Starship Asterisk*

Chris Peterson wrote:I think I get the confusion. You're looking at the cropped image on the main page? I'm looking at the actual APOD image that you get when you click on that image.

Ah, I see. Well, the full, uncropped image certainly looks like nothing I've ever taken.

I'm confused. M60 appears absolutely dead center in the image. NGC 4647 is in the upper right, and M60-UCD1 is in the center of the lower right quadrant. Are we looking at the same image? I see M60 as a big overexposed thing dominating the top-left quadrant. M60-UCD1 is the smallish, whitish "...

geckzilla wrote:Nitpicker is a fairly new member we don't know much about yet.

To borrow from the caption, "dense smudge" could equally be applied to me. Hope that helps.

Indeed very interesting. I barely knew of M60, and now I'm being told about the existence of M60-UCD1. Where will it all end? And thank goodness for the caption, as otherwise I might have assumed it was a lousy, overblown exposure of the Moon with a few washed-out stars and the odd aberration. (In o...

Well done bystander ... tag you're it. I really didn't think it would be that hard, but wasn't sure. I grew up with a mother who liked doing 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles of things like a clear blue sky, and perhaps this rubbed off on me.

Owlice, re the spoiler, fairy nuff, I concede.

"Life after dead"?

The trees may "live" on as books, but it looks like the editors are gone for good.

It's not simple for a slowly moving object. Assuming the streak is unsaturated in all channels (which appears to be the case here) you need to either integrate the intensity over the entire path, or you need to determine the exposure time for any single pixel (or pixel grouping) and then scale the ...

Especially while the NASA site is down.

Hint: it's looking down on the former CCCP.

MargaritaMc wrote:there were no Apods more recent than 2010

Looks like a typo ... "2010" should be "2013".

I have confirmed that this streak did not match any of the 14,650 civilian satellites in the NORAD TLE database published at the time of the observation. The only other information I have to go on is from Wikipedia: in the year 2001, almost 20,000 objects were catalogued from all sources. So, in 201...

Me, I am going with, there was something in the meteors, This year I have noticed more than a few meteors with a greenish burn. Enough small particles left from a burned out meteor shower could have been the cause. What turns green when burned? The green commonly observed in bright meteors is cause...

The Jade Scope Observatory, in the dark boondocks of New South Wales and run remotely from Hong Kong, gives me a serious case of green envy, but I am nowhere near New Brunswick, so not related to the APOD from the day before.

Me, I am going with, there was something in the meteors, This year I have noticed more than a few meteors with a greenish burn. Enough small particles left from a burned out meteor shower could have been the cause. What turns green when burned? Wow, I don't think that possibility has been mentioned...

Beyond, that's a terrible segue back to astronomy. You Oort to know better.

Norman, you might be able to solve the Shag Harbour Incident by trolling.

Seems to be looking about NE (based on sky motion) from a latitude of N46. Can Aurora Borealis be observed from so far South? Based on the topography of the location if the camera had been pointing NE much of what you would be able to see is the cliff wall. That said, the camera seems to be pointed...

This APOD is an attempt not only to solve this intriguing sky riddle, but to measure how powerful the APOD readership is as a citizen-science, collective-intelligence engine. I remain unconvinced that this intriguing sky riddle has been solved for sure. Too many possibilities if you read all the co...

This one does it for me:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010219.html

Higher res version now on Wikipedia:

I have no idea whether this one will prove difficult or not:
(BTW, when answering, is there really a need for a spoiler to mask a URL?)

Incidentally, I chose the name "Nitpicker" because: a) my first ever post to this forum was particularly nitpicky, b) it is a reminder to me not to nitpick too much, c) it is an open invitation to others to correct me, should I write something iffy (I'm fairly thick-skinned), d) in most of...

The ambiguity arises because the Earth's noontime equator is moving in the opposite direction of the Sun's apparent movement in the sky. The Sun is moving south in the sky because the equator on the daytime side of the Earth is moving north of the ecliptic, and vice versa. Never heard the term &quo...

Not as hard as it seems:

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130920.html

From only a few days ago.

Well, my re-reading of this entire topic leads me to believe that, as an exercise in testing the collective intelligence of this forum's contributors, we haven't been very decisive (especially me). Several people have been convincing, but I'm not sure that a majority have been convinced. One point w...

Seems to be looking about NE (based on sky motion) from a latitude of N46. Can Aurora Borealis be observed from so far South? The view is southward, and yes aurora can be viewed well from that latitude. Right you are. I live too close to the tropics and the heat is getting to me. I assumed (which i...

Seems to be looking about NE (based on sky motion) from a latitude of N46. Can Aurora Borealis be observed from so far South?