Starship Asterisk*

Why does the apparent shape of Mercury change as it transits? If we were looking at its shadow on the curved surface of the Sun then it would make sense. However as a back-lit object, it is unclear to me why Mercury should appear to have a changing elliptic outline. See attached image analysis from ...

B/W, inverted, and flipped, looks very much like a winter scene in the woods.

Black Hole Lives Matter!

Great picture, Boomer! :D .... The reason for the strange appearance of Betelgeuse in old astronomical photographs is that these photographs were made using blue and ultraviolet-sensitive plates, and Betelgeuse emits so little blue light that it virtually disappeared in those photographs! ... Note ...

The word "violent" all depends on your point of view. On the one hand, altering the course of a hundred billion suns requires titanic forces, but on the other, the interaction of galaxies appears like puffs of smoke gently mingling over the course of a billion years.

I brightened-up your image of Enceladus from https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170209.html for a similar effect.

Very impressive image! I was wondering if the dark blobs in the lower left corner are real or image processing artifacts? See attached enhanced image. Also similar appearance in upper left corner.

Why do the pulsations appear to be somewhat in phase? Here is a plot of average image brightness for each of the 10 frames.

DaddyG wrote: ↑Fri Feb 08, 2019 7:13 pm Four planets?

Yes four planets: including the Earth!

Here is my rough estimate of what the comet looked like through my binoculars on Dec. 18. I manually drew the comet (fuzzy gray patch in lower left corner) onto a picture of the Pleiades. Not particularly striking for my optics, but then again it was 7 million miles away! This is from suburban Cleve...

Here are the extended paths to show the apparent radiant.

Thanks, now I want to visit the Aiguille du Midi Skywalk, it sounds spectacular!

neufer wrote: ↑Tue Sep 18, 2018 2:11 am

• The Aiguille du Midi ski center.

What is the bright area on the mountain? (Circled in red.) A very large climbing party?

I like these alliterative possibilities:

a blunderbuss of black holes
a blockbuster of black holes
a blowout of black holes
a blitz of black holes

Here is a slightly enhanced version, without the very odd artifact colors.

Interesting effect. Similar to how I brightened the shadows of your Enceladus image on Feb 9, 2017.

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php? ... 70#p266970

Here is a version with the shadows enhanced. Presumably Saturn is illuminating the dark side.

I made a video of the moon crossing in front of the Earth using a similar technique:

Jim Leff wrote:Can someone please post the reversed images? Perhaps to Imgur, or other free easy image upload service?

Here are the images swapped left and right for viewing using the parallel technique (focus eyes far away).

I was wondering why Mercury appears to be elliptical, especially away from the center of the sun? Attached is a simple measurement from ImageJ.

The cited paper "http://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.03349v2.pdf" has 115 authors! Just a bit absurd... While superficially it might seem so, this is common with "big science" papers- results that come from billion dollar projects with thousands of scientists involved. There really can be...

The cited paper "http://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.03349v2.pdf" has 115 authors! Just a bit absurd...

Here is a slightly enhanced version with some of the intervening stars removed:

Any idea what this is on the horizon? We had this discussion last time this image was run. I managed to find a daytime photo of a flamingo flying in front of either the same one or a similar one. Regardless of its actual purpose, it is an object which spins when wind blows through it. http://asteri...

Any idea what this is on the horizon?