought that it took a stellar explosion to creat...

Added data point: See https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap160125.html . This table is very inconsistent with that one. Are you all sure that the colors are labeled properly? It shows low-mass stars contributing to everything between Strontium and Lead, while the exploding massive stars are only credited fo...

Are you all sure that the colors are labeled properly? It shows low-mass stars contributing to everything between Strontium and Lead, while the exploding massive stars are only credited for elements as heavy as Zirconium. That does not look right. I thought that it took a stellar explosion to create...

My belief is that spiral arms like there are the tidally distorted remains of two galaxies that captured each other and merged. I don't think so. We see no sign that the well-ordered inner parts of NGC 1512 have been affected by a merger. On the other hand, the outer, extremely faint and very disor...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Ngc1512_nasajpl.jpg FWIW - I see in NGC 1512 the tail end of a galactic merger. The Inner Ring (whose context can be seen in the accompanying GALEX image) is just two spiral arms that start from the ends of the bar. That they overlap and become mo...

[Phobos] completes one orbit in just 7 hours and 39 minutes. That's faster than a Mars rotation, which corresponds to about 24 hours and 40 minutes. So on Mars, Phobos can be seen to rise above the western horizon 3 times a day. To be clear: 1) Deimos rises above the eastern horizon once every 5.32...

If you zoom in on the center, you see bright dots with what look like cometary tails coming off of them. One is a 1:00 from the central star, and others are at 2:30, 3:00, and 7:30. Perhaps we are seeing a cometary system being destroyed by the young white dwarf at the center.

I have found the Pleiades, on a hillside at 3:00 from the Einstein Cross and halfway across the picture from it. It is on the more distant hill and next to the top of a closer hill. Well hidden and hard to see unless you are looking for it. ... And of course its being lights on a hill instead of in ...

Definitely an interesting galaxy, but it looks more like a distorted spiral to me than a true barred spiral like is seen in the 1/9/2016 APOD . I continue to wonder if barred spirals are not the late stage of a galaxy merger. The start is two galaxies intially interacting as the approach and get dis...

From https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-human-microbiome-project-defines-normal-bacterial-makeup-body : "The human body contains trillions of microorganisms — outnumbering human cells by 10 to 1. Because of their small size, however, microorganisms make up only about 1 to 3 perce...

If there was normal matter in close proximity to the black holes as they spiraled down, I would think the massive gravity waves might so compress and distend the matter that they would display absorbed energy with bright, high frequency photons that might be detected if a telescope were looking in ...

I agree with the earlier posters who did not like the use of a placeholder for this APOD. Certainly there should have been a note mentioning the news conference, but a normal picture. Then this video could have been the next day's APOD. I didn't see any problem with the placeholder, it made things ...

I agree with the earlier posters who did not like the use of a placeholder for this APOD. Certainly there should have been a note mentioning the news conference, but a normal picture. Then this video could have been the next day's APOD.