Search found 13098 matches
- Thu Apr 04, 2024 4:45 am
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: Unusual Nebula Pa 30 (2024 Apr 03)
- Replies: 15
- Views: 796
Re: APOD: Unusual Nebula Pa 30 (2024 Apr 03)
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...
- Wed Apr 03, 2024 6:37 am
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: Unusual Nebula Pa 30 (2024 Apr 03)
- Replies: 15
- Views: 796
Re: APOD: Unusual Nebula Pa 30 (2024 Apr 03)
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...
- Wed Apr 03, 2024 6:31 am
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: Unusual Nebula Pa 30 (2024 Apr 03)
- Replies: 15
- Views: 796
Re: APOD: Unusual Nebula Pa 30 (2024 Apr 03)
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 ...
- Wed Apr 03, 2024 4:46 am
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: Detailed View of a Solar Eclipse Corona (2024 Apr 02)
- Replies: 16
- Views: 1132
Re: APOD: Detailed View of a Solar Eclipse Corona (2024 Apr 02)
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...
- Tue Apr 02, 2024 4:35 am
- Forum: The Communications Center: Breaking Science News
- Topic: HUBBLE sees the new star FS Tau proclaiming its presence with cosmic light show
- Replies: 4
- Views: 536
Re: HUBBLE sees the new star FS Tau proclaiming its presence with cosmic light show
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 ...
- Mon Apr 01, 2024 3:24 pm
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: Swirling Magnetic Field around Our... (2024 Apr 01)
- Replies: 25
- Views: 1117
Re: APOD: Swirling Magnetic Field around Our... (2024 Apr 01)
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...
- Mon Apr 01, 2024 10:11 am
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: Swirling Magnetic Field around Our... (2024 Apr 01)
- Replies: 25
- Views: 1117
Re: APOD: Swirling Magnetic Field around Our... (2024 Apr 01)
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...
- Mon Apr 01, 2024 6:49 am
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: Swirling Magnetic Field around Our... (2024 Apr 01)
- Replies: 25
- Views: 1117
Re: APOD: Swirling Magnetic Field around Our... (2024 Apr 01)
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 ...
- Sat Mar 30, 2024 7:02 am
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: Medieval Astronomy from Melk Abbey (2024 Mar 30)
- Replies: 10
- Views: 906
Re: APOD: Medieval Astronomy from Melk Abbey (2024 Mar 30)
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...
- Fri Mar 29, 2024 10:21 pm
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: Millions of Stars in Omega Centauri (2024 Mar 28)
- Replies: 26
- Views: 1445
Re: APOD: Millions of Stars in Omega Centauri (2024 Mar 28)
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 ...
- Fri Mar 29, 2024 1:48 pm
- Forum: The Asterisk Café: Discuss Anything Astronomy Related
- Topic: Colors of Twilight vs. Sunset/Sunrise
- Replies: 28
- Views: 2220
Re: Colors of Twilight vs. Sunset/Sunrise
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...
- Fri Mar 29, 2024 5:36 am
- Forum: The Asterisk Café: Discuss Anything Astronomy Related
- Topic: Colors of Twilight vs. Sunset/Sunrise
- Replies: 28
- Views: 2220
Re: Colors of Twilight vs. Sunset/Sunrise
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...
- Thu Mar 28, 2024 8:18 pm
- Forum: The Asterisk Café: Discuss Anything Astronomy Related
- Topic: Colors of Twilight vs. Sunset/Sunrise
- Replies: 28
- Views: 2220
Re: Colors of Twilight vs. Sunset/Sunrise
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...
- Thu Mar 28, 2024 5:57 pm
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: Millions of Stars in Omega Centauri (2024 Mar 28)
- Replies: 26
- Views: 1445
Re: APOD: Millions of Stars in Omega Centauri (2024 Mar 28)
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...
- Thu Mar 28, 2024 3:16 pm
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: Millions of Stars in Omega Centauri (2024 Mar 28)
- Replies: 26
- Views: 1445
Re: APOD: Millions of Stars in Omega Centauri (2024 Mar 28)
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...
- Thu Mar 28, 2024 7:56 am
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: Millions of Stars in Omega Centauri (2024 Mar 28)
- Replies: 26
- Views: 1445
Re: APOD: Millions of Stars in Omega Centauri (2024 Mar 28)
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...
- Wed Mar 27, 2024 6:44 pm
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: The Coma Cluster of Galaxies (2024 Mar 27)
- Replies: 13
- Views: 890
Re: APOD: The Coma Cluster of Galaxies (2024 Mar 27)
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...
- Wed Mar 27, 2024 10:28 am
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: The Coma Cluster of Galaxies (2024 Mar 27)
- Replies: 13
- Views: 890
Re: APOD: The Coma Cluster of Galaxies (2024 Mar 27)
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...
- Wed Mar 27, 2024 6:52 am
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: The Coma Cluster of Galaxies (2024 Mar 27)
- Replies: 13
- Views: 890
Re: APOD: The Coma Cluster of Galaxies (2024 Mar 27)
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...
- Tue Mar 26, 2024 5:44 pm
- Forum: The Communications Center: Breaking Science News
- Topic: HUBBLE sees the new star FS Tau proclaiming its presence with cosmic light show
- Replies: 4
- Views: 536
Re: HUBBLE sees the new star FS Tau proclaiming its presence with cosmic light show
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...
- Tue Mar 26, 2024 2:16 pm
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: Comet Pons-Brooks' Ion Tail (2024 Mar 26)
- Replies: 12
- Views: 910
Re: APOD: Comet Pons-Brooks' Ion Tail (2024 Mar 26)
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...
- Tue Mar 26, 2024 8:04 am
- Forum: The Asterisk Café: Discuss Anything Astronomy Related
- Topic: Colors of Twilight vs. Sunset/Sunrise
- Replies: 28
- Views: 2220
Re: Colors of Twilight vs. Sunset/Sunrise
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...
- Mon Mar 25, 2024 3:51 pm
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: Sonified: The Jellyfish Nebula... (2024 Mar 25)
- Replies: 8
- Views: 685
Re: APOD: Sonified: The Jellyfish Nebula... (2024 Mar 25)
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
This APOD is approved by Ann!
Ann
- Mon Mar 25, 2024 5:46 am
- Forum: The Asterisk Café: Discuss Anything Astronomy Related
- Topic: Colors of Twilight vs. Sunset/Sunrise
- Replies: 28
- Views: 2220
Re: Colors of Twilight vs. Sunset/Sunrise
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 ...
- Mon Mar 25, 2024 5:40 am
- Forum: The Bridge: Discuss an Astronomy Picture of the Day
- Topic: APOD: Looking Back at an Eclipsed Earth (2024 Mar 24)
- Replies: 13
- Views: 1025
Re: APOD: Looking Back at an Eclipsed Earth (2024 Mar 24)
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...