Mastodawn

I have a bit of time on my hands, so let's do another 24h round of #AskAnAstrophysicist, but this time it's a thematic one.

⭐ What do you want to ask an astrophysicist about stars? ⭐

(I am a professional astrophysicist, part of whose work concerns itself with high mass stars & their winds and I've also taught a variety of astro university courses)

Boosts welcome. I may not be able to reply to all in case of many questions.

#SciComm #WissKomm

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Bluejay May 13

@vicgrinberg I recently saw an interview clip of the Artemis II crew, and I think either Reid or Victor said that something that surprised them was the “three-dimensionality” of space — that the stars appear more 3-D out there than they do when seen from Earth. Do you think you could expand on that? I’m having a hard time visualizing how much more “3-D” a field of distant points of light could look. Is it that the parallax effect on stars was more noticeable at their speed?

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Dr. Victoria Grinberg May 13

@bluejay I have no idea what the Artemis crew meant since I've never been to space or seen the interview. Parallax needs you to make measurements on two very far away locations. And depth perception does not work on high distances. What I imagine is that stars don't twinkle in space - twinkling comes from the atmosphere, so the view must be more clear and thus our brains plays interesting games with us interpreting this!

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Bluejay

@vicgrinberg Thanks! I found a link to the clip, if you can access it; it’s actually Jeremy Hansen making the observation, near the start of the video.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DYA2FZAgUys/

The New York Times on Instagram: "The astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission flew farther from Earth than any humans in history. They dealt with zero gravity, they stared into the dark void of space and contemplated our place in the universe. When they got back last month, they were hailed as heroes. “The Daily” asked kids to send in questions for the crew. The astronauts — three Americans and one Canadian — sat down with Rachel Abrams to answer them. Tap the link in bio to listen to or watch the full conversation. Video by The Daily Team/The New York Times"

36K likes, 348 comments - nytimes on May 6, 2026: "The astronauts of NASA’s Artemis II mission flew farther from Earth than any humans in history. They dealt with zero gravity, they stared into the dark void of space and contemplated our place in the universe. When they got back last month, they were hailed as heroes. “The Daily” asked kids to send in questions for the crew. The astronauts — three Americans and one Canadian — sat down with Rachel Abrams to answer them. Tap the link in bio to listen to or watch the full conversation. Video by The Daily Team/The New York Times".

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