I am writing this short story. It is part of the overall book that I am writing, but it is also a story that can be enjoyed completely on its own. In that story, a planet-sized ship approaches our Solar System, and, ultimately maybe, Earth. For dimensions, let's say it is equal to 1.5 of Earth's diameter. According to Google, that's 25,512 19,134 kilometers. The Planet-Ship is probably less dense than Earth, as it is largely occupied by biomass and weird alien electronics. You may think of it as a round Borg cube, from Star Trek.

My "Round Borg Cube" is completely black and spherical, with a smooth surface without any visible features.

What I wanna know is...

• Assuming that the object is on a very slow path towards Earth, at what proximity will its effects be known?
• At which point will scientists observe its effects, view it, or detect it with instruments?
• If that is at all possible, what would be a threshold in which the "Round Borgs" would have to interrupt their movement in order to remain undetected?
• At which distance will it be visible to the naked eye (if at all)?
• And if they chose to get dangerously close to Earth, what would be the impact on our environment?

I understand that is a lot to ask, but I just can't trust GPT for that kind of stuff, even if their answers sound plausible. Perhaps someone with astronomical knowledge as well as an interest in science fiction will find my questions enticing. I don't expect precise answers because I am not providing precise information. So feel free to speculate on that scenario. In any case, I am grateful for any answer I can get.

Thanks!

This random late-night thought that hopefully someone can quickly point me to (my Google-fu is weak tonight). I'd like to see some pictures of space from the ISS that don't include Earth. I live in an area that is heavily light polluted so my nightsky view is terrible and I've seen amazing images from other places on Earth that look stunning - I figured a view from the ISS would be even more amazing.

Some of the ones I've quickly found on google appear to be photoshopped - as I'll find the same scene with only a few stars, another seemingly showing the entire Milky Way and then another plain black highlighting the earth.

Many Thanks!

I'm not sure how big the astrophotography community, if any, is on ~tildes but I'd figure I'd open a topic up and see! Astrophotography is one of my hobbies, and it was brought to my attention (see link for two quasars near the M3 globular cluster) that it's actually pretty easy to photograph quasars. The same are visible in my attempt at photographing M3. Anyway, my question here is does anybody know of any particular interesting or distant quasars to photograph? I assume most will just be "dots" but it still sounds like fun since they're among the most distant objects you can see. I assume most quasars would be broad spectrum, so no filters are really needed, but I'm also curious if there's any bright yet redshifted objects you'd need infrared to capture.

My setup is an Astro-Tech AT80EDT 80mm Refractor f/6. I just got the f/0.8 reducer which I'm excited to take for a spin. It's a chonky piece of glass. My camera is a ZWO ASI585MC which does decent enough for deep sky.

Edit: To add, using something like http://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/ is great for finding interesting objects once I've already taken a photo, but it's less helpful to plan my shots.