Starship Asterisk*

The APOD pic I received for 10/30/07 was not astronomy related, it was a pic of a cat looking into a flower pot. For real! What's up with that? I don't have any other wallpaper set on my computer.

Thank you.

To ease your shock moment of terrestrial creatures, here are some astronomically related pictures of similar life forms: Cat's Eye and Sunflower.

OBapod: it may have to do with the apod being an animated gif, which may not be supported on your system as a desktop wallpaper.

I see the same image. I've also seen animated gifs as my background before (although they remain static). Perhaps the kitten's name is Comet 1-7P/Holmes...

I have seen animated GIFs before with APOD but as RhoEps said they remain static. I can recheck my settings but I believe that since this is the first occurrence there must be something else going on.

Thanks

Well, something's going on, because I see a comet transposed next to Jupiter. I looked, but I couldn't spot a kitten

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap071030.html

When I first read your title I was a little confused. "That's not astronomy" gets said fairly often, typically when the APOD is of some atmospheric phenomena. I couldn't fathom how a comet would not be considered astronomy.

--

The size of the coma has definitely been growing over the last couple of days, but does anyone know if the comet is getting brighter? Friday or Saturday I saw the magnitude quoted as 2.8. All I've seen since then is 3 (rounded, I assume).

I'm guessing the wallpaper application grabbed the wrong image, somehow. oO

Would be curious to know where it grabbed it from since both lanceman and I see the same picture, and I'm pretty sure this wasn't already residing on my machine.

If I go to the APOD site and manually set the picture to be my background it works just fine.

I suspect the residents of Comet 1-7P/Holmes are attempting to hide their existence...

I have the same problem my wall paper has been set to a cat looking in a pot.

Must be the Halloween syndrome!
Orin

How do I get an official answer on this? That is after all the reason I posted this message in the first place.

In the explanation, the word "curiosity" contains a link to the cat picture.

lanceman wrote:How do I get an official answer on this? That is after all the reason I posted this message in the first place.

No taunting intended; I clicked on the curicity link and saw your cat! I also was able to download Jupiter and the comet and set it as my walpaper with no trouble. Have you tried to redo the picture?
Orin

Nancy D wrote:In the explanation, the word "curiosity" contains a link to the cat picture.

check the image in question with the one that Nancy indicated. (the second hyperlink of the text under the curiosity hyperlink

Yes, that's the picture in question. I still don't understand how it became my wallpaper though. I guess now it's a moot point since the wallpaper has again changed it is now correct for today.

Thanks for the input.

Seems that APOD has just acquired a skittish trait.
See the previous day's APOD (http://www.afscme.org/issues/1363.cfm 29th Oct)) and click on the 'sunglasses' link in the last line.
John

JohnD that link is no good.

Go to the APOD for 29th OCt 2007.
Click on "sunglasses".
Works for me.

John

What was the link you had in your post?

An irrelevant webpage.

John

three cheers though for astronomical humor
EggHeads need a sence of humor too