it's just a traffic light on the fritz..

Rika

You mean on the blink?

blink..prepare to stop?

from here I cannot make out the color..is it a blinking yellow or red,

Rika

Black Audi Wagon

first it was the parking lot, now space..
Blk Audi, will see about that....
powering up the Hardon Lazer as I type..
ahem..can someone spare a few D-cell batt's...seems we are a little short on juice.

Rika

Intergalactic penis envy?

Probably just making way for a galactic bypass.

http://www.strudel.org.uk/blog/astro...418_vogons.jpg

Probably a dusty lens

So? It's similar to many spectra, and the engine behind a thermal blackbody spectra with some absorption lines is well understood. It appears to be a pretty standard galactic object, the only issue is the missing h-alpha lines. If we started discounting every observation that doesn't contain perfect absorption lines, then the body of astronomical data would be MUCHHHHH smaller ;)

Mike:

You need to help the guys out who observed the object and wrote the paper. :)

They're having a hard time with the "object".

Best,

I meant to say "at least" 130 light years away. My bad.

Eh, they did a decent job of determining what is is NOT, from the limited time and data they had. Determining what it IS is always harder, and might never happen. It's like seeing a butterfly that doesn't fit any current classification, but only seeing it once. did you see a new butterfly, or did you see a rarely known one, or did you see one that had sunlight dappling it strangely so it looked different?

I gave my suggestions, if those researchers happen to drive p-cars, and happen to thread PPOT,and happen to see my suggestions, and happen to follow up...well, I expect my damned royalties!!! :D

I think it's much more likely to be a butterfly than a teapot.

I'm too new on the board to know the teapot inside joke, but I've seen reference to it. I'm sure you guys enjoyed yourselves immensely, with much laughing and guffawing when you came up with some joke about a teapot.


:p :p :p

See Russell's Teapot on the internet.

I was mistaken then...no guffawing is associated with Russell's quaint little stories.

I figured he meant to discuss this celestial teapot:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...t-asterism.jpg

Me too. I'm pretty sure it originated on "the God thread". If you have a day or two to look through the thread...... Maybe Kurt came up with it? It seems to have a life of its own - but I don't know if it's never ending.

I just childishly keep referring to it because it sounds funny to me. What a dumbass, huh? :)

Edit: Oooh! Thanks, Jim!

Vogons.

I still say its Borg...