Starship Asterisk*

Please post your birthday collage submissions here. If you prefer to have your collage posted anonymously, please let me know by PM so that we can arrange it.

Thank you!

This is my first attempt at a mosaic. I used MacOSaiX on my iMac. The image uses just over 1700 images from a folder on my system, about 400 of which are cosmic images, many of them former APODs. The subject is obvious, I suppose -- at least to Doctor Who fans.

I'd rather do a mosaic using just APOD images, but the 400 I have is not enough. Most mosaics require thousands of images to get good tonal range and detail. Any idea how I could get on-line access to a pool of such images? I can point the software to the URL of a folder of images -- I don't need to have them locally.

I'm trying another now using Google image search which, if it works, will be more on topic and on target. When I do a search for "APOD, galaxy, nebula, NGC, photo" at Google, I get about 6000 images returned, so the same search using MacOSaiX should yield the same set of images. We'll see. It takes a while to create a mosaic this way.

Rob

Another try at the same subject. The software I used initially wouldn't work with Google images. Bugged, I guess. This time I downloaded a trial version of Mazaika for Mac OS X. It uses a different process, first creating a library of mosaic tile images from images in folders you select (but only on your local hard drive) and then rendering the master image using those tiles. It worked much faster than MacOSaiX. I told it to use a folder of Mars images and a folder of Space images, with a total of 327 images in all. Naturally the results feature quite a few images with circles of some sort in them -- craters, galaxies, etc. But at least its all astro images this time, and I like the overall result better too. Hope you like it.

Rob

Maybe Robert could make a internet directory of APOD images or thumbnails available to you and others (public access).

Wow! Now the picture looks so much better.

Ann

that's an interesting Picture Rob.
but i can't understand what it is trying to show.
don't you think that the result would be much better if you create an Astronomical Image using those astronomical mosaics?

Hi Amir,

Yes, that's my goal. I was working on a Tardis image as a way to practise, though it is vaguely related to a space theme. After all, a Tardis is how a Time Lord gets around.

Rob

Rob, that is a really cool image! Although I and surely many APODees are Dr. Who fans, I don't know if the Tardis is the right icon for APOD's 15th. Can you image-pixelate other images as well? Can you do the famous "Blue Marble Earth" like is shown here: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070325.html ? That would be really cool and APOD appropriate.

As for downloading the APOD thumbnails, I think the Linux "wget" command can get them from the APOD calendar page's archive. They are coded by date. You don't need special permission. Here is an example: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_020508.jpg .

- RJN

Here's one of the Blue Marble image (the Earth from high orbit.) It's still using my local 327 images, so it's not a clear as it could be, but it's fairly good. I like the way the blackness of space has been rendered with lots of galaxies and globular clusters and such. Sort of realistic, in an odd way.

Rob

Credit and copyright: Ronnie Warner

Well, wow!!! Look at NGC 4038 in the middle of that Vincent van Gogh painting!



Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh.



NGC 4038 (and 4039) by Nature!

I can see a number of planetary nebulae in Ronnie's van Gogh image, too, and I think I can spot the Crab nebula on the lower left. But Ronnie, what is that galaxy that you placed below NGC 4038, the dominant part of the Antennae? It's an extremely face on galaxy, and it looks a bit like M100 or M61, but it isn't any of those. Wait, don't tell me - it's a part of M101?

And I really like you planet Earth, Rob. As you said:

I like the way the blackness of space has been rendered with lots of galaxies and globular clusters and such. Sort of realistic, in an odd way.

I'll say!

Ann

You're right, Ann. It's M101.Once I adjusted the scale, the antennae fit right in. It was as though the master knew about them.

In addition to the galaxies you mentioned, there are several others in there. The Cartwheel galaxy will be easy to find. Others are scattered about.

There are also quite a few nebulae (eagle, witch head, ant, cateye, crab, eskimo, owl, rosette), a couple of comets, a lunar eclipse, a conjunction, and Einstein's cross. In all, over twenty objects. I can put more in if you would like, but wanted to respect the painting by not overwhelming it.

Did you find the picture of the APOD creators in there?

Thanks.
Ronnie Warner

Let's try a larger size of the Starry Night mosaic, to give Ann and others a fighting chance to find the APOD creators!

Got 'em. They're represented by the crab in the lower left.
[just kidding]
Nice work Ronnie.
Rob

bystander wrote:Maybe Robert could make a internet directory of APOD images or thumbnails available to you and others (public access).

One route to this is to use the image directory http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/. Now I know when you look to the image directory itself the NASA computer denies access, but the individual thumbnail images that appear on the Calendar pages are all in there and access to them is not denied. For example, try http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/calendar/S_070420.jpg and you will get the thumbnail of the image used on APOD on 2007 April 20. The coding of image names is directly by date, so I am hoping this is good enough. If not, please let me know and we can try something else.

- RJN

I have no experience with wget, but most of the get tools I've used work like the get command inside most ftp clients. They require that you be able to see the filenames (i.e. read the directory).

I can download the thumbs using the DownThemAll! addon to Firefox, but I have to go to each month's calendar page, and download the files month by month (DownThemAll! reads the filenames from the Calendar page).

Other download accelerators (GetRight, Download Accelerator Plus, etc) can be set to download multiple files using file numbers (S_######.jpg), but you will either have to do the month breaks manually or set it for the entire range 000000-999999 (actually 000101-991231).

With the larger image, I found the Cartwheel Galaxy. I also found M104, the Owl, the Cat's Eye, the Eskimo, Thor's Helmet and an Einstein Cross.I also found what really just looked like a pink rose - would that be the Rosette? I found what I guess is the Ants, but I'm no great fan of planetary nebulae, so I'm not sure. But you mean that the Witch Head is there? I absolutely can't find it, unless it is the brown blob to the left of the Cartwheel galaxy.

What other galaxies are there? I can really only find M 101, M 104 and the Cartwheel.

It was a lot fo fun to see the APOD creators in there - would that be Owlice and Bystander?

Ann wrote:It was a lot fo fun to see the APOD creators in there - would that be Owlice and Bystander?

Robert J. Nemiroff [RJN] & Jerry T. Bonnell

Ann wrote:With the larger image, I found the Cartwheel Galaxy. I also found M104, the Owl, the Cat's Eye, the Eskimo, Thor's Helmet and an Einstein Cross.I also found what really just looked like a pink rose - would that be the Rosette? I found what I guess is the Ants, but I'm no great fan of planetary nebulae, so I'm not sure. But you mean that the Witch Head is there? I absolutely can't find it, unless it is the brown blob to the left of the Cartwheel galaxy.

What other galaxies are there? I can really only find M 101, M 104 and the Cartwheel.

It was a lot fo fun to see the APOD creators in there - would that be Owlice and Bystander?

The Witch Head is on the upper left, above Hale-Bopp. The brown blob next to the cartwheel is part of the Eagle Nebula. Ronnie Warner

Thanks, Ronnie, now I found the Witch Head! It's looking good, too. And yes, I guess the brown blob near the Catwheel galaxy could indeed be the Eagle. But what's the big orange blob in the upper left corner? And what about the big yellow and orange "crescent" thing to the right - don't tell me it's the Moon illuminated by Earthlight, is it?

Ann

The orange blob on the upper left is the rosette. On the upper right, I tucked in an eclipsed moon under the master's brushstrokes. In the extreme upper right is Jupiter from a particularly nice conjunction with the moon.

If you're interested, the lunar conjunction from December 2004 is here:
http://www.astrorad.com/Site/The%20Moon.html

Ronnie Warner said:

The orange blob on the upper left is the rosette.

Okay!

On the upper right, I tucked in an eclipsed moon under the master's brushstrokes.

An eclipsed Moon, eh? Nice!

Oh, yes - now I can see the Lady in the Moon in your Moon!

In the extreme upper right is Jupiter from a particularly nice conjunction with the moon.

I can see Jupiter!

But Ronnie, there really is a pink blob to the left of the eclipsed Moon, and to me it looks like a rose. What is it?

Ann

Ann, that pink blob is due to the addition of the Tarantula nebula. The Hubble picture of it is gorgeous. What you see as a rose is the nebula superimposed on Van Gogh's "star" with the nebula at 70% opacity in Photoshop. I thought they looked good together. It was my goal not to completely cover up his brushstrokes with any of my additions. Most of the added objects have feathered edges, and varying opacity.

In the upper part of the picture, just to the left of center, there is another pic of this nebula in a different false color, showing SN1987A.

Ronnie Warner