Starship Asterisk*

Yup, my left-right confusion has struck again. :oops: I get left and right backwards all the time. If I'm giving you directions, look which way I'm pointing, never trust what I say. Yeah, our minds are quite funny, at least every now and then... Things that seem very clear, quite often are not that...

I have that except with east-west confusion. Maybe they are the same thing, though. This is why I like astronomical orientation because east is left and west is right and that's just the way my brain wants things to be. I don't have a problem with east and west, even flipping back and forth between...

Behind the right hand edge of the frame, and along the right hand side of the image ???? Whooo! Confusing time! I take it you mean to say the left side of the picture? So the right hand side/edge of the frame/image means the part at my left hand? Then you are completely right i think. A little conf...

Saturn secretly peeking from behind the trees, centre on the right? [And also reflected in the water] Cute and quite natural looking image! Yes, that seems to be Saturn, with Beta Librae above it. This is a lovely image. If I'm not mistaken, the Eta Aquariid radiant point is beyond the right hand e...

The superb quality of images sent back from such as the Curiosity rover continues to amaze me. :D Clicking on the APOD brings up a slightly wider field-of-view mosaic that has Sol 603 in its caption. It took some doing but I've been able to find that the raw images used in producing the excellent m...

I couldn't enlarge the picture. That's a pity. I wanted to study the emission nebulas in the dust lane, which are rarely revealed so clearly in this particular galaxy as they are in this picture. I could see the tail, though! :D Ann Oh, that's a shame. The link to the original image doesn't work fo...

It never works well to use Everest as an example as base to peak height, since there are so many other much lower mountains with similar or greater relief (Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea being the kings since their base is well below seal level, giving them net relief of nearly 30,000 feet). I think you m...

APOD Robot wrote:... Mt. Sharp, the unusual central peak of Gale Crater, ...

Just in case you didn't follow the "Mt. Sharp" link, the official name of that mountain is "Aeolis Mons."

Greetings and thanks for the discussion of my image featured in today's APOD. The "normal" tonality image linked above is a good illustration of two possible variations in processing the same data - but it is an APOD dating from 2011. http://www.avertedimagination.com/img_pages/solar_nirv...

But wait a minute though. If today's APOD was a complete inversion like a photographic negative, shouldn't the Sunspots be bright? The very bright spots on today's apod are sunspots. The dark areas are plages, which normally appear brighter than the background surface of the Sun. I totally do not u...

I love looking at the Sun's Hydrogen-alpha light through my little Coronado Personal Solar Telescope . There is a remarkable amount of detail in today's apod. I'm curious about the choice to invert the colors in this image, everything looks backwards to me! Alan Friedman posted a correct color versi...

I didn't know that's Anthony's avatar. All I could tell from his small picture is that it was a mountain. Thanks, Bruce. When I was picking an asterisk avatar I had recently returned from a trip to Yosemite, so I chose an Ansel Adams picture of Half Dome on a whim. I don't claim any special identif...

Why is the meteor streak green? What is causing that color? Colors of meteors -- The color of many Leonids is caused by light emitted from metal atoms from the meteoroid (blue, green, and yellow) and light emitted by atoms and molecules of the air (red). The metal atoms emit light much like in our ...

My, this is a lovely picture. I'm honored. =====> =====> =====> =====> =====> =====> =====> =====>

Thanks for the technical info John, and for the image.

Yes. And also mark your calendar for August 21, 2017 . Will do my friend though it appears as if the route of that eclipse is south of my location....am I reading that incorrectly??? You have to be within the blue borders to see totality. The eclipse is still visible far outside but will leave some...

CURRAHEE CHRIS wrote:Looks like I need to mark my calendar for the event in October!!

Yes. And also mark your calendar for August 21, 2017.

Glorious. The stars and planets are so sharp! It's so easy to find the constellations that the sky seems almost unreal. I'm not criticizing the image, just sharing my first impression.

This is an interesting video, and it looks like the sky was much clearer in Arizona than it was here on the northern California coast! Still, I'm glad I observed this eclipse in person and in real time, even through clouds and some fog. There's a certain majesty to watching the Moon move through Ear...

Sorry, I don't follow. A comment implying that further clarification is required does not support your assertion. Non quod erat demonstrandum sed aliud. Chris, does this really read as a straightforward request for clarification? Whatever that means. Light is just energy, and all the energy in the ...

Given that we are considering phenomena so far outside a normal human frame of reference, the presumption that there is only one correct way to think about this stuff seems rather small minded. I don't think I said anything to suggest otherwise. But the light itself is very old. Whatever that means...

I haven't seen anything from Art on the apod discussions recently. Art, where art thou? Does anyone else have news of Art? He's around. Some posts on the Ten Reasons thread, for sure. http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_140427.jpg " Mrs Grundy " has made it crystal clear that she does wa...

This is the source of much confusion. High redshift galaxies are not old. They're young. In the sense that they were young when they emitted the light we're seeing today. But we always look at things as having the age where we observe them. Thus, if we see a supernova tonight that's a million light...

Anthony Barreiro wrote: If there were cosmologists more than five billion years ago, they would have observed that the expansion of the universe was decelerating, and would have reasonably predicted an eventual "big crunch." Sorry about standing in for Nitpicker here, but since I am so re...

Chris Peterson wrote:He's around. Some posts on the Ten Reasons thread, for sure.

Thanks. I'm glad Art is still around. I regularly read the apod discussions, but the rest of starship asterisk is terra incognita.

It can be disconcerting when someone in an online community disappears without explanation.