Starship Asterisk*

What is the name of the asteroid? I imagine it refers to the Hubble telescope?

I made a time lapse of lightning several years ago. Most of the bolts start at a radio tower, and shoot upwards. Would those be positively charged?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lkibAjbHyg The "guilty party" is years of underfunding by different agencies. This instrument has been a target for defunding and decommission for many years. It's been limping along on borrowed time for a long time now. The catastrophic failure likely jus...

Incredible footage. It's amazing that a drone was inspecting and getting video of the very cables that failed. Following the link about mapping the surface of Venus, it states that using a telescope in West Virginia together with the Arecibo Telescope, "The new survey will resolve details as fi...

Hi everyone, long time, no see.

I've heard that the conjunction will be the closest since 1623, and also that it will be the closest in around 800 years. Which one is it?

Wouldn't meteors that hit Jupiter sink to the center? And if they burned up, the heavier elements should still make their way to the center, right? All meteoroids hitting Jupiter burn up. Fine dust might remain suspended for very long periods of time; gases forever. Being that hydrogen is the bigge...

Wouldn't meteors that hit Jupiter sink to the center? And if they burned up, the heavier elements should still make their way to the center, right?

Thanks for that explanation but it begs the question (in my mind) -- why is the illumination just at the edges from our perspective? If the recombination with the ionized boundary layer causes the glow, why doesn't the entire "cloud" appear to glow? Simplistically, it appears that a very ...

Science should be expressed clearly and accurately, so I think it is worth mentioning. The write-up says, "An equinox occurs midway between the two solstices, when the days and nights are the least equal." Sounds incorrect, and can certainly be misinterpreted. I think your concern is misp...

Here comes another matter of semantics. Science should be expressed clearly and accurately, so I think it is worth mentioning. The write-up says, "An equinox occurs midway between the two solstices, when the days and nights are the least equal." Sounds incorrect, and can certainly be misin...

The write-up says, "this stunning view of Saturn's rings and night side just isn't possible from telescopes closer to the Sun than the outer planet." The outer planet is Neptune (or the unconfirmed Planet Nine), so the statement isn't correct. Not a big deal though. All planets with orbit...

The write-up says, "this stunning view of Saturn's rings and night side just isn't possible from telescopes closer to the Sun than the outer planet." The outer planet is Neptune (or the unconfirmed Planet Nine), so the statement isn't correct. Not a big deal though.

wolfie138 wrote: ↑Thu Sep 19, 2019 6:14 am Looks like a crocodile.

To me, it looks more like the traditional depiction of the devil.

wolfie138 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 18, 2019 6:15 am that's a stormingly good pic for being a 3 sec exposure on a plane!

Yes, it is. I'm guessing the photographer held the camera against the plane's window, and/or window frame.

How do they know that the storm "tried to absorb its own tail -- which surprisingly caused it to fade away."?
And it's being compared to a snake. I don't think snakeopomorphizing the storm is the best idea.

"...as someone pointed out to me: In the summer, the Sun is high in the sky and the Moon is low. In the winter, the Sun is low in the sky and the Moon is high. The small-looking brilliantly bright Moon high in a black winter's sky makes those winter nights seem particularly cold and forbidding...

Speaking of perception... Why does everyone say that the lighter region looks like a heart? I guess early-on, when the resolution was poor, it looked Sort Of like a heart. But when higher resolution photos were available, it clearly looked like a footprint. It even looks like 'mud' splashed away whe...

Even in these very dusty places, elements other than hydrogen only represent a percent or two of the total mass. So stars that form in such areas, while considered "metal rich", are still mostly hydrogen. And when they start forming, they tend to blow away a lot of dust, preventing it fro...

Looks to have a lot of dust! I imagine a lot of star forming in this galaxy! 8-) What happens when stars "try" to form from hydrogen that has lots of other elements in it? Failed star? Could a star form with a solid (or liquid) core made from other elements? Even in these very dusty place...

orin stepanek wrote: ↑Thu Aug 22, 2019 10:53 am Looks to have a lot of dust! I imagine a lot of star forming in this galaxy!

What happens when stars "try" to form from hydrogen that has lots of other elements in it? Failed star? Could a star form with a solid (or liquid) core made from other elements?

I'd have to give this movie two thumbs down. :thumb_down: :thumb_down: I don't see any relativistic beaming near the center, I don't see any gravitational lensing near the center, nor is there any hint of a polar jet. :facepalm: And it's so short that I only ate two pieces of popcorn. And, only thre...

Tnx! Looks like the Nebula illumination has changed the most! :thumb_up: I doubt it's changed enough to even measure, let alone see visually. It's not difficult to use two images taken with different technology to evaluate star positions, but it's very hard to do any sort of photometric comparison,...

Beautiful 1901 image! Has it been compared to images from todays images to see any changes over the last 118 years? :rocketship: Sorry for the late reply - here is a gif I made of the 1901 image and an image of it taken in 2017. Clicking it should open a larger version. Over those 116 years, there ...

Interesting, innocuous origin for the word 'aftermath'. It went from describing a fine productive field's second harvest to describing scenes of horrific destruction. I wonder how many people's fear of math stems from seeing and hearing news accounts of death and devastation called "the afterm...

The photo of the sun looks like a (colored) negative. The sun should look darker around the edges.