APOD: Geometers Playground Over Wyoming (2011 Jun 06)

[APOD Robot]

Geometers Playground Over Wyoming

Explanation: If you travel several kilometers off a main highway through Wyoming, you may see an unusual sight. In particular, near Buford, Wyoming, USA, you could run across the geometric Ames Monument, visible on the right, built to commemorate the financiers of a historic transcontinental railroad across North America. The above spectacular wide field mosaic, however, has also captured other geometric designs, many of them far in the distance. On the far left, for example, is a lunar halo surrounding by a lunar corona surrounding the setting Moon. On the right, however, is the arch of the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy surrounding the pyramidal structure. Illuminating the horizon to the right of the monument are the city lights of Cheyenne. The menagerie of images used to create this 360-degree composite were all taken during a single night last month. Still, the digital stitching of images taken over such a long period of time has led to a few unnatural land and sky juxtapositions. Can you identify any?

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[gimwinkle]

Shadows! And, the lack of them in the monument, also.

[herbhicks]

various shadows and non-shadows at different angles and scale.

[castello]

The shadows are a mess but the stars look pretty random as I don't see many of the usual suspects.

[RADDAD]

You get to see yourself coming and going on Monument Rd!

[Ann]

It's a spectacular image! Hyper-realistic and unreal at the same time. It is night, but the landscape is bright. However, the color of the landscape is neither typical of daylight or typical of landscapes at night (when there usually are very few colors). The Moon is glaring at you like an evil eye, but it can't quench the soft pink glow of the North America Nebula.

I love it! I can almost imagine some characters out of a fantasy film start walking that road. Frodo and Sam, perhaps?

Ann

[Beth3711]

It's beautiful, sort of Vincent van Gogh meets M. C. Escher.

[islader2]

The place is strewn with leaverites--I brought back a few.

[Guest]

the sun and full moon are both setting at the same time??

[YukiOgasan]

When you (normally) look up at the sky, the Milky Way is a long straight band. This 360 composite image gives the illusion that the Milky Way has a U-curve in the sky. It's still a beautiful image =)

[iislader]

The Ames Monument area is prime habitat for the jackalope bio name Humbogus wyomingensis, yet there is nary a one in the photo. If person goes to Ames on a hot summer day without shade or water, that person would see lots of H. wyomingensis upon standing around for a couple of hours (best done without polarized sunglasses).

[summerstargazer]

Right off the bat, I noted that the "Big Dipper" (Canis Major) is rather topsy-turvy; as is the "North Star." The outer two stars of the dipper cup point to the North Star which is almost parallel to the horizon instead of higher in the sky toward the North.

[CT]

The moon rising & sun setting simultaneously

[Yukterez]

Seems to me like the whole aspect ratio of the picture is wrong, it is much too high like watching a 16:9 movie in 4:3 (at least the moon and the pyramid, also the road, look like they need to be stretched in width or shrinked in height)

[Star*Hopper]

Can you identify any?

Why, yes....I can.

[lodrigj]

Scorpius seems to have moved to the other side of the Milky Way...

[Guest]

Shadows stretching to and from the camera simultaneously.

[mrtew]

You can't see the colours of the ground at night such as the over saturated greens and yellows of the grass and the reds of the rock. Or if it's day then you obviously can't see the stars.

[William]

The left hand side of the picture should be to the rear of you as you take a picture of the right hand side..... the monument is illuminated by the moon rising.

[lyle]

I think that the fence and the dirt road on either side of the photo is the same fence and road. It is a continuous, straight line fence, disappearing into the distance. The road seems to disappear in behind the monument, but really it is approaching the monument at a right angle with the camera position at the vertex.

[darkgently]

The Milky Way is in the wrong place relative to the stars... or vice versa... Scorpius (lower right) is certainly in the wrong position, and Vega (just right of centre) is not supposed to be in the galactic plane!

[jorgen]

the shadow of the moon is at the wrong side?

[canopia]

The image is an abstract patchwork, can be considered as some kind of art. But it is nowhere near an accurate astronomy picture.

[bbonomi]

Well, the star trails point in multiple directions inconsistent with using a fish-eye lens (especially noticeable at the top center and again directly above the monument); there are errant or missing shadows (mentioned frequently), and the horizon perspective also seems to indicate that the focal point of the lens has been shifted or zoomed in places, particularly on the left side - then in stitching the images together the "seams" were morphed using a stretching technique to obscure the lines and blend the colors? I'm not even sure that the horizon on both the left side and the right side of the monument are not the same, with the one on the right being taken with the lens zoomed and from a perspective which positioned the monument to the left of the steppe instead of on its right (note the "steppe" located directly behind the fence line in the center of the photo.) I wouldn't be surprised if the slight glow in the center of the horizon wasn't also Cheyenne, only at a different time of day and edited to mute the shape.

[orin stepanek]

Looks like a scene from a children's movie!