Starship Asterisk*

The last time I got into what I thought was simply a friendly discussion, the person ended up swearing at me and telling me to do all sorts of unsavory things. It took me very much by surprise. So I'm a little gun shy. :) But I love languages. I've studied five (although I'm not fluent). So when peo...

I wasn't intending to start a debate about it. Someone asked and I answered. Yes, it can be given the English plural with no problem. Generally, one doesn't speak of more than one gnomon anyway. In my dictionary, there were few references to the word being used in the plural form. The reason I chose...

Gnomon is a Greek word. And the plural would be gnomones.

What I'm wondering is who randomly brought a skeleton to the town square. ...or does he just make a visit every day?

I remember reading about the eclipse in Antarctica. There was an eclipse tour going down there. It only cost $40,000 per person. There's no way I'll ever have that much disposable income. :) But I live right in the path of totality for this one and it'll be the first time I've ever seen a total sola...

Is that a bowshock to the left of the top right pillar? It looks like another picture I've seen of a new star blowing away the dust from a forming protostar. And if so, are the jets to the right of it part of that particular event or are they separate?

I'm going to be in my backyard for the eclipse. It goes right over my house, but every campground has been sold out for more than a year and all the hotels are sold out (even with astronomically (ha!) high prices and a requirement of at least three nights' stay). We usually have clear skies in Augus...

Fascinating views of Saturn. I'm going to be so interested to see Cassini's final moments. Mind-boggling to the end.

Maybe it'll be a giant diamond like Arthur C. Clarke wrote in 2061. It was based on a hypothesis by some astronomers, but I always found the idea fascinating.

This is interesting, but I would prefer that A POD stick with A stronomy. It's a satellite image taken by NASA. I think these are interesting when they come up, which isn't often. The Earth Science Picture of the Day sometimes has astronomical pictures, too. One of my favorite APODs was the bucket-...

So are the majority of the stars in the center part of the surrounding nebula, then? Obviously, the galaxy to the left wouldn't be, but those bright stars in the midst of the "jaws" (vivid image!). If so, then, I'd imagine that this is kind of what the Pleiades might have looked like a few...

That's amazing. While I know the definition of an equinox, I don't think I've ever seen a video showing the actual movement of the terminator. Definitely going to show this to my students. We're just about to start the astronomy unit anyway.