Starship Asterisk*

When the Mars Global Surveyor reached it's destination it was traveling approximately 5KPS faster than Mars' relative velocity. To achieve orbit insertion and be successfully captured by Mars' Gravity Well the orbiter needed to shed about 1KPS of speed which required sufficient fuel for a 20 to 25 ...

Got it. Mars is traveling through space at a little over 24KPS. So when the MGS arrived at a speed of 5KPS, while it was traveling significantly slower than Mars' solar orbit, it was traveling faster than Mars escape velocity and as such needed to reduce speed to 4KPS to ensure orbital insertion. So...

When the Mars Global Surveyor reached it's destination it was traveling approximately 5KPS faster than Mars' relative velocity. To achieve orbit insertion and be successfully captured by Mars' Gravity Well the orbiter needed to shed about 1KPS of speed which required sufficient fuel for a 20 to 25 m...

Kind of like Cal Worthington and his dog spot

Looks more like Mr. DNA from Jurassic Park

ygmarchi wrote:It was copied from a sci-fi movie, I just can't recall which.

There was a similar device (Same??) used in the movie 2012 as an indicator that the Sun was about to catastrophically alter the EARTH

There is also an apparent object displaying motion in the opposite direction at the 3:00 position. It covers about 1/5th the distance in the opposite direction and is only just visible at the edge of the field of view in the second image

definitely a place that I would like to see a Curiosity style rover examining

Wonder if Snow White has seven little moons in orbit

Interesting but kind of puzzling. According to the Planck spacecraft, the latest estimated age of the universe is 13.82B years. Assuming that light speed is constant in the confines of space and hasn't changed over time, shouldn't we only be able to see back as far as first light? The graphic suppli...

An iris has a dark dot, the pupil, in it. And :no:, it doesn't look like the flower either. https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/fd/f1/75/fdf175cbca4c0034e6616c194fe6d2ae.jpg I don't know. Doesn't the shape and color of the Iris Nebula somewhat resemble a blue iris? Ann If you rotate the Iris ...

Funny,
At first glance my mind thought of it as "The Song of the Hummingbird"

Especially if it were a One Way Trip

Personally, I find the concept of gravity to be very attractive but I am also repulsed by the thought of Anti Gravity

If they truly want to see if we can survive there (not likely without pressurized habitats) They should send a Payload with the next explorer project that includes a water supply and seeds to show we Can or Can't grow food there. The lander would need a small dome with internal mechanisms and camera...

Here is a nice evening view of the observatory with the Slit in a static position and from a slightly different perspective

Considering that Mercury covered such a small portion of the Sun's surface (smaller than many larger Sun Spots) it would more likely go undetected by any instrument incapable of discerning a small Exo-planet from a Star-spot. The only telltale sign would be from the Duration and repetition of the ev...

funny thing is, in the linked article the Dress is clearly either Light blue/Gold or White/Gold with Blueness caused by shadowing while the adjoining article definitely is Royal Blue and Black The WIKI article definitely displays a dress that is not Blue and Black https://www.buzzfeed.com/claudiakoe...

While the gamma ray sun may be quiet when compared to the energetic gamma ray moon, it can be far brighter than the gamma ray moon when flaring http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/658561main_LAT_all-sky_flare_March_7_2012_labels.jpg http://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/objects/heapow/archive/solar_syste...

This would have been a much better image if it were taken near Solar Eclipse and had both the Sun and Moon in the same image.
But not bad though...
Why, the Moon is just teeming with Energy. All we need to do is find a way to gather that Gamma and put it to use.

APOD wrote [cut] up to a billion or more times [cut] which sounds "as heard on TV". Don't mess with gamma rays. They're seriously energetic. There's a reason people don't go near the Chernobyl site and why astronauts need shielding from them! (Although apparently humans are more harmful t...

Ann,
That is a really interesting elliptical galaxy with the interior dust lanes and apparent blue starbirth within it. There is also an interesting apparent toroidal structure visible

At least the police didn't kill this crazy person even though it could have been devastating if the device were real. I'm kinda surprised that they didn't shoot to kill

Happy Earth Day to all