Starship Asterisk*

APOD 28 November 2004 Doomed Star Eta Carinae. http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041128.html I remember reading in Astronomy magazine that the width of just one of the gas/dust lanes in either of the lobes is about the size of our solar system. That gives this image scale as to it's true size which is INCREDIBLY MASSIVE and emitting from a single star! WOW!

A wonder full image I think is this one.

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02960

The HUDF has to be one of my favorites just because it is a tiny section space and it holds so many galaxies. This picture is worth more than a thousand words, and brings about so many unanswered questions. It's simply amazing. I am awestruck everytime I look at it.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040309.html

Yes, fabulous!
Thank you, I'd forgotten that one, now it's my desktop background.

backrowbass wrote:

senectus wrote:Today's picture is the most exciting for me:
A Hole in Mars Close Up : http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070928.html
I'm just itching to know what is down there, and the prospects for liquid water and multicellular life down there is so promising that it makes my legs itch

I started speculating about a science fiction story as soon as I saw the picture.

ahhh!!! that's the pic right there. You know there's gotta be a huge cavern just beyond that opening. Just look at the blackness within... it's calling for humans to go check it out! =))

Or maybe we can try and shoot another probe on over and aim for the hole. 5000-point shot from millions of miles away... from wayyyyyy downtown!

I just love this:
http://www.nps.gov/wica/historyculture/ ... trance.jpg

No smoking in cave please!

senectus wrote:Today's picture is the most exciting for me:
A Hole in Mars Close Up : http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070928.html
I'm just itching to know what is down there, and the prospects for liquid water and multicellular life down there is so promising that it makes my legs itch

I would like to see this same image area illuminated from the other direction, with the sun shining down at the apparent angle of the hole.

I like this one!

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap971129.html

Orin

There are so many stunning and profound photos available here that I can't pick one favorite. But my favorite CLASS of photo are the spiral galaxy portraits. I gaze at a beauty like NGC1300, the Whirlpool, the Pinwheel, or a dozen others. Then, I try to imagine the scale and possibility of the life on the other innumerable worlds in those disks. I realize that what looks like pale fog is actually so many stars, at such distance, that they can't be resolved. Then I think about the hundreds of billions of stars in each one, and that the galaxies themselves number in the hundreds of billions, and I feel amazed and humbled.

There are so many stunning and profound photos available here that I can't pick one favorite. But my favorite CLASS of photo are the spiral galaxy portraits. I gaze at a beauty like NGC1300, the Whirlpool, the Pinwheel, or a dozen others. Then, I try to imagine the scale and possibility of the life on the other innumerable worlds in those disks. I realize that what looks like pale fog is actually so many stars, at such distance, that they can't be resolved. Then I think about the hundreds of billions of stars in each one, and that the galaxies themselves number in the hundreds of billions, and I feel amazed and humbled.

G'day d2386n

You said

d2386n wrote:I feel amazed and humbled.

Join the club.

Hello All,

Nothing so far has given me the real sense of weightless, unsupported suspension like this:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080308.html

M104 is half the Milky Way's size but the near edge-on angle in this remix gives it a floating look and feel like few others.

Here are mine:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050924.html
The beautiful cat's eye nebula

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070414.html
Lake Venus

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap061009.html
the robot of an alien species

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap071106.html
this one had me mesmerized, playing it over and over

A Darkened Sky - APOD 2008 September 20

Picture and description:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080920.html

Big picture:
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/ ... o1_big.jpg

Total solar eclipse of 2008 August 01. Monochrome. Corona to great distance. Mercury. Beehive cluster. Many stars. Clear Mongolian sky. Beautiful brightness range and contrast.

Here's a small number of my favorites:



http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap991231.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080917.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070715.html

After all these years, this apod is still my favorite.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030326.html

I'm intrigued by the streamers trailing from the edges of the cloud. They have the right shape to be trailing vortices like those generated by a lift-generating wing. Is it possible that the pressure changes that produced the cloud could also have generated vorticity in the cloud's flow field?

Arp 273 gatkinson@nexicom.net lfreeman@ghrc.ca, tmclaughlin@ghrc.ca seems to show the smaller galaxy's tail being bent by Dark Matter of the large galaxy whereas the other tail farthest from the large galaxy is not bent - therefore (?) no DM?

Beautiful photo.

Noctilucent Clouds Over Sweden

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060718.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/ ... en_big.jpg

NG2264-i love this -the whole array is beautiful w/ all its different elements.

FieryIce wrote:My favorite APOD's

M16: Stars from Eagle's EGGs

Mars Then and Now

A Berry Bowl of Martian Spherules

Razorbacks in Endurance Crater

If you've ever wandered in the woodsy woods where the rabbits run ...

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040405.html

... you will of course have seem identical sights .. and we shall find creatures still alive on Mars and depositing these turds.

Anything with the ISS. It's amazing to think we've had people on the ISS constantly since November 2000. A constant reminder of the good things we can do, aside from all the crap we put up with on the surface.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090206.html

There are so many outstanding APODs it is hard. But one really capures my imagination 2008 September 20-A Darkened Sky, a multi image total eclipse stitched together perfectly. It looks very much like plasma is going into the poles and plasma/solar wind is emanating from all of the rest of the surface. Truly awesome.
http://www.zam.fme.vutbr.cz/~druck/ecli ... 00_mo1.png

bhrobards wrote:There are so many outstanding APODs it is hard. But one really capures my imagination 2008 September 20-A Darkened Sky, a multi image total eclipse stitched together perfectly. It looks very much like plasma is going into the poles and plasma/solar wind is emanating from all of the rest of the surface. Truly awesome.
http://www.zam.fme.vutbr.cz/~druck/ecli ... 00_mo1.png

It is a great image. And it is plasma we see around the Sun, but all of it moving outwards, none inwards. You'd need to see much closer to the edge to capture any loops of plasma.

How do you know its "all moving inwards?"

bhrobards wrote:How do you know its "all moving inwards?"

It's all moving outwards. This is very obvious in any animated images, as from SOHO. The only plasma that falls back onto the Sun is what is trapped in tightly closed magnetic fields, which are very close to the surface at the scale of this image. Of course, we have a variety of space-borne sensors monitoring solar wind and solar radiation, and it's all moving away from the Sun. As you'd expect, of course, given that there are no forces present to produce motion in the opposite direction.