Starship Asterisk*

i realize APOD is usually a picture, but the following graphic might be of interest

http://ldecola.net/files/distances.png

among other things it shows what a big leap getting to something out of the solar system will be.

i agree with henrystar: any APOD that's an artistic rendering (e.g. 2012 December 26 'Makemake of the Outer Solar System') should be clearly labeled as such in the title...

Thanks to everyone. I use it to talk about 'health and life' on Earth, and it shakes people's ideas of what a landscape should look like. When someone guesses 'Mars' I usually sneer and say, 'yeah, sure!' but eventually let them know.

However, I did convert it to grayscale.

Lee De Cola.

I've used the attached picture (cropped from the original) in a lecture but have misplaced the source...

Lee De Cola, PhD, MCP
U.S. Geological Survey
521 National Center
Reston VA 20192 USA
Room 2D324
703-648-4178, fax 4603
W77°22'10" N38°56'48"
703-709-6972 home
LDECOLA@USGS.GOV

Thanks, everyone, for your thoughtful responses, which I attempt to summarize. On the one hand, astronomical tools produce renderings according to the following principles: 1) the lens geometry of telescopes magnify the viewing field, i.e. they separate distant, close objects, 2) the sizes of telesc...

I see lots of images in full color but wonder what the 'true' colors of the objects might be? I.e. what would they look like to me say if I were visiting them?

I think the 6 January 31 image borders on fraud. I stared at it for a minute, and even read the caption but it didn't immediately sink in that this was an "artist's impression" (whatever that means). Why not show us the Huygens images themselves and reserve the computer graphics for linked...