Starship Asterisk*

Ah, I hadn't read; you were talking about this. You should post a link w/ info on the subject you start. 8)

It may be possible, but there are many ice/rock object orbiting the sun in the outer reaches of the solar system. There was a discussion a while back about whether Pluto should actually be called a planet; such objects were talked about in more detail.

Pluto has one satellite, called Charon.

Am I the only one who doesn't see any nebula???? http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0507/abell39_misti_c50.jpg The star is in the middle, the "bubble" around it is the nebula. A planetary nebula is created when a star in it's dying stages "puff"s off its outer layers. Here's...

Saving makc the trouble:

Smells like a bot. It should be very, very smart bot to translate "Larry Ottawa, Canada" to "Larry from Canada" :?: And again, bots usually have links to some commercial site. Unless...it's the first wave of a new generation of super-intelligent über-bots! From the planet Cricke...

Hi! I agree with Larry from Canada. I also noticed what looked like Ice in some of the craters. Orin Stepanek Smells like a bot. But those are awfully random elements it repeated. It appears not selling anything. Orin, say something else. And don't start it with "Hi! I agree with Orca..."...

Well, though there are a lot of "lockings," most of them do seem to keep the conversations organized. Granted...if you were to "let the threads fly" as it were, there would be a lot of repeated subjects. But we could always go back to the traditional thread control mechanisim: mi...

ahuffman wrote:Would not a single exposure of such a picture be possible above the Arctic Circle in winter?

A single exposure? The issue is the length of the exposure. The longer the shutter is open, the longer the star trials.

If you are asking why do the star trails appear circular, it's because the camera was focused directly on the pole star.

#2, w00t. The third one is is crooked! 8)

I find it interesting that people assume an object is more "real" if it is photographed in the same tiny part of the EM spectrum that our eyes are sensitive to (at least what our brains tell us our eyes are actually seeing). But then...I suppose there is a "tactile element" that ...

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0506/marssunset_spirit_big.jpg Pretty strange indeed. The only explanation they give is that the filters they used bring out the blue color: This small panorama of the western sky was obtained using Pancam's 750-nanometer, 530-nanometer and 430-nanometer color...

imagine liquid comet. there would be no crater at all. I guess it is about how much of impact energy can be consumed for plastic deformation - if none, it would have to crack, leaving large crater. That sounds about right to me. How about a brick dropped into a box of polystyrene packing peanuts? T...

that's the great part of APOD, it shows all of those. Agreed. I don't think I can really choose one subject over any other. I think APOD has always had a good mix of beauty and science. Both are important. IMO: on one hand, our lives are enriched by the deepening of total human knowlege. But at the...

Very nice. 8)

Dan Cordell wrote:I had trouble deciding between the top three, but I chose solar system objects simply because I love picture of Mars.

I thought this was interesting:

Without a doubt...those tracks were made by a 1964 Ford pickup.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0504/ngc3628_croman_c45.jpg You'd have to know the distance of the smudge and compare it to the distance the galaxy. Without knowing that, the object could be a small satelite galaxy, like our Magellanic Clouds, or a large galaxy hundreds of thousands of light...

True indeed! And it's those dark, hot, dense regions of nebulae where protostars are formed.

BANG wrote:It was already explained in that picture

Wow...noob, aka BANG, getting snappy about an explanation...that's ironic...

Or another question: why did they choose a target that is 50,000 ly away?

Besides, when "they" get the message, it will show them just how primitive we are...they will think we still play Atari.

You can break down nebulae into two groups: emission and reflection . The Trifid Nebula (M20) contains examples of both. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0204/trifid_aao.jpg The reddish-pink color signifies an emission nebula. The cloud is largely made of H2. When ultraviolet light from nearby...

"That's no moon, it's a space station."

The pull of Jupiter’s gravity is 26 times stronger than the Earth so I he weighed 100 pounds on Earth he would weigh 2,600 pounds on Jupiter, Bilderback, that is actually a bit high. The gravity of Jupiter is 2.34 times that of the Earth. A kid that weighs 100 lbs on Earth would weigh 234 lbs on th...