Starship Asterisk*

Brendan, it's a lovely photo; I was very glad to see that it became an APOD! Congratulations!

[b][size=110]Winter Stars[/size][/b]
by Sara Teasdale

[list] I went out at night alone;
The young blood flowing beyond the sea
Seemed to have drenched my spirit’s wings—
I bore my sorrow heavily.

But when I lifted up my head
From shadows shaken on the snow,
I saw Orion in the east
Burn steadily as long ago.

From windows in my father’s house,
Dreaming my dreams on winter nights,
I watched Orion as a girl
Above another city’s lights.

Years go, dreams go, and youth goes too,
The world’s heart breaks beneath its wars,
All things are changed, save in the east
The faithful beauty of the stars.[/list]

Thanks for taking the time to comment on my first APOD.

Brendan

Wow, I am just so impressed by this picture, I mean, the utter complexity of the meaning of orions belt risung sideways in a somewhat out of focus snow covered field, well, it just boggles the mind :shock:

O! familiar sight:) I like Orion, though I havn't seen for a long time.. still snowing.
Good to see it here:)

I wonder why APOD enlarged the photo so much, which accentuates the noise from the Canon 1000D. I'm not sure what the vertical noise stripes are. I'm now intrigued to try a similar exposure with my Nikon D5000 to see if there is a difference. It's a tough shot anyway with a consumer dSLR because if you don't want to stretch the stars, you need the high ISO, and thus you get noise.

[quote="Giovanni"]Why have you choosen...[/quote]

If you haven't got something positive to say consider saying nothing at all, because you need to understand the value of your comment is also negative in addition to its tenor.

Personally, I think it's a nice picture. I wish I had skies dark enough that I could see things so well in the sky. Where I live it's Bortle level 1. And it [i]never[/i] snows. :(

-Noel

I love this view of a mysterious little lane - so "down to Earth" with all that formidable space and many stars overhead - I can just hear the crunch, crunch, crunch of the crisp snow underfoot.

Neufer ... good grief .... strained my synapses trying to research and decode the "demum, etc." phrase above. Joyce was an obvious genius with magnificent verbal/lingual agility but what the h@!! was he saying? I think that he was slightly mad and tripping on some special hallucinatory tea as he wrote this .....

[quote="neufer"]frigorique exposito[/quote]
Should be [i]frigorique exquisito[/i], I think.

[quote="APOD Robot"][url=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101226.html][img]http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_101226.jpg[/img] [size=150]Sideways Orion Over Snowy Ireland[/size][/url][/quote]
So, O'Ryan really is Irish then :?:

[size=135][c]Finnegans Wake: Page 185

[color=#0000FF][i]Demum ex stercore turpi cum divi Orionis iucunditate mixto,
cocto, frigorique exposito, encaustum sibi fecit indelibile
(faked O'Ryan's, the indelible ink).[/i][/color][/c][/size]

Why have you choosen an orrible quality picture like that?

"Tomorrow, if all literature was to be destroyed and it was left to
me to retain one work only, I should save Job." (Victor Hugo)
He (ÉL) made the Big Dipper, Orion and the Pleiades and the chambers of the south. Job 9:09
Just south of Ecuador and ideal to be observed from both hemispheres
We now, in mid summer, with positions reversed with respect to north, have in the south of the Pleiades, Orion, Betelgese, Sirius in all its glory, in the zenith at midnight when it enters the new year
[img2]http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_tPvp8QP0z98/SNb0emAS57I/AAAAAAAACEk/oXimOhkIyFU/s640/Proxima+Sur+Constelacion+de+Orion+final.jpg[/img2]
Down in the position noted Orion pocketing in Western
[img2]http://www.surastronomico.com/galeria/Pedro_Romano/Orion_4.jpg[/img2]

[url=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101226.html][img]http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_101226.jpg[/img] [size=150]Sideways Orion Over Snowy Ireland[/size][/url]

[b] Explanation: [/b] [url=http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=173537]Orion always comes up sideways[/url] ... and was caught in the act earlier this month over a snowy landscape in [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donegal]Donegal[/url], [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Ireland]Ireland[/url]. To compose this serene picture, the photographer found a [url=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101117.html]picturesque setting[/url] to the east, waited until after sunset, and then momentarily lit the foreground with a flashlight. The [url=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap061229.html]three bright stars[/url] in [url=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101023.html]Orion[/url]'s belt stand in a [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7rMwLxi3Xs]nearly vertical line[/url] above the snow covered road at the bottom. Hanging from his belt, the stars and [url=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap021220.html]nebulae[/url] of the [url=http://www.glyphweb.com/esky/constellations/swordoforion.html]Hunter's sword[/url] are visible lower and to the right. Yellow-orange [url=http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100106.html]Betelgeuse[/url] is the brightest star on the image left. As winter progresses in Earth's northern hemisphere, [url=http://youaskandy.com/questions-answers/25-article-series-1950/16922-why-can-we-see-orion-only-in-winter.html]Orion[/url] will rise earlier and so appear continually higher in the sky at sunset.

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