Starship Asterisk*

The wonderful folks who put our beautiful APODs together typically do such a fantastic job that we seldom realize that they're probably often assembled from different parts. The slightly noticeable "seam" in today's photo, (6 Aug '08, NGC 1818: A young Globular Cluster), is just a little reminder of that fact. Not a complaint, just an observation.

Somehow reminded me of the old joke line, "Waiter, there's a fly in my soup!"

smitty wrote:The wonderful folks who put our beautiful APODs together typically do such a fantastic job that we seldom realize that they're probably often assembled from different parts. The slightly noticeable "seam" in today's photo, (6 Aug '08, NGC 1818: A young Globular Cluster), is just a little reminder of that fact. Not a complaint, just an observation.

Somehow reminded me of the old joke line, "Waiter, there's a fly in my soup!"

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080806.html

I only see it on the perimeter of the larger enhanced photo. Like maybe it is the edge of the photo.

Orin

It's actually four pictures, not one. This composite is not one of the better efforts from HST.

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_th ... /index.php

I only see it on the perimeter of the larger enhanced photo. Like maybe it is the edge of the photo.

Orin

The seam runs vertically up and down the image about 3/4 ths of the way across from the left. It can be seen in the "disconnects" of the star "spikes."

Smitty

Thanks smitty! Good observation.

Orin

I have to say, the caption is chock-full of interesting information for today's APOD. It explains very well not just what we're seeing, but why it's important.

You're correct about the interesting information, iamlucky13. Very educational as well as beautiful.

smitty wrote:The seam runs vertically up and down the image about 3/4 ths of the way across from the left. It can be seen in the "disconnects" of the star "spikes."

It is rather flagrant.

Not only that, but when I used a photo editor to try to realign the seam, nothing matched! Even with stretching. Didn't try rotation. So it's not just a seam, it's one side of one seam and the other side of another seam. Where their true partners are, whether within this photo or elsewhere in the sky, I can't say.

bystander wrote:It's actually four pictures, not one. This composite is not one of the better efforts from HST.

http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_th ... /index.php

I highly recommend that link to anyone who has ever seen one of those HST photos with the zigzag edge (like today's large APOD photo). After reading that page, I took another look at the composed photo. All four seams are bad.

The seam was not obvious to me and I only noticed it when I looked closer because of the topic. The image has been used as an APOD on several previous times, with its oldest use being the APOD of March 7th 1998. Image editing will likely have improved since then. I think it's a nice image.