Starship Asterisk*

geckzilla wrote:Anyone having any luck seeing a flying lizard?

No, a chirping bird, as usual!

A nice toy!

This link may be a simple analogy. Instead of changing the frequency, maybe changing the volume(of the universe) will determine the size of the spheres.
Then again, maybe not!

My deepest sympathy, Orin. Dogs truly are our best friend.

The Cave Nebula (Sh2-155, Caldwell9), LDN1216 and VdB155 http://www.istarion.net/Picturepages/Nebulas/SH2-155%20The%20Cave%20Nebula.shtml Copyright: Matts Sporre http://www.istarion.net/images/Nebulas/Sh2-155%20The%20Cave%20Nebula/Publish/SH2-155-Hubble-Matts-Sporre-1280C.jpg Except for the Cave Ne...

Melting Glaciers, Joe Raedle’s photographs from Greenland
Scroll down to the Greenland visit
http://peopleus.blogspot.com/2013/09/ic ... urces.html

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Sirius_A_and_B_Hubble_photo.jpg Even though I'm only just starting out on the image processing side of things, I'm already feeling that I don't enjoy it quite as much as actually being out under the sky at night. This may prove to be the real limit...

I understand that through accretion, a neutron star will "spin up". Wouldn't the progenitor star have lost some of it's spin by shedding it's outer layers?

Chris Peterson wrote:

rstevenson wrote:I just found out it's a 24.5" mirror, replacing the old 20" one. Very interesting technology in this design.

The Planewave instruments are very nice. I'm considering a 24" model for my own observatory.

Don't forget the FLI ProLine PL16803 that goes with it

That is a VERY nice toy! Do you get to help in getting it up and running?

In the case of processing for aesthetic images, there really is no set rule of thumb for the amount of sharpening or anything else. What I mean by this is that how you manipulate an image depends a LOT on what object you are processing. I'm sure it's no one's goal to overcook an image, but that's wh...

Chris, when you say sharpening, are you referring to wavelet function or some sort of sharpening in Photoshop?

Nitpicker, here is a nice tutorial for using registax. It's written for Ver 4, and mono processing but the workflow is the same for color.
http://paulhaese.net/planetaryprocessing.html

I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that's the best explanation, just that it's a good one. Don't think I'm arguing against a subsurface sea on Europa. In fact, I think the best evidence supports that conclusion. I'm simply pointing out that there remains a good deal of uncertainty in the matte...

From what I can tell, it's believed that the liquid ocean on Europa is 100km deep, which would probably make it global. If there were life there, then it would necessarily be expelled through a geyser, wouldn't it? It would be a lot easier to look there than going through all that ice. Very likely....

Thanks. I didn't realize the water or ice layer was so thin. I have to repete what Ann said then, 'Europa keeps getting more and more interesting.' Yes. But all the fractured terrane on the surface shows that at least in the past chunks of crust were rearranged enormously, like ice flows on the Art...

NGC 346 NGC 346 is an open cluster with associated nebula which spans 200 light-years. It is part of the Small Magellanic Cloud and lies approximately 210,000 light-years away in the constellation Tucana. Three panel mosaic Hubble Legacy Archive Data set: HST_10248_01_ACS_WFC_F814W_sci(Red) HST_102...

See also Bill Nye's open letter to Barack Obama asking for 1.5 billion dollars for planetary science. This one's particularly refreshing because it's specifically directed towards funding the Planetary Science Division, by far the most scientifically productive part of NASA, and a part that is bein...

Spirit reminds me of "The Little Engine That Could". What a great view it provided! I can imagine the briefing to the Mission Project Team: She'll only last a month, so make your plans accordingly.

geckzilla wrote:I can't figure out if astronomy is an elitist hobby or if things really need to be that expensive...

No more so than owning a Harley Davidson. Talk about price gouging parts, in both cases!

All is not lost, Nitpicker! Your Alt/Az doesn't have to be, well, an Alt/Az. With the addition of a simple wedge, you can join the ever growing ranks of deep sky astrophotographers. Then you can start worrying about sky limited exposures! http://sctscopes.net/Photo_Basics/Accessories/Wedges/wedges.h...

The primary limitation of an altaz mount is that it's nearly useless for imaging, since you are pushing things even with 30-second exposures, and that's way to short to get good results. Wait a minute! Aren't you the one who stated that short exposures collect the same amount of data as one long ex...

The primary limitation of an altaz mount is that it's nearly useless for imaging, since you are pushing things even with 30-second exposures, and that's way to short to get good results. Wait a minute! Aren't you the one who stated that short exposures collect the same amount of data as one long ex...

"...when viewed from our Galaxy's center ... the light from this powerful laser would combine with light from our Sun to together appear only as bright as a faint and distant star". -------------------------------------------------------------------- Using that logic then, it would seem t...

Two days later, it dawns on me that Gallipoli Barracks is beyond the ridge in my two sunrise photos, above. The Australian Army's official insignia is the Rising Sun badge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_Sun_(badge) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/Australian_Army_Emblem_Tran...