Starship Asterisk*

Only rigid bodies can tidally lock. Are not the disk gas-rich galaxies rigid when: 1) alone and keeping themselves flat, smoothely whirling 2) run upon another body and conduct a mighty bing through their bodies Is Earth rigid, is the Earth's ocean rigid? And are lito- and hydrospheres going to tid...

The separation between NGC 1055 and M77 is about 442,000 light-years. Do I get it right: the disk galaxies in a binary system don't do a tidal lock. They pose like runaway disk saws about to saw each other in two. And the pair of NGC 1055 and M77 looks like a pair of identical twins at that. It wil...

Once the shock front forms, clumps of the material splash against the back of the shock front in an irregular pattern creating the mottled appearance. So the shock front is like a lamp light when some clumps cast shadows, that are irregular cones in 3d space, every one having the same center as the...

neufer wrote: ↑Fri Dec 11, 2020 5:35 pm
Quegli spaghetti are 1-dimensional intersections of 2-dimensional shock fronts.

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php? ... 34#p308860

I just don't get it. To have a spherical shock front crossing another spherical shock front we must have two different centers, must we not?

I was wondering about the use of the descriptive phrase "looping filaments", aka "spaghetti". Wouldn't the "filaments" we are seeing be more likely to be the optical result of "edge darkening" of many overlapping bubbles of gas and dust? I wonder if there is ...

We know that there is a central black hole in the Milky Way because it is the only explanation for the orbits of the stars at the very center. Do those orbits prove that the central BH is not a binary system with a period of 10 hours, to ruin 5 hours exposure in 2017? Do those orbits prove that the...

The Dust comes from stars formation, OK. Ann and Chris, thanks for explaining. But is a normal car crush analogy in any way? Before the auto break system there were cars rotating after having tried to use breaks on a sleazy road. But even those unhappy cars could not rotate fast enough to rival with...

There is actually speculation that a central black hole might not exist? How could that even be possible? Well, are we really sure that there is a central BH in the Milky Way? The Event Horizon Telescope project tried to image it with few hours exposure and failed to get any crisp picture to publis...

This I find strange: how come the bridge is dustier than either of the tidal arms? And this is a question from driveline analogy: considering two colliding galaxies as a two rotating wheels coming to a point of clutch, does that friction accelerate the rotation, decelerate it, or both, or none of th...

made a "drying puddle anime" https://www.facebook.com/AstronomyPictureOfTheDay/posts/3505465126155590?comment_id=3506733752695394&reply_comment_id=3506840939351342&__cft__[0]=AZUODXtO2vZ1NL9m-rjI5Sxwp94YIsG6EeDbmbVC5DEuq_8XykFi95QeCUNY3GibdeJX3A0h6IjpX2Dyo3g8rQqccj2nO7xlA9GtiHJ1VeB...

made a "drying puddle anime" https://www.facebook.com/AstronomyPictureOfTheDay/posts/3505465126155590?comment_id=3506733752695394&reply_comment_id=3506840939351342&__cft__[0]=AZUODXtO2vZ1NL9m-rjI5Sxwp94YIsG6EeDbmbVC5DEuq_8XykFi95QeCUNY3GibdeJX3A0h6IjpX2Dyo3g8rQqccj2nO7xlA9GtiHJ1VeB...

https://scontent.fhen2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/126315406_3451554238298996_2532111946056853504_n.jpg?_nc_cat=100&ccb=2&_nc_sid=dbeb18&_nc_eui2=AeF0w-IakDK0D1MlxrFh2nGnoBr--8LGVeKgGv77wsZV4kKnpR44FX76bJBdwARg46WgPsrVQPiTYpFRiS3I4S-m&_nc_ohc=MyfWgMSxdMAAX9pnade&_nc_ht=scontent.fhe...

What I thought when asking was: 1) curved protuberances of Sun are plasma magnetic loops as are some low density plasma loops a light year long near the center of the Milky Way. What if dust curls about the edge-on view of NGC 5866 were too…? Well dust as such is not one with magnetic field lines, b...

Are complex dust lanes magnetic loops ?

Can the mass of the central black hole be inferred from the size of the bulge (supposing the bulge formed after the gas was gone with the active nucleus's wind) ?

seems 1987A (bright star to the right and low besides the Tarantula) in 2020 looks dark https://www.facebook.com/AstronomyPictureOfTheDay/posts/3482273791808057?comment_id=3482950748407028&__cft__[0]=AZUeDHqe06NsiMlJHtTAI9tkR8GBX5HAideEhc3vDANomoBZndcb828yrJP6vFGNVZPJFPt2uhFr27wY4ldpaIiVs3N0C9_4...

Phobosians will find a way to keep their home in orbit.

I wish we had somethinng better than GAIA to gauge a star's distance from us.
Say some way to imply a star's angle diameter from weak blinking caused by interstellar gas fluctuations or rogue planetoids nanolensing

can a dark dusty pillar last 10 million years to drift a thousand ly away from the star that sculpted it?

I wonder where the sun pole is. At 20 minutes past twelve o'clock? https://scontent.fhen2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/123353191_3398425753611845_2935760074361404071_o.jpg?_nc_cat=100&ccb=2&_nc_sid=dbeb18&_nc_eui2=AeHz2uvYFvl3CwXQ32aChIzv3XnequLRME7ded6q4tEwTtKz6S-IWMDMPZGstGmjPECfoslNafQbM-...

Still there is a difference between the cold, or blue and warm, or orange part of the low-sun sky on Earth. And the same separation mechanism gives unmistakable colors to any scattering nebula once we set the angles and the intensity of the scattering. Do I get it right: if an illuminating star is (...

I wonder whether the foreground narrow cone is a jet from a forming star in the depth of the dense dust dome. I mean, a jet that is getting narrower to the end of it. Could it be sharpened by the stellar wind or radiation emitted by the main stars at the center of the APOD picture? The same kind of ...

I begin to see the picture.
A cloud is vulnerable… A Herbig-Haro jet punches right through it, a visiting star rumples it up.
A dense Bok globule will stay cool for a while but evaporate eventually if boiled by several large stars long enough.

So I guess it is at least possible that we are seeing the remains of a hole punched through the nebula by a Herbig-Haro jet emitted by a not yet fully formed star deep inside the nebula. Either that, or a star that was just passing by plunged right through the nebula, leaving a hole behind. Ann wow...

I wonder what on Earth is making the cone of light in the bottom right corner https://scontent.fhen2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/122607445_3377825805671840_4118261237163859252_n.jpg?_nc_cat=101&ccb=2&_nc_sid=dbeb18&_nc_eui2=AeEU_2KXGFN6RwzuPRxUFNFqdkXPENU54-J2Rc8Q1Tnj4g7YPMOxTkzFFw8AhHzmFTc...

Ann wrote: ↑Sat Oct 24, 2020 9:25 am Well... I guess the night sky of 47 Tuc might look something like the picture at right.
Ann

I wonder why does that starry sky look like a view from a flattening distance.
I would expect some close stars to shine as bright as Moon and be visible through daytime skyshine.