Starship Asterisk*

Thanks for the suggestion of an attachment. Here it is.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid= ... e=1&ref=nf is the URL for the photo, since my attempt to to post it here has failed.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2316802046968&set=a.1269937716014.40416.1456999641&type=1&ref=nf This is a frame from the video, admittedly embedded in the APOD page. Notice the flare at 280 degrees (just above the left limb). That is the start of the cometary CME, and it is in a...

I have a hard time not seeing the events as being connected. The comet heads into the Sun, and suddenly there is a double eruption that creates a CME sending stuff out in the direction of the comet's passage! My guess in that the comet disrupted a magnetic field line connecting the two active region...

The trouble with this APOD is in the title: "Not for human eyes"! However, this web page exists for human eyes! So little wonder that is has frustrated and annoyed so many people. To make matters worse, the solution to the puzzle is the QR code itself! IMO, making this is an "impracti...

This galaxy looks perturbed. The spiral arms are far from symmetrical and there are shadow arms off to the right. Is there another galaxy close by with which this one is interacting? Bystander - I think that you have made a very profound observation. I think that this is a case where there are two ...

I will repeat my major concern about this photo, namely the large dusty bridge connecting the two galaxies: It is not predicted by any of the current galaxy collision models! They predict only tidal tails. Yet the main tidal tails are heading out to the left and the top of this image, and are almost...

I will stand corrected. I was looking at the Hubblesite picture of these galaxies ( http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2006/46/image/a/format/zoom/ ), and found that they do have short, stubby secondary tidal tales. Still, they are nothing like the secondary tidal tales in the simulat...

Thank you, ems! I liked that very much, esp. the CGI rotates between actual photos, demonstrating I hope to verks how the tails do look. I still think the second video is very, very similar to the original APOD, stop it at 6 seconds and see. [sp. corrected] I'm not going to deny the similarity, esp...

Loads of simulations on internet video, like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBFc1ldP_Ps I presume they are based on basic physics and they look very like the APOD. OR, this one is IDENTICAL! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8S-RW9Veks Neither one of those simulations shows a bridge developing ...

The thing that impresses me is the bridge of gas and stars between the cores of the galaxies. To get a better look at it, click on the photo or go to http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1005/NGC4038_ssro.jpg and zoom in on the cores of the galaxies. The impression I have is that the material is being fu...

If NGC 4731 has had a gravitational distortion from NGC 4697 you would not get the effect you can see. On that point, I agree with you. That is one reason for my speculation above. (Of course, the shape itself is also more or less in accord with my speculation to begin with.) If they passed by each...

I for one think that NGC 4731 represents an early stage in the formation of a spiral galaxy. My basic idea is that you have two galaxies pass close to and disrupt each other (like the Antenna galaxies are doing). The result is that even their central cores get stretched out like silly putty. After t...

The waves appear before the vehicle goes supersonic. The engine plume or the engine itself sounds to me as a more reasonable cause. I concur with this explanation. As I mentioned above, you can hear the engine sound go from being fairly consistent to being more like a "boom-boom-boom". I ...

RJN write/quoted - The reference is to Feynman's famous "The Feynman Lectures on Physics." Here Feynman has been quoted as saying: “Why is it that particles with half-integral spin are Fermi particles whereas particles with integral spin are Bose particles? We apologize for the fact that w...

I advise poeple to not just look at Wailhound's link, but also to listen to it! You can hear a faint sound like a "pop-pop-pop" as the rocket is approaching the cloud layer. I'm sure that those pops are the shock waves being generated. Keep in mind that at the distance of the rocket when ...

I advise poeple to not just look at Wailhound's link, but also to listen to it! You can hear a faint sound like a "pop-pop-pop" as the rocket is approaching the cloud layer. I'm sure that those pops are the shock waves being generated. Those pops are not a sonic boom. I have heard (and fel...

I don't think that we are dealing with a sonic boom with this phenomenon, or at least not with the waves that destroyed the sun dog. The ripples are appearing at nearly the same time and many of then are well away from the rocket. A sonic boom would clearly emmenate from the rocket, and move outward...