Starship Asterisk*

Here’s a pic from early on in the business, before I was doing yeast donuts. You can see the Donut Robot in the background...

I love Cake donuts; plain; chocolate glaze; or white glaze! :wink: Hi Orin, From 2002 to 2006 I owned and operated an independent coffee and donut shop with two outlets here in Dartmouth and Halifax, Nova Scotia. The first product out the door was a cake donut based on a recipe from the mid-30s rep...

Thanks Art.

omps.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EuV-A2wXcAAjP-x?format=jpg I’m curious what that chart is showing, Art (the one above the snowman, the one that for some reason didn’t get included in this quoted text.) What is a Global TOAST Analysis? I tried looking it up and found Test of Astronomy Standards...

Everything on a robotic mission is either integral to the craft or is doing science. The ISS demonstrates another reality: humans are incredibly inefficient science machines. The astronauts up there spend a lot more time fixing toilets and looking for leaks and doing general housekeeping than they ...

I've come to the conclusion that when i said i wanted to be somebody when i grew up i probably should have been more specific I always like to see credit given. The line “I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.” is from Lily Tomlin’s one-woman show The Se...

We don’t adjust our calendars by one day every four years because the shortest day of the year is not named January 1. We adjust the calendar because the Earth takes 365.24 days to go around the Sun once, and for convenience we don’t try to do something with that extra quarter day every year (which ...

Here in Nova Scotia, specifically in its largest city and on the Atlantic coast, we’re having one of our mild winters. It’s only snowed three times so far, with both of the first two melting away and yesterday’s snow likely to do the same over the next couple of days. But it isn’t always like that. ...

I liked it better before the 3D graffiti...
Rob

I’m curious when the common name was changed from “Pillars of Creation” to “Pillars of Star Creation”. Were religious groups complaining?

Rob

I thought that the cameras in such a machine could resolve up to some-meters-wide objects. Should we conclude that what is shown as a ejection are big rocks? Could gravel-size objetcs (some centimetres) be seen? I would very much appreciate any coment coming from you to clarify this. Clicking on th...

The cluster is always described as blue, of course, but there’s clearly a reddish-brown aura about it. Is that not part of the cluster? If so, why the color difference; if not, what is illuminating it? Rob That is clearly the extended dust cloud that the Pleiades themselves have blundered into and ...

The cluster is always described as blue, of course, but there’s clearly a reddish-brown aura about it. Is that not part of the cluster? If so, why the color difference; if not, what is illuminating it?

Rob

I'm unsure that this question/remark/issue is not reported yet, but the HTML format is purely obsolete on the APOD pages. More precisely, and annoying (for me) the <p> tags don't have a matching </p>. Consequently, it's hard to parse a page for keeping a specific item, like the description (eg. wit...

Oops, yes, Avatar! My brain insists on calling it Pandora. I am not in control of its output.

Rob

I almost forgot to mention my favorite recent sci-fi (ish) movie, Pandora. It’s actually a morality play about the Amazon and similar sites of human mismanagement of the planet, but it’s just plain beautiful to watch. And other than floating mountains (Unobtainium!) and actually getting there quickl...

I never saw Zardoz, but alas, I did see both the embarrassing Barbarella and the unbearable Dune. I sort of liked the first Dune novel, it had intriguing ideas, but I never made it through the next one. While I consider 2001 A Space Odyssey to be one of the best sci-fi movies because of its realisti...

I always liked Inconstant Moon. Didn't know it had been adapted. I don't even know that it's reasonable to call it science fiction. A Boy and His Dog was an amusing movie, although I don't know that I'd include it in my favorites. Maybe I just don't have good taste. I suppose the only science ficti...

Hi Ann, Some of my favorite science fiction films and TV programs have been very close versions of prize winning science fiction stories. Two come to mind: Harlan Ellison’s novella A Boy and His Dog, a dystopian after-the-bombs-fall kind of story with a shock ending which was made into a full-length...

I started reading science fiction when I was 10 years old, and that pretty much ruined me for reality. If the author/scriptwriter is good enough, I can accept whatever they throw at me with equanimity. I mean, if you can accept faster than light travel, which is a requirement for any kind of space s...

I was ready to go out for a look at the comet this evening but the sky is too hazy at the moment. That’s generally true here, being on a sea coast and our location on the downwind side of the city, so no surprise there. But I happened to notice in another app that the ISS would be passing almost dir...

Thanks all. As usual I learned much more from the discussion than I had asked for.

Keep on asterisking...

Rob

Has Millet accurately rendered a particular group of stars? Or is it just a star-like spatter of paint?

Rob

Don't tell me what the poets are doing Don't tell me that they're talking tough Don't tell me that they're anti-social Somehow not anti-social enough ... I'm not sure why you posted these lyrics, but it would have been polite to include the songwriters' names. Songwriters: Gordon Downie / Johnny Fa...

Hi, The image is both gorgeous and impressive when seen at full resolution. What are the two red dots seen right and left of the arc bow ?There are also some green dots in the background, they look more like background galaxies. Alex Hi Alex! You gave me a tough nut to crack there. In fact, I wasn'...