A message from Anonymous

You're cool for how you responded to that anon by showing him what was wrong and everything all in such a calm manner. I would've shown annoyance, at least.

Thanks. Showing annoyance doesn’t really do much. If you legitimately don’t know about something, it would be pretty off-putting to be treated like an idiot or a nuisance. 

A message from patchesthegreat

out of curiosity, how often do you get asks that display an absolute misunderstanding of the size of stars? I feel this happens a lot to you guys.

Science illiteracy is a lot more common than a lot of science-literate people think.

A message from Anonymous

your post about the moon must having a dark part when its in crescent form, you do realize that there can be stars IN FRONT of the dark area?? stars obviously arent just shiny dots on a flat sky: they are in different places to, in this case, being in front of or behind the moon.

You’re right, stars aren’t just shiny dots on a flat sky, but they aren’t just tiny little specks either. A common example of a star is our sun. Compared to the Earth and Moon, is is many many many many many - you get the point - times bigger. A picture for reference: 

So, if there were a star in front of the moon, we’d all be toast. They look like little dots only because they are immense distances away. 

A message from Anonymous

The pet peeve post is so popular because someone legitimately wondered if drawing stars in the dark part of a crescent moon would actually be fine because "space isn't 2D, so aren't there stars everywhere? couldn't some be in front of the moon?"

We know. :P They should have come to us and asked so they wouldn’t have been put down like that!