Starship Asterisk*

Cette photo a été prise du RER, n'est-ce pas? If so, someone is very fast with their camera. Remarkable. Oh, and thanks to APOD for not listening to those chawbacons who complain whenever the Amazing Picture Of the Day is of terrestrial phenomenon and that you continue to show intriguing non-telesco...

"The tails of both comets point approximately toward the recently set Sun"

Away, surely - though I suppose it depends upon what one means by 'point'

An amazing image of an amazing and very rare sight.

Redfishbluefish... "Still best to have a person at the pointy end. Though, admittedly, not too many pilots would want to sign up for a trip to Titan anytime soon." I'll gladly go tomorrow. They don't even have to PAY me! :---[===] * To actually consider such a trip seems to me an OTE even...

Launched from earth Oct 1997, landed on Titan in Jan 2005. It was predicted to get 30 minutes of data from the surface - instead it lasted 90 min. Truly amazing! To restore a sense of proportion: Half of the data transmitted were never received, as someone forgot to program one of the two data recei...

Heliocentric it was too. As to the Library at Alexandria. It was largely burned at least three times: First, by accident of war, by Julius Caesar - with much of it surviving to be added to; Then, deliberately by Pope Theophilus about 400CE in his fight against "Paganism" (ie, against the b...

the mainstrem explanation is that it is because of "uneven mass distribution" in the intermediary galaxy. The definition of "mainstream" is such that if you have a problem with it, the burden is largely on you to demonstrate its deficiencies, not on the mainstream to defend its ...

Moon shadows on Saturn typically appear inky black, just as the shadows of the rings do. I don't know what the spot is -- maybe a camera or processing artifact -- but it appears far too light to me to be a moon shadow. 7205_17346_1p.jpg I assume we're talking about the circular structure below the ...

The black & white brings out what appears to at least one crater on Saturn. This seems odd, as I did not think that the surface of the planet was visible. It is either a cloud structure, if you look closely up above it, you also see some WHITER spots, or it could be a camera artifact. I am thin...

The black & white brings out what appears to at least one crater on Saturn. This seems odd, as I did not think that the surface of the planet was visible. As the dawn of this New Year's Eve brings METAR 311053Z 10006KT 2SM -DZ BR OVC003 10/10 A3006 it looks as though I might have time to find ou...

With remembrance of, and thanks to, French pilot Saint-Exupéry who discovered the first of the Little Planets.

What is the bright blue spot in Orion, just outside the inner halo at about 5 o'clock: UFO, Healing Brush gone wrong, or some sort of reflection within the lens? It appears to be an internal reflection. I see a subtle hexagonal structure aligned with the lunar diffraction spikes, created by the 6-l...

What is the bright blue spot in Orion, just outside the inner halo at about 5 o'clock: UFO, Healing Brush gone wrong, or some sort of reflection within the lens?

"...I’ve read all 120 responses to the Bad Astronomy article..." Links are always helpful. My search on BA failed to turn up the article you reference. I did discover though, that last week, BA has moved from Discover to Slate and is now http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy.html As to ...

Any attempt at depicting the end-Permian event would be epic indeed. Maybe they could work it into a longer version... :) Likely not to be as visually interesting, either? K-T Extinction (Sorry, "K–Pg:" A renaming right up there with "Brontosaurus" on the pedantic scale) does se...

Could these lenticular cloud formations be caused or influenced by a Von Karman vortex street ... If one actually knows what a von Kármán vortex street is (as I pilot, I do) then one would know the answer to the 'question.' I, for one, take this 'question' as a sophomoric attempt to demonstrate sup...

...crater-forming impacts were so large they spun Dione, changing the part that suffered the highest impact rate before the moon's spin again became locked... This would nicely explain the differential cratering at the leading and trailing surfaces. But, to my mind, this leaves unexplained the larg...

My favorite lenticular cloud picture is a long-ago APOD showing a single lenticular cloud with what appreared to be wingtip vortices trailing downwind from the edges. I suppose these things could behave like lifting surfaces if pressure distributions were right. I did a search on "lenticular&q...

I am glad that this was repeated - since I missed it the first time. Surprising though that APOD does not have a longer institutional memory, for there are not likely that many people (all of whom are appreciated by us!) involved, and this is a striking image. Except for sailplane pilots, no one wan...

Of course, not everyone agrees "How did we ... delude ourselves into ... glorifying a transportation system that operated with a 1.5% hull-loss rate?" I suppose the answer for me is that I do not view it as a system of transportation, but as a system of exploration. Leaving aside the "...

A video of the last shuttle being moved from usefulness to neglect? What a trite and schlocky idea, thought I. But, I went ahead and watched it: Watched it three times in succession. Tears in my eyes at the end. This is what the country, and most of the world, wants - science, wonder, exploration - ...

Sadly and harshly underscores the fact that rides to the ISS are now dependent upon Russia's Soyuz. When we landed on the moon, had anyone asked me, I would have said we would certainly have a scientific base there within thirty years. How was I too know that the moon landing was basically just a po...

I do wonder what the (non-auroral) skyglow is from on the horizon. The picture is taken facing north towards Polaris - so rising or setting Sun seems unlikely. K-Falls is in the wrong relative direction, as is Eugene. Bend, though sort of in the right geographical orientation, seems both too far awa...

SO many times.

But, never TOO many times.

This is where I want my taxes going: To discovery of wonder and of worlds - rather than to world conquest.

"Pictured in the foreground is a snowbank formation known as ..."

I guess it depends upon what one means by "foreground."

Photographically, is not the foreground Castle Rock (APOD link), with the Horse's head snowbank in the mountains in the middle ground?

Amazing image!

This, then, is a picture of God: Since that small blue marble is what creates life on this planet.