Starship Asterisk*

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=82004 wrote:

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Progression of the Rim Fire at Night
Earth Observatory, September 8, 2013

<<The winter of 2012–2013 was among the driest on record for California, setting the stage for an active fire season. By September 6, 2013, the Rim Fire had made its way into the record books. Eighty percent contained, the fire was the third largest in California since records began in 1932.

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the Suomi NPP satellite tracked the growth of the fire between August 20 and September 4. The VIIRS day-night band is extremely sensitive to low light, making it possible to see the fire front from space at night. The brightest, most intense parts of the fire glow white. Pale gray smoke streams away, generally to the north. Thin clouds obscured the view on some days, particularly August 31, September 1, and September 3. On August 20, the Moon was full, so the landscape was reflecting a large amount of moonlight. The background grew progressively darker as the September 5 new moon approached.

The perimeter of the fire changed along different fronts from day to day, depending on winds and firefighting efforts. On August 24, firefighters focused on containing the western edge of the fire to prevent it from burning into Tuolumne City and the populated Highway 108 corridor. They also fought the eastern edge of the fire to protect Yosemite National Park. These efforts are evident in the images: Between August 23 and 24, the eastern edge held steady, the western edge receded, and the fire grew in the southeast.

On the morning of August 25, 2013, fire managers reported that the blaze was growing in the north and east. With the fire burning aggressively and moving east into Yosemite, August 26 and 27 proved challenging days for firefighters. But over the next few days, they began to gain control after a series of burnout operations along the fire’s northern and eastern edges. On August 29, the evacuation advisory for Tuolumne City was lifted. The southeastern flank continued to burn intensely in the first week of September, but officials expect the blaze will be 100 percent contained by September 20.>>

Gemma Caelestis wrote:And just to be clear, I'm also annoyed by the unscientific assumption that the elk in this picture were stunned by the fire.

Boomer12k wrote:... horrible tragedy....hope the Elk made it...

DavidLeodis wrote:I hope the elk were subsequently OK.

Chris Peterson wrote:

geckzilla wrote:There is a duality to this photo which depends on which direction you think the elk are looking. In the most obvious sense, they are watching the fire burn their previous home. You could imagine this as a candid photo of them and that they are unaware of the photographer. On the other hand, if they are facing the photographer, they may be more greatly concerned with the presence of the human taking their photograph than with the fire raging behind them.

It is quite certain the elk on the left is looking towards the photographer, because otherwise we wouldn't see its mane. It's a little less certain which way the elk on the right is looking, but I'm pretty sure it is also towards the photographer.

geckzilla wrote:There is a duality to this photo which depends on which direction you think the elk are looking. In the most obvious sense, they are watching the fire burn their previous home. You could imagine this as a candid photo of them and that they are unaware of the photographer. On the other hand, if they are facing the photographer, they may be more greatly concerned with the presence of the human taking their photograph than with the fire raging behind them.

Q4: Have some APOD pictures been run more than once?
A4: Yes. Many of our readers have been with us less than a year and are unaware of some really spectacular or important astronomy pictures. New information about old pictures is becoming available over the WWW. The text and links for rerun pictures will make use of this newly available information. So although the picture might be old, some of the text and links of each APOD will be new. Also, more web surfers have larger bandwidth connections, which allows us to post higher-resolution image files that can be transferred conveniently. Software to handle more sophisticated image file formats has also become more common, so the picture's size and/or format might be new. Lastly, rerunning APODs saves us time and helps us update our archive. In general, our rerun policy currently is to only rerun APODs more than one year old to keep the pictures relatively "new" to new APOD viewers. We will almost never rerun more than two pictures in any given week. So when you load the current APOD, it is still, most probably, a new picture.

owlice wrote:There are many sites on which to see amateur images, including Asterisk, so why denigrate APOD for being, well, APODish?

geckzilla wrote:

There is often very little difference between a professionally processed image and a dedicated amateur's but that goes for all parts of astronomy, not just imaging. At this point it doesn't even need to be stated that "amateur astronomy" doesn't mean "unskilled astronomy". I think the "professional" astronomers who get awarded Hubble time would be quite happy to get three filters. Time is just so limited (expensive, not "cheap") that if two will do then two it is.

BDanielMayfield wrote:What are "chip gaps"?

geckzilla wrote:You don't even know about the chip gaps. Oh, the chip gaps! The chip gaps are heartbreaking.

Ann wrote:As for professional and amateur images, may I throw in my two cents and say that some amateur images are just as good as professional ones. Often amateurs spend a huge amount of time on their images, and thus achieve stunning results. Professional images are often produced "on the cheap", for the simple reason that the individual images are just treated as entries in a large catalog: scientists need a huge database of the best possible quality, but there are many aspects of the images that can be dispensed with because they aren't necessary for the science in question. For example, the Hubble pictures are often two-color ones, photographed through two filters, which is often perfectly enough for science but disappointing from an aesthetic point of view.

owlice wrote:There are many professional images that could be shown instead of amateur images, and there are at this point likely millions of images just from NASA missions that could be shown rather than images from other telescopes/missions. Part of APOD's charm (and, given what the editors have said, design) is the breadth of material they consider suitable for the site.

OzRob wrote:

owlice wrote:There are many professional images that could be shown instead of amateur images, and there are at this point likely millions of images just from NASA missions that could be shown rather than images from other telescopes/missions. Part of APOD's charm (and, given what the editors have said, design) is the breadth of material they consider suitable for the site.

Yes, we are aware of your opinon. Are you going to continually denigrate other people's opinions on this matter?

owlice wrote:There are many professional images that could be shown instead of amateur images, and there are at this point likely millions of images just from NASA missions that could be shown rather than images from other telescopes/missions. Part of APOD's charm (and, given what the editors have said, design) is the breadth of material they consider suitable for the site.

Beyond wrote:I think it's the word "Astronomical" that 'throws' some people. Somehow it's forgotten (or never realized in the first place) that the Earth is actually part of the whole Astronomical picture. Just ask any alien passing by.