Starship Asterisk*

Some random comments: .... - And finally, Ann, what exactly is a "color commentator" (though I suppose that is obvious) and how did you acquire that title? (After two years here, I figure I'd ask. 😊) Well, the title was given to me soon after I joined Starship Asterisk* in 2010 (before we...

With a temperature near 200,000 K, WD J005311 is the hottest star known. The extreme properties of the central star are being powered by the residual radioactive decay of ⁵⁶Ni, where the usual half-life of 6.0 days from electron capture is increased to many centuries due to the nickel being complet...

At first I ho-hummed this APOD, because I didn't find it beautiful or immediately interesting. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2404/Pa30V_NASA_960.jpg I still don't find the image beautiful, but now I think it is really interesting! The event that created the nebula seen in the APOD was the merger ...

I should have commented on this APOD before, because it is really stunning! https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2404/CoronaExmouth_Hart_1080.jpg APOD 2 April 2024 annotated.png So these are my questions. Are the long straight lines magnetic lines, where particles rush out away from the Sun into the out...

Unfortunately I could find no information about the star driving HH 30. HH 111 is another matter. According to Wikipedia, The HH 111 driving force is a 25 L ☉ class 1 protostar, so, in other words, it is 25 times brighter than the Sun. Already! Very young stars are always a bit faint, and they grow ...

I have nothing to say about the magnetic lines in today's APOD, but there is a video that explains why the black hole images (minus the magnetic lines) look the way they do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUyH3XhpLTo I found the video kind of hard to understand, but then, I'm a math idiot. But even...

I look forward to reading APOD every April Fools Day. What happened, guys? Want more "The Moon is made of green cheese" jokes? I've only got that one. https://lightsinthedark.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/green-moon.jpg Jason Major of lightsinthedark.com wrote: Way back in 1546 ye olde Engl...

Can anybody tell me the date this APOD was posted? If I'm not mistaken, this is the first time that this APOD has been posted. The first time this picture was posted here at Starship Asterisk* was in the Found Images thread a few days ago. It has not been an APOD before, because the image was only ...

I like it. Of course an Earth-centered solar system has nothing to do with reality, but the Ptolemaic system was very carefully constructed and worked extremely well, before humanity had better instruments to measure the actual motions of the planets relative to the Earth (Tycho Brahe) and mathemati...

I'm mostly passive on this board and just like reading the comments. But I do like my Star clusters. Wait a minute on this remanent core talk. If it is a dwarf galaxy core. It had to be a real old galaxy. The estimated age of the Omega Centauri stars is from 10-12 billion years old. If that is the ...

The solution is goats. Ours will happily gobble up vegetable remnants we don't eat ourselves. I'm sure your neighbors would be fine with a few goats around the house, no? _ https://asterisk.apod.com/download/file.php?id=49416&t=1 Thanks for the suggestion, Chris, I didn't think of that! :D 🐐 Th...

Very true... but possibly excepting flowers! The color of the petals of pink/red/blue/purple flowers is created by a class of molecules called anthocyanins, and the actual color can vary across that range, determined primarily by pH. So really, there is no "natural" or "real" co...

I think that if you see a color photo whose color balance seems surprising, chances are that it is the picture that is different, not the natural phenomenon that has taken on a strange hue. Very true... but possibly excepting flowers! The color of the petals of pink/red/blue/purple flowers is creat...

Globular clusters are leftover galaxy cores? The 2010 count of them was 157. We see large numbers of them in the Andromeda galaxy, and other galaxies. So, based on that number crunching, clusters are two or three orders of magnitude more common than galaxies. There is no evidence that globular clus...

I've asked this before re the Hercules cluster: do astronomers know the approximate distance between the closest stars to each other here? They seem to know the approximate number of stars, and the size and distance of the structure. I'm assuming things are not homogeneous tho: some stars are relat...

So... globular clusters are not my favorites because they are not so colorful. Anyway... Let's compare the two largest globular clusters of the Milky Way! NGC5139_mdf1024[1].png Millions of Stars in Omega Centauri Image Credit & Copyright: Massimo Di Fusco and Mirco Turra https://www.universeto...

Why is the galaxy cluster such a hostile environment for star formation? I would have thought that all the chaotic movement would create shock waves to collapse the dust and gas and kick off star formation? The way I understand it, large galaxy clusters and giant elliptical galaxies "grow up&q...

they are both affected by the hostile environment of the galaxy cluster, so they are transiting away from their spiral shape and gradually shutting down their star formation. Ann Why is the galaxy cluster such a hostile environment for star formation? I would have thought that all the chaotic movem...

Beautiful and Amazing. I wish they had mentioned the range of distances to galaxies (e.g. from 170 million to 10 billion light years away etc). Just to get and give a perspective, not everything that's "seen (looks) together and close" isn't so in reality. How can we know that most of the...

https://scx1.b-cdn.net/csz/news/800w/2024/hubble-sees-new-star-p.jpg?f=webp FS Tau is a multi-star system made up of FS Tau A, the bright star-like object near the middle of the image, and FS Tau B (Haro 6-5B), the bright object to the far right that is partially obscured by a dark, vertical lane o...

Still pushing the "comet is a dirty snowball" theory despite pictures, impacting one, & actually landing on one??? We know betteer. Comets are a mix of rocky material, mostly silicates and carbonates, and volatile ices. Nothing wrong with calling that a "dirty snowball"... a...

Hello all -- I'm trying to understand colors of the sky at twilight. I'm not in the field of physics, but I've tried to grasp some concepts, which I first briefly note, and then pose some questions. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. 1. Attempt at basic understanding. The blue light waves o...

Hey, I liked this APOD! It sounded like fish - or maybe whales - splashing in the ocean. Instead, it's a supernova remnant splashing in the cosmic sea!

This APOD is approved by Ann!

Ann

Thanks to all of you who looked at my post! Please let me know -- no one wants to reply to my question because: 1. It is a such difficult question, impossible, I've asked a question that has stumped all viewers! (unlikely!) 2. On the contrary, my question is quite idiotic and incomprehensible, the ...

Are you sure it isn't the ISS ? The APOD image is from 1999, and the ISS was launched in 1998. So it could have been. Today's APOD, like those on most Sundays, is a repeat, having been used on at least five occasions. It first appeared on 30 Aug 1999, just a few days after the image was snapped, wi...