Starship Asterisk*

Badsocref wrote: The ion tail should be slightly bluish and is (but only very slightly so). I do not know why the dust trail appears greenish, but it could have to do with our viewing angle. Indeed, the color balance is off here. This is the first time ever that I have seen a dust tail look green. A...

I think my favorite is the Wally Pacholka image, an amazing interplay between "heaven and Earth", so to speak. The way the clouds interact with the starry sky is fantastic. I love the "almost Milky Way-lit" observatory and ground, too, although I assume that this is a double expo...

I liked the picture a lot! What a nice take on Vermeer's The Astronomer , too. You changed his portrait of one man into a portrait of two persons, Robert Nemiroff and Jerry Bonnell, the creators of Astronomy Picture of the Day. It's a beautiful picture that reminds us of how long humanity has tried ...

Biddie67, thank you very much for your kind comment!

Ann

Definitely interesting.

I find it remarkable, however, that a planet which ought to have been considerably colder than the Earth had one of its polar regions covered in liquid water. Any thoughts?

Ann

Okay. Thanks, Chris.

Ann

I have heard that what is now the Mediterranean was once dry land where people lived and livestock grazed. Then, very suddenly, the Atlantic Ocean broke through the Sound of Gibraltar, and the land inside was flooded extremely quickly. This event may have lived in memory and given rise to stories ab...

Yes!!! I'm so glad that this splendid image was made Astronomy Picture of the Day!! Congratulations, Ronnie!

Ann

NGC 5746 is a nice-looking galaxy, to be sure. It has a very nice and striking shape. But to me it is a boring galaxy, because it is all monocolored: it is all yellow through and through, because its brown dustlane can be considered just another form of yellow, though a darkened one. There is no sta...

And that's what we are reduced to when it comes to pondering the question of extraterrestrial life - believing, thinking, guessing. Proving the existence of extraterrestrial life might well be hard, if that life doesn't look like we expect life to look, and if it exists in places where we have a har...

I can select only one? How will I be able to choose? :( M51 is extremely handsome in that image! Downright dashing! That galaxy sure knows how to put on the ritz, and all those pink rhinestones against that sky blue suit and the little yellow "brooch" in the middle holding the swirling sta...

Sorry, Antennae! http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn11509/dn11509-1_600.jpg I was going to vote for you. Really I was. You see, I have the greatest respect for people who would vote for that Saturn image, because I, too, think it is amazing that we humans have managed to send a spacecr...

By the way, since Gendler's (Hubble-based) image has a very different color balance than Gerber and Hager's image, which color balance is the best? In my opinion there can be no doubt that Gerber and Hager's color is better. I've said it before and I'm saying it again, the Hubble people can't do col...

Bystander said: I'm with you, Rob. I can't see any connection, either. I don't think they are pictures of the same nebula. I'm wondering about Gendler's designation. I beg to differ. I think they are the same. Here you can see the problem with different color balances. The Gerber-Hager image is more...

I can see a large face with a goofy smile, too.

Ann

I just bought the June issue of Astronomy magazine. On the cover there is a deeply red-orange :evil: picture of the Sun,, with the following caption: Is the SUN an oddball star? The article in the magazine says that while it is easy to find analogs of the Sun in our cosmic vicinity (that is, it is e...

Mars may have abundant water in the past, but if it did the water is all gone now, at least all the liquid water. To me, the most important lesson here is that while Mars may have had an ocean three billion years ago, the Earth has had an ocean for more than three billion years, and it is still ther...

Bystander wrote: Do you have a link that doesn't take you to a hotmail login screen? :? Oh, I'm very sorry! No, I guess I don't. Well, you can see it if you go to the homepage of Sky & Telescope (http://www.skyandtelescope.com). Right now the picture is there, but I don't know for how long. Ann

Rob wrote: Try as I might I can't see what portion this more detailed image is of the Dec03/09 APOD. I'm also not quite sure why a polar ring galaxy image wouldn't include the, um, polar ring. Well, this is why the Hubble's tiny field of view is a problem. In the wide-field image by Immo Gerber and ...

Hah, I like it - Jupiter's Great Red Spot is a part of Jupiter's Great Red Spot! (And there is a very face-on center of a spiral galaxy in there, too. What galaxy is it, I wonder? Could it be, uh, M74? Any suggestions? No, wait - I think it is NGC 1232!)

Ann

Rob said: I'd say it's bloody amazing that the stars are as cleanly imaged as they are. Great image! I agree! As a color freak, I'd like you to pay attention to the little "ultra-red" star below the loop of Mars (just below the 11/11 position of Mars, if you look at the annotated image (sl...

Wow, that's three great submissions, Rob! I'm impressed. And yes - I particularly like Einstein in (or on) Hubble!

Just one question - couldn't you find a way to fit my favorite cluster, the Pleiades, into all that blue stuff of the Earth and the surroundings of the space telescope?

Ann

BMAONE23 wrote:

shouldn't that read
ETBGR8

You're right! Something got lost in translation.



This thing isn't working!

Ann

Thanks to Tycho Brahe's careful observations of the path of Mars across the sky, Johannes Kepler was able to show that Mars follows an elliptical orbit around the Sun. http://curvebank.calstatela.edu/birthdayindex/dec/dec14brahe/brahe2006.jpg Tycho Brahe. Note the fake nose. Tycho Brahe wore a prost...

It's official: It's the new interstellar greeting of the universe. Don't say hi. Say 6EQUJ5. Now if we only knew how to pronounce it. But maybe pronouncing it isn't necessary, since soundwaves don't carry through interstellar space (and don't give me that thing about radiowaves). So we have to spell...