APOD: Eye on the Milky Way (2020 Apr 21)

[APOD Robot]

Eye on the Milky Way

Explanation: Have you ever had stars in your eyes? It appears that the eye on the left does, and moreover it appears to be gazing at even more stars. The featured 27-frame mosaic was taken last July from Ojas de Salar in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The eye is actually a small lagoon captured reflecting the dark night sky as the Milky Way Galaxy arched overhead. The seemingly smooth band of the Milky Way is really composed of billions of stars, but decorated with filaments of light-absorbing dust and red-glowing nebulas. Additionally, both Jupiter (slightly left the galactic arch) and Saturn (slightly to the right) are visible. The lights of small towns dot the unusual vertical horizon. The rocky terrain around the lagoon appears to some more like the surface of Mars than our Earth.

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[Ironwood]

Very artistic, but I'd have preferred to rotate the picture 90 degrees counterclockwise. Then it would fit my monitor much better.

[Indigo_Sunrise]

Very creative image!

[orin stepanek]

Very creative image!

+1

I'm might flip it for a background!

[TheZuke!]

Kinda creepy looking, but also awesome!
What is the cluster of bright stars near the bright spot on the left (Jupiter) of the Milky Way?

[ptahhotep]

Interesting. Does anyone know anything more about the lagoon? It looks as if it may be volcanic in origin to my untrained eye.

[Innocent Bystander]

Someone please explain why, if Earth is in the plane of the Milky Way, it appears as an arch instead of a straight line? What are we seeing in this image?

[Chris Peterson]

Someone please explain why, if Earth is in the plane of the Milky Way, it appears as an arch instead of a straight line? What are we seeing in this image?

You can't project a sphere (the sky) onto a plane (your screen) without something giving. If you mapped it so the Milky Way was straight, the horizon would be massively distorted.

[Innocent Bystander]

Ah, so it's an artifact or illusion of the display tech, sort of. Thank you.

[Chris Peterson]

Ah, so it's an artifact or illusion of the display tech, sort of. Thank you.

Your eyes do the same thing. Unless the Milky Way is straight overhead, you don't see it as linear, but as an arch. How could you not? You have a "linear" horizon and a "linear" Milky Way, which intersect in two places. Because they're not actually lines, they're circles that we observe from their centers. Individually, that makes them generally appear linear. But together, the illusion is spoiled.

[Innocent Bystander]

I have never seen the Milky Way in person. More bad eyes than light pollution, though there is a bit of that. Viewing still photos doesn't give the perspective that watching a video fly-by of Saturn does, for example. I will try to factor in 3-D placement and movement as I try to imagine why something appears as it does. Thanks for the explanations.

[Fred the Cat]

I'd say the photographer was quite farsighted! Even those with the best vision need enhancement to see things far away.

An Atacaman eye that big would need a good retina.

[Ann]

I wasn't going to try to identify the most prominent objects in the Milky Way in this APOD, but I'll have a go at it! (And please forgive my most terrible handwriting using pencils to place numbers of the objects in the Milky Way.

Constellation Cygnus with Vega in Lyra and Altair in Aquila. Deneb in Cygnus, along with Vega and Altair, form the Summer Triangle. Photo: AstroBackyard.

---

Number one is The North America Nebula, NGC 7000, and A-type supergiant star Deneb.

Number 2 is the Sadr (Gamma Cygni) region, which contains a lot of nebulas and stars and star clusters. Number 3 is Vega, and - oh! I forgot Altair! Well, no matter, because if you look at the annotated image at right, you can see both Deneb, the North America Nebula right next to Deneb, the Sadr region, Vega and Altair. The photographer calls himself AstroBackyard, and I think his first name is Trevor. Note, when you try to find Altair in the image that I have annotated, that Altair is far to the right. Maybe you can see a white pinprick at about 3 o'clock? That's Altair.

I'm not absolutely sure what number four is, but I think it might be open clusters IC 4756 and NGC 6633. The photographers may possibly be Till Credner and Sven Kohle.

Number five is the Scutum star cloud, perhaps most famous because bright open cluster M11 is seen in front of it. The pictures are by Matija Pozojevic and R Jay GaBany.

Let's look at the middle part of the APOD. Number five is, again, the Scutum star cloud. Number six is the M16 and M17 region. They are two bright nebulas. You can see them here. M17 is to the left in this picture. The photographer is Michael S.

Number seven is the Small Sagittarius Star Cloud, also known as M24, a region which is quite full of bright young stars. The link goes to an APOD, complete with a caption, and not directly to the image. The Small Sagittarius Star Cloud is the bluish region at lower left in the APOD.

Number eight is the Lagoon Nebula, seen here with the Trifid Nebula in a picture by Fred Espenak. The Lagoon Nebula is much larger and brighter than the Trifid Nebula.

Number ten is Jupiter, unless I'm very much mistaken. Jupiter is seen here in a picture by NASA, ESA, and A. Simon.

Number eleven is the Antares and Rho Ophiuchi region. This region is seen here in a picture by Samuel Muller. Antares is the bright orange star, surrounded by a yellow reflection nebula, and Rho Ophiuchi is the brightest blue patch in the picture.

Number twelve is the "False Comet", seen in a picture by stevec35. The False Comet consists of a nebula called the Prawn Nebula, and bright cluster named NGC 6231. The False comet is anchored by stars Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Scorpii. You can see a picture of NGC 6231 and Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Scorpii by Josef Pöpsel and Stefan Binnewies here.

Okay, this took some time, so I'll do the last third of this post tomorrow (or more likely, make a new post for the last third of identifying objects in the Milky Way.

Ann

[p1gnone]

Very artistic, but I'd have preferred to rotate the picture 90 degrees counterclockwise. Then it would fit my monitor much better.

forget for fitting the monitor; my horizon in horizontal!

[Ann]

Time to talk about the last third of the Milky Way arch in this APOD! I'll make it easy for me by posting a picture which was a previous APOD where you can see all the objects I have marked with numbers on this APOD.

Close Comet 252P/Linear, visible in 2016, and the Milky Way. Image Credit & Copyright: Alex Cherney (Terrastro, TWAN)

---

So let's compare the two images! Number ten in my labelled image is Jupiter, but in 2016 the planets visiting Scorpius were Saturn and Mars. Number nine, which I didn't label in this part of the Milky Way, is the Lagoon Nebula. You can see it in the "arched Milky Way") as a small pink spot to the right of my "number 10".

Number 12 is the "False Comet" again, seen in my link in a photo by Richard Bell, and it isn't labelled in Alex Cherney's image, but I find it relatively easy to spot as a curved arc that is pink in one end, left of center in Cherney's picture.

Small blue cluster NGC 6193, centered on O-star HD 150136, and the vast red nebulosity NGC 6188 that is lit up by it. Photo: Josep Drudis.

---

Number 13 is the small but mighty star cluster NGC 6193, which is lighting up nebula NGC 6188.

Do read about this amazing star, HD 150136, and the vast nebula it is lighting up- 20 light-years across! - in this text by Philip Plait.

And check out more amazing images of this astonishingly photogenic part of the sky at Alchetron.com. I think that the nebulosity of NGC 6188 is also called "The Fighting Dragons", and there are images where you can almost see two titans battling for supremacy.


Okay, got a bit carried away there! Let's look at number 14 on my labelled version of the APOD. This is Omega Centauri, the largest and brightest globular cluster of the Milky Way, seen here in a picture by ESO/INAF-VST/OmegaCAM. Read more about this amazing cluster here.

Omega Centauri isn't labelled in Alex Chereney's image, but you can find it at upper right, looking strikingly yellow-white in comparison with all the blue stars surrounding it.

The Alpha Centauri triple system. Alpha Centauri A and B, both Sunlike stars, orbit each other a t a little more than Urnaus' distance from the Sun, which amounts to a distance of some 20 Astronomical Units. Small dim red dwarf Proxima Centauri is located at least 8,500 Astronomical Units from the bright pair. Images: ESO 1-m Schmidt Telescope.

---

Number 15 in the image that I labelled is Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our own, some four light-years distant. I have to show you this ESO image at left, which gives you an idea of what the Alpha Centauri system looks like, with two Sunlike components orbiting each other at a distance similar to that between Uranus and the Sun, and a tiny dim red outlier, Proxima Centauri. Alpha Centauri is labelled in Alex Cherney's image. To the upper right of Alpha Centauri you can see an almost equally bright blue star. This is Beta Centauri, a tight pair of hot B-type stars, thousands of times brighter than Alpha Centauri but located so much farther away.

Number 16 on the image labelled by me is the dusty dark nebula aptly named The Coalsack. I like this image of it a lot, but I don't know who the photographer is.

Number 17 is the iconic Southern Cross, or Crux, seen here in an image by Christopher J Picking.

The Carina Nebula. Photo: Harel Boren.

---

Number 18 in the picture labelled by me is the amazing Carina Nebula and its surroundings. Here you can see a picture of the Carina Nebula, with brilliant star Eta Carina at center left, and the Gabriela Mistral Nebula at upper right.

But I'm also going to post a link to an image that is way too big, 2,69 MB, but it is labelled and you can see so much in it. Check it out here at your own risk!

And that's all from me for the moment!

Ann

[TheZuke!]

Ann,
Thank you very much for the "play by play"!
You went above and beyond answering my question!
I did get a couple of bad links, but that may be an effect of the nanny router here at work.