Starship Asterisk*

I wonder why Nasa doesn;t use the same technology as Facebook to produce stereo or 3-D pictures. How many people have an old set of red and blue paper spectacles lying around? I don't know what FB does, but here's a de-anaglyphed version suitable for cross-eyed viewing. _ de-anaglyph-Phobos_stereoM...

Just a stunning image…
Space cat approves!



Eric

Am I misinterpreting something in the caption? It seems to be saying that, since the Moon is illuminated from the bottom, the Sun is below the horizon so the picture was taken before sunrise. Could not the picture have been taken after sunset? Six months earlier?? You are correct, it was just left ...

I wonder how come that stars are smeared like in a long exposure, Moon is crisp and lights from small Guatemalan towns are crisp. The three must move differentially, must they not? Or is Moon in fact smeared? If the moon was being tracked by the camera and the exposure was long enough then that wou...

I tried and failed to google the colour coding :( There's a description in the infrared link in the APOD explanation. But even that is confusing because they show two examples of the dog in infrared. The first one we are mostly familiar with from Flir cameras. The hottest light is the bright yellow...

An example of why we often use pseudocolor palettes when trying to get more out of an image. I've converted the original to grayscale and then applied a common pseudocolor mapping used for astronomical images. It results in an image that lets our eyes see more detail than would otherwise be apparen...

I think Mr. Adams would appreciate today’s APOD image!



Eric

I'm always envious of people who manage to see, and take pictures of, such vividly blue noctilucent clouds. They have never looked so blue when I have seen them. Don't feel bad. It's because they are not vividly blue to the eye. Rather like blue stars, visually they are bluish white. It takes an im...

is Triangulum Galaxy a thing you can see ? Because its photons must be 3.2 million years old They start off with... “ What is the oldest thing you can see? ” Then they qualify it with a “likely” later on in the post… “ Given its distance, light from Andromeda is likely also the farthest object that...

Brilliant image… “ The corpse, already greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire, sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose informing voice had consigned me to th...

So it seems according to the image that the central bar is rotating in a direction opposite the rest of the galaxy but the caption implies this is an illusion caused by the Sun’s motion. How does that work? We're not seeing the motion of the stars here in the galaxy's frame of reference, but in our...

So it seems according to the image that the central bar is rotating in a direction opposite the rest of the galaxy but the caption implies this is an illusion caused by the Sun’s motion.
How does that work?



Eric

This is definitely one of my all time favorite APOD titles!

Victor, those are wonderful!

Eric

Earth might be the densest planet but the reason Earth is more dense is because of gravitational compression. In fact though Mercury is by far the smallest planet with a radius of 2440 km it has basically the same surface gravity of Mars which has a radius of 3396 km! Awesome photo btw. I love when ...

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 6:14 pm

XgeoX wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 6:04 pm

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 3:19 pm

All I see is a circular central bulge seen at a tilt.

Looks much more oval than circular to me, just saying.

It appears to me to have the same eccentricity as the galaxy as a whole. As the galaxy is a disc, that would imply that the core is, as well.

Hmm, never looked at it that way…

NGC 6744, depending on the exposure and filters, looks to be right on the precipice of being a barred spiral… https://web.archive.org/web/20080721034305im_/http://www.aao.gov.au/images/image/aatccd006.jpg Eric Wikipedia wrote: NGC 6744 (also known as Caldwell 101) is an intermediate spiral galaxy a...

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 3:19 pm

XgeoX wrote: ↑Thu Jun 23, 2022 11:05 am NGC 6744, depending on the exposure and filters, looks to be right on the precipice of being a barred spiral…

All I see is a circular central bulge seen at a tilt.

Looks much more oval than circular to me, just saying.

NGC 6744, depending on the exposure and filters, looks to be right on the precipice of being a barred spiral…


Eric

Serene is the perfect description for this beautiful image.

Eric

Cool photo, great composition but a little too saturated for my taste.

This pic shows especially well that a galaxy isn't a neat and tidy spiral. Many pics of other galaxies suggest a cloud of stars, relatively disorganised, around the main structure, but not as clearly as this. So the Milky Way will have a shell of stars. Do we know this, or only infer it? John We kn...

The question might then be asked what sort of tail/trail might Venus and planet Earth be showing November 12, 2010: Did you know that the Earth has a dust tail? The Spitzer Space Telescope sailed right through it a few months ago, giving researchers a clear idea of what it looks like. That could be...

DrewJEvans wrote: ↑Sat Apr 30, 2022 5:40 am Thanks so much for selecting my image as APOD.

Quite honored. Clear skies everyone.

A very worthy image indeed Drew! It’s so beautiful and sharp my first thought was “Hubble”.
Thanks for sharing!


Eric

Someone should have put dinger in a box and see how he liked it!

Eric