Starship Asterisk*

are colours real?
how long is the exposure?
is the ring a true ring in 3d space or just a light echo looking like a ring from the point of view?

Beautiful image! But it looks like the central region of this galaxy is pretty empty of stars - is this really the case? It's an illusion. The central region is nothing but stars! Thanks, Chris. When I look at this flat image, a 2-dimensional elliptical region, or oval, appears to be the main illum...

The egg shell has a pretty uniform hue. The image of the egg does not because of the intensity variations. Even with a hue created by a very narrow wavelength, there is no single color (or meaningful RGB representation) because the actual color is defined by intensity as well as hue. here's a fragm...

neither the Robin's Egg Nebula nor a robin's egg have a colour hue or a wavelength. Both look like some indigo ink that thickens white to pale cyan to blue to dark violet to black. The egg shell has a pretty uniform hue. The image of the egg does not because of the intensity variations. Even with a...

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2308/ngc1360_v2_1024.jpg https://www.10000birds.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/robin-egg.jpg Yes, I guess the turquoise color of robin's eggs is a good proxy for the blue-green color of many planetary nebulas. A robin's egg is never likely to show any large patches ...

At the time when Sirius A becomes a white dwarf, Sirius B will still be a white dwarf orbiting their common center of mass. And the planetary nebula that will be created by Sirius A will envelop Sirius B, too. So that's what Sirius will become for a short time in the future, a binary white dwarf in...

A robin's egg is never likely to show any large patches of pink, however. Ann the alien conspirator who went 1500 years back in time and 1500 ly away to create the Robin's Egg Nebula got somewhat confused: they correctly understood the phrase your eyes were bluer then robin's eggs but failed to see...

I guess they started out as a normal binary star, after which first one and then the other of the two "less than 8 solar masses components" used up their available fuel, shed their outer layers and became the "central double star" of a planetary nebula. Ann what are the chances ...

I wonder how can two stars in a binary system go together hot new white dwarfs

a retrograde GSO, would return to the same point in the sky more often (or less often???) than once per Earth rotation. Hmm, in the simplest case of zero eccentricity and zero inclination, what would the path of such an object be as seen from the ground and how often would it return to the same pos...

Locutus76 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 01, 2023 10:04 pm

Today’s APOD really makes me think of the wonderful artwork of the late Don Lawrence, creator of the Storm comics

or like this:

The link about there likely being a meter thick layer of loose dust on the surface of Phobos says " Evidence comes from infrared pictures that indicate the rapid speed that Phobos' surface cools after sunset. " I suppose my intuition about a loose layer of dust providing insulation and so...

The link about there likely being a meter thick layer of loose dust on the surface of Phobos says " Evidence comes from infrared pictures that indicate the rapid speed that Phobos' surface cools after sunset. " I suppose my intuition about a loose layer of dust providing insulation and so...

Phobos doesn't look so dark to me. Maybe a darker shade of gray should have been used to color the moon. pixels in this APOD's Phobos are like RGB = 115 125 137 of 255, far too bright for albedo 0.071 , or 18 of 255 In the same time Mars's clouds at grazing angles should be as white as they are pre...

my attempt to use the questioning galaxy as a character in the text failed.
Still I think it gives a nice idea for extra bold font designers

Absolutely fascinating, Victor! Ann the black background is the Coal Sack, right[float]Herbig-Haro 46+47 (NIRCam Compass Image) 20.jpg[/float] Herbig-Haro 46+47 (NIRCam Compass Image) 1600.jpg Wait - so all those background galaxies and stars are actually shining THROUGH the Coal Sack Nebula (in ne...

Ann wrote: ↑Sun Jul 30, 2023 9:34 am Absolutely fascinating, Victor!
Ann

the black background is the Coal Sack, right[float][/float]

The ? mark even looks like it's receding from us at an angle, top first, just like the Star Wars movie opening text (though the angle is not nearly as steep)! a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away https://scontent-ams2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/362677290_6368849366569454_1414994844811384739_...

James Webb Space Telescope spies giant cosmic question mark in deep space

I wonder if there in fact is a pair of jets drowned in the spikes.
If only the JWST finds the time for another exposure, when the spikes would align differently

Different pictures of the same deep-sky objects may look very different when you photograph them with different equipment and filters and exposure times and what not! Makes sense to me to switch back and forth to IR version to see clearly where exactly the spherical core is: Milky Way IR allsky-2ma...

Here is a parallel-view Stereogram 3D of a spiral or a tunnel close to our line of sight: https://scontent-mrs2-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/359783428_6704029749616582_7968474930243376459_n.jpg?_nc_cat=111&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=5cd70e&_nc_eui2=AeEuhk7-gg32ipCP6tBV_sicVGFxk9WRryxUYXGT1ZGvLKWyqN...

... I uploaded the "square ring galaxy" to my computer already in 2021! It is a very striking object. ... This is clearly a barred ring galaxy, where the ring, for some reason, looks amazingly square. It is possible that the blue object just above it is a satellite galaxy affecting the ri...

so much for my "orange soot ink" claim

These stars are red for the same reason that sunsets are: wavelength dependent scattering. Not the intrinsic color of the scattering particles. The "soot" preferentially scatters shorter wavelengths of light produce deeper in the star, so only the longer wavelengths (red) make it through....