Starship Asterisk*

thanks for the very helpful replies.

for the record, the three objects i referred to are located at:

(-207, 761)
(-818, 954)
(-962, 876)

where the coordinates are measured in pixels from the lower right corner of the full resolution (2302 x 1176) image.

hummm. well, skymap shows that venus *was* high in the eastern sky in the morning during the week that you saw your bright star. venus can be very bright; i'll bet that is what you saw.

in the full resolution picture, there are three background galaxies in a line more-or-less tangent to the top of the face-on galaxy. i'd expect more-distant galaxies to be both smaller in apparent size and more red-shifted in colour. why then is the one on the right both bigger and redder than the o...