And my post was erased incredible hats off to censorship..

What I find incredible is how many occasional commenters whose comments go into moderation or disappear for some other reason then comment to whine about censorship. If Phil really censored comments, what makes any of you think he’d allow a comment commenting about censorship through moderation?

In fact, there is only one reason why Phil will delete a post, and that is if the comment is outright offensive i.e. not family-friendly. Kids read this blog too.

You only have to look at some of the insane stuff that people post (for example, in threads about AGW) to realise that, if Phil wanted to censor comments, he would certainly censor those comments.

If your comment failed to appear, maybe it got lost in the intertubes somewhere, or maybe you failed to enter an email address (I’ve done this, when using a computer different from the one I normally use to visit, losing sometimes 15 or 20 minutes’ worth of typing through having forgotten to fill in that field).

Thanks for the great writeup, Phil!

@23 Zack: Did it have a link in it? Any posts with links are automatically subject to moderation.

And, like babies will, these stars eject material from both ends: called bipolar outflow, twin beams of material (typically called “jets”) are screaming out of these newborns at several hundred kilometers per second in opposite directions.

Wait, what?

How many babies have you encountered with “bipolar outflow” measured at several hundred km/s???

Well, not really. Unlike a supernova, which is a transition from star to neutron star/black hole/nothing in a matter of hours or minutes, star birth happens relatively slowly. The proto-star slowly contracts – the gravitational potential energy of the star-stuff is converted to heat, and this heat keeps the contraction from proceeding too quickly. These proto-stars can actually shine more brightly from the heat of formation then the young actively fusing star that it becomes. Inside the star, processes can take quite awhile to normalize. For instance, you have convective and non-convective layers forming as the core heats up. And even once fusion is ignited in the core, it can take many thousands of years for the fusion energy to actually make it to the surface.
In a nutshell, it takes a very long time (by human standards) for protostars to become stars, long enough that there isn’t a tremendous amount of change in any “birthing” star in a human lifetime*. I think a better metaphor then birth might be growth from a baby to an adult

*This is what I understand to be true, but I may be totally wrong. Take with a grain of salt

I’d also add that very bright objects, like Venus, (or Jupiter, now fairly close to opposition and pretty bright) often appear to “blink” more because of atmospheric scintillation, and that the human eye will often see a bright point source as “moving” (one reason why so many UFO sightings turn out to be Venus). I’d bet on Venus if it was just after sundown, Jupiter if it was later at night.

The human eye, in a dark desert, is only able to perceive about 3000 stars, so the short answer would be,,no. Stellar nebula are way to far away and dim to be seen w/o assistance.

If what you saw was “blinking” and appeared to move, it was most likely either a high altitude aircraft or a satellite,,,

Gary 7