APOD: A Gegenschein Lunar Eclipse (2015 Oct 14)

[APOD Robot]

A Gegenschein Lunar Eclipse

Explanation: Is there anything interesting to see in the direction opposite the Sun? One night last month, there were quite a few things. First, the red-glowing orb on the lower right of the featured image is the full moon, darkened and reddened because it has entered Earth's shadow. Beyond Earth's cone of darkness are backscattering dust particles orbiting the Sun that standout with a diffuse glow called the gegenschein, visible as a faint band rising from the central horizon and passing behind the Moon. A nearly horizontal stripe of green airglow is also discernable just above the horizon, partly blocked by blowing orange sand. Visible in the distant sky as the blue dot near the top of the image is the star Sirius, while the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy arches up on the image left and down again on the right. The fuzzy light patches just left of center are the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Red emission nebulas too numerous to mention are scattered about the sky, but are labelled in a companion annotated image. In the image foreground is the desolate Deadvlei region of the Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia, featuring the astrophotographer himself surveying a land and sky so amazing that he described it as one of the top experiences of his life.

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[Nitpicker]

Not bad at all. [joke] Just needs a few giraffes shopped into the frame. [/joke]

[Ann]

Not bad at all. [joke] Just needs a few giraffes shopped into the frame. [/joke]

Camelopardalis?

Ann

[Nitpicker]

Not bad at all. [joke] Just needs a few giraffes shopped into the frame. [/joke]

Camelopardalis?

Ann

Right you are. I completely missed the giraffe foot sticking out of the ground. Silly me.

[Ann]

Click to view full size image

Ann

[RedFishBlueFish]

I did have a moment of disorientation when looking at the annotated view and noting that the bigger of the two Nubeculae Magellani was labelled "LMC"

This was puzzling to me, for, as a child I learned the dwarf galaxies as the Greater and Lesser Magellanic clouds.

Consulting the fount of knowledge that is the internet-tubes it would seem that Large and Small are the much more widely used appellations. Which plays the devil with my interpretation of the "LMC" acronym.

One learns something every day, whether one wants to or not ..

[NCTom]

In looking at the LMC (I also learned it as the GMC 50 years ago!), is the bright spot on the upper left hand side a Milky Way star or is the Tarantula Nebula really big enough to be that visible in this photo?

[Ann]

In looking at the LMC (I also learned it as the GMC 50 years ago!), is the bright spot on the upper left hand side a Milky Way star or is the Tarantula Nebula really big enough to be that visible in this photo?

That is the Tarantula Nebula.

Ann

[Ron-Astro Pharmacist]

Namibia sounds like quite the place for the Days of our Lives – and the nights!

[Ann]

Giraffes aside, this is a gorgeous image.

Ann

[Beyond]

Giraffes aside, this is a gorgeous image.

Ann

Ann, Giraffes are big animals. They have to be 'aside',( or upside down, as in your earlier post) or they'd block most of your view of the image.

[neufer]

Giraffes aside, this is a gorgeous image.

Ann, Giraffes are big animals. They have to be 'aside',
(or upside down, as in your earlier post) or they'd block most of your view of the image.

• Camelopardalis is relatively big...but not too bright:

[b][color=#0000FF][size=150]H. A. Rey's method of forming Camelopardalis[/size][/color][/b]

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<<Although Camelopardalis is the 18th largest constellation, it is not a particularly bright constellation; in fact, it only contains four stars above magnitude 5.0.

The space probe Voyager 1 is moving in the direction of Camelopardalis [having been deflected out of the plane of the ecliptic by a south polar flyby of Saturn] though it will not be nearing any of the stars in this constellation for many thousands of years.

The constellation was created by Petrus Plancius in 1613 to represent the animal Rebecca rode to marry Isaac in the Bible. Johannes Hevelius gave it the official name of "Camelopardus" or "Camelopardalis" because he saw the constellation's many faint stars as the spots of a giraffe. The word camelopardalis comes from Latin, and it is the romanisation of the Greek "καμηλοπάρδαλις" meaning "giraffe", from "κάμηλος" (kamēlos), "camel" + "πάρδαλις" (pardalis), "leopard", due to its having a long neck like a camel and spots like a leopard.

Part of the constellation was hived off to form the constellation Sciurus Volans, the Flying Squirrel, by William Croswell in 1910. However this was not taken up by later cartographers.>>

[b][color=#0000FF]Camel humps may have evolved as an adaptation in a cold climate.[/color][/b]

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<<The High Arctic camel, from the mid-Pliocene epoch, is a fossil camel related to the fossil genus Paracamelus from which modern camels arose. It is also related to the extinct Ice Age Yukon giant camel. Collagen-containing fossils were found in 2006 near Strathcona Fiord on Ellesmere Island in Nunavut, Canada.

The High Arctic camel lived at least 3.4 million years ago during a warmer period in a boreal-type forest environment. Paleoenvironmental reconstruction shows that in the mid-Pliocene the camel would have been living in a landscape that supported a boreal-type forest, dominated by larch trees. At the time, global temperatures are estimated to have been 2 to 3 degrees warmer than today, whereas locally, in the Strathcona Fiord area, temperatures would have been 14–22°C warmer. Mean annual temperature would have been around freezing, with cold and snowy winters.>>

[retrogalax]

Nice

[neufer]

<<The Namib-Naukluft National Park is a national park of Namibia encompassing part of the Namib Desert (considered the world's oldest desert) and the Naukluft mountain range. With an overall area of 49,768 km² larger than Switzerland, the Namib-Naukluft is the largest game park in Africa. A surprising collection of creatures survives in the hyper-arid region, including snakes, geckos, unusual insects, hyenas, gemsboks and jackals.>>

[b][color=#0000FF][size=150]550 year old dead trees in Dooie Vlei[/size][/color][/b]

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<<Deadvlei is a white clay pan located near the more famous salt pan of Sossusvlei, inside the Namib-Naukluft Park in Namibia. Also written DeadVlei or Dead Vlei, its name means "dead marsh". The pan also is referred to as "Dooie Vlei" which is the (presumably original) fully Afrikaans name.

Dead Vlei has been claimed to be surrounded by the highest sand dunes in the world, the highest reaching 300-400 meters (350m on average, named "Big Daddy" or "Crazy Dune"), which rest on a sandstone terrace.

The clay pan was formed after rainfall, when the Tsauchab river flooded, creating temporary shallow pools where the abundance of water allowed camel thorn trees to grow. When the climate changed, drought hit the area, and sand dunes encroached on the pan, which blocked the river from the area.

The trees died, as there no longer was enough water to survive. There are some species of plants remaining, such as salsola and clumps of !nara, adapted to surviving off the morning mist and very rare rainfall. The remaining skeletons of the trees, which are believed to have died 600-700 years ago (AD 1340- 1430), are now black because the intense sun has scorched them.Though not petrified, the wood does not decompose because it is so dry.>>

[Ron-Astro Pharmacist]

I think these are just upside down trees like Ann's giraffe. Plants have a quite a different symmetry than animals. Makes you wonder we differ so much?

Will our first encounter with alien life be vegetable rather than animal? Friendly or dangerous.

[Ann]

Art wrote:
Camelopardalis is relatively big...but not too bright

Source: http://jocelyndelhotalgiraffes.blogspot ... story.html

Giraffes are relatively big...but not too bright.

(But at the edge of one of its super-long extremities the cosmic Giraffe sports a magnificent, if seemingly dim, blue eye.)

Ann

[neufer]

I think these are just upside down trees like Ann's giraffe.

Plants have a quite a different symmetry than animals. Makes you wonder we differ so much?

Will our first encounter with alien life be vegetable rather than animal? Friendly or dangerous.

<<In a Scientific American article, [Carl Sagan] wrote, “If a silicon-based giraffe had walked by the Viking Mars landers, its portrait would have been taken.” Sagan didn’t actually think there might be silicon Martian giraffes, but he was glad that the Viking landers would be ready to take pictures of any animals bounding around.

Here’s a 1981 letter from Sagan to someone who thought alien life forms would be very much like creatures on Earth. Sagan disagreed: “We have a worrisome tendency to think that what we see is all that can be… But why five fingers? Why fingers rather than tentacles? Why the agonizingly slow data processing in our neurological systems? Why not multi-spectral infrared sensing? It’s easy to think of a wide range of anatomies, physiologies and sensory modalities that have not been adopted by humans or indeed by any other creatures on the Earth.”

[Ron-Astro Pharmacist]

It is actually ironic that we haven't even documented all the forms of life on our own planet but many of us spend endless time in curiosity about what we aren't likely ever to see.

Go wonder!