Starship Asterisk*

The featured image was captured in 2021 by NASA's robotic Juno spacecraft when it passed by the immense moon. The close pass reduced Juno's orbital period around Jupiter from 53 days to 43 days. Have I understood this correctly? That Juno's close pass has affected Ganymede's orbit by 10 days?! Sure...

madtom1999 wrote: ↑Thu Jun 01, 2023 8:37 am Is there any FLOSS software I can use to play with this stuff at home?

Play with what, exactly - what are you wanting to do?

APOD Robot wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 4:08 am M16: Eagle Nebula Deep Field
From afar, the whole thing looks like ...

I am pretty sure there is no way (yet) for us to see this from any perspective other than "afar"!

Especially that image, taken through green, violet, and ultraviolet filters! Yes, but that only makes it "false" color according to how nature has evolved our eyes and our brains to see and interpret light waves. A different being might well look at Saturn as see it much as we can only th...

Yes, I know that the Saturn picture has been color-enhanced to bring out details in Saturn's atmosphere. I'll never forget my shock at first seeing it, because the concept of false or mapped color was unknown to me. I disliked Saturn for a while after seeing that image. Oh well, that's me... :roll:...

Is a stable Lagrange point really a "gravitational well"? It is only so because the centrifugal forces balance the gravitational ones, not because of the g-forces alone - no? Happy to be corrected by anyone better informed...

Yes, I know that the Saturn picture has been color-enhanced to bring out details in Saturn's atmosphere. I'll never forget my shock at first seeing it, because the concept of false or mapped color was unknown to me. I disliked Saturn for a while after seeing that image. Oh well, that's me... :roll:...

According to Google:

A constellation is an area on the celestial sphere in which a group of visible stars forms a perceived pattern or outline

whereas

An asterism [is] a pattern of stars that is not a constellation.

So... basically an asterism is a pattern that isn't a pattern ...???

Congrats to all at APOD for the prize - https://www.iau.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iau2206/!

gorade wrote: ↑Mon Jul 25, 2022 7:18 am To my eyes it looks waning. Or didn't I find the right moon after all?

It is - who said otherwise? Text says "a new moon will occur in three days" - i.e. it's waning.

On that occasion it was commented that whoever was on the promontory was closer to the Moon, I personally thought that a person on the beach of Cabuyal, Ecuador would be even closer due to the terrestrial equatorial thickening. If I'm wrong I want to know After Ranulph Feinnes, the explorer/writer ...

Finding things to see in quasi-random patterns... always reminds me of this Peanuts strip: https://64.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lse4 ... 1_1280.jpg

@JIRKA - it's not only you.

I'm very doubtful you were seeing any edge blur due to the atmosphere. Well.. from my admittedly limited understanding, the thick atmosphere will still distort the image we see from here - you're not seeing the atmosphere per se, but light passing through it will be refracted nonetheless. This, alo...

An interesting book, for those that don't know it, is "Chasing Venus" by Andrea Wulf', chronicling the attempts by' astronomers in the 18thC to measure Venus' two transits across the sun then, which would allow them to work out the distance it was from the Sun, and hence begin to get an id...

Interesting point in passing about what's East and what's West on the moon. After a bit of searching, I found this article with some background info:
https://the-moon.us/wiki/IAU_directions

De58te wrote: ↑Thu Jan 06, 2022 10:00 am if Venus is directly in line between the Earth and the Sun,

Pretty sure that's not the case here - we'd have "new Venus" rather than a crescent one. As for the hypothesis in that sci-fi story... I am also no expert but don't think that it's true.

"about 2 percent illuminated by sunlight" sounds somewhat strange to me - it is 100% illuminated by sunlight!! I presume you mean that about 2% of the sunlight that hits it is reflected...

Vertical?! hmm.. ok, we know what you mean

So.... out of interest, what happened to June 10th? Did the Vogons bulldoze it to make way for a time-tunnel from June 9 straight to June 11?

Reminds me of William Blake's "To See a World...", which begins:

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour."

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/b ... world.html

orin stepanek wrote: ↑Wed Oct 23, 2019 11:13 am I know it is a famous painting; and I'll get a lot of flack; but to me this painting looks like a child's painting! But it is a Vincent van Gogh art piece, therefore very very valuable!

You should look closer - it is NOTHING LIKE a child's painting!

You can help name Saturn's new moons, but you should understand the rules.

So... no "Moony McMoonface then?

SO what actually causes the bright "flash"? I would have guessed light reflecting off dust thrown up, but in an eclipse...?

Wondering what's the cause of all the "black carbon particles in red from combustion processes" in central Africa?