Starship Asterisk*

The Milky Way Over Pulpit Rock

Explanation: Can a picture of the sky be relaxing? A candidate for such a picture might be the above image taken only last month from Cape Schank, Victoria, Australia. The frame is highlighted by a quiet lagoon, soft ground fog, two galaxies, and tens of thousands of stars. The rock cropping on the left may appear from this angle like a human head, but the more famous rock structure is on the far right and known as Pulpit Rock. Across the top of the image runs a distant stream of bright stars and dark dust that is part of the disk of our spiral Milky Way Galaxy. On the right, just above Pulpit Rock, is the Milky Way's small neighboring galaxy the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC). The bright white object just to the left of the SMC is a globular cluster of stars in the Milky Way known as 47 Tucana.

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Oooooooooooooohhh!!! I love this, the image and the explanation both!!

I want to see this for myself someday.

The softness along the shore is not ground fog but the result of the water moving during a long exposure. The blurr becomes more evident at short distance. Beautiful image and place!

Yes, that's a delightful image and a great explanation, too!

Ann

This is a great photo. But the first thing that I noticed about it was the Emu - looming so huge in this image. I'm surprised that the explanation didn't include something about this famous Aboriginal shape.

Cheers.

marvelous

Di wrote:The softness along the shore is not ground fog but the result of the water moving during a long exposure. The blurr becomes more evident at short distance. Beautiful image and place!

I agree with this explaination...

Thanks everyone! I am pleasantly shocked to see it did make the APOD.

Marcopie wrote:

Di wrote:The softness along the shore is not ground fog but the result of the water moving during a long exposure. The blurr becomes more evident at short distance. Beautiful image and place!

I agree with this explaination...

Indeed, the mist is caused by the ocean waves and long exposure.

Cheers,
Alex

Love your work, Alex.

Yes indeed; a great photo!

One inside the other outside soon to also be inside, just as timely globular cluster was incorporated by the Milky Way for Small Magellanic Cloud is the destination set, will be trapped in the same way that the octopus embraces the rock.

BTW it's 47 Tucanae, not 47 Tucana.

That is absolutely one beautiful picture. Way to go Alex. Nice work.

jisles wrote:BTW it's 47 Tucanae, not 47 Tucana.

That's convention, nothing else. There is no possibility of confusion by eliminating the use of the Latin genitive. I always make it a point to do just that. It's a stupid and useless convention that pushes astronomy a little further from people without scientific training. The good thing about English is that its rules are determined strictly by common usage, and the way to change English is to use it differently. Eliminating the Latin genitive in star names is my little effort to push the language in the direction I think it needs to go! <g>

Go for it, Chris!!!

What a wonderful photo - if I lived there, I'd could turn into a totally noctural creature just to be able to glance up for this view!

Except for the ground fog, what an agreeable picture for everyone. There must be something about stareing into the great unknown that kinda pulls at everyone, like a longing to return to where everything started. Well........perhaps some future day........

terrastro wrote:Thanks everyone! I am pleasantly shocked to see it did make the APOD.
...
Cheers,
Alex

Congratulations on your APOD and
Welcome Aboard the Starship Asterisk*

Very nice picture, Alex! Thanks

This image was first seen on the Observation Deck.

Due to owlice's blatant promotion of her favorite,
It made the pages of APOD over my personal favorite:

Stairway to Heaven (Copyright: Alex Cherney)

bystander wrote:Due to owlice's blatant promotion of her favorite

lol!! Now that's a scary thought!!

I love the picture and was really happy to see it as today's APOD! I love the write-up, too, because it answered questions I had about the picture (even some questions I didn't know I had until I read the text!). That's one of the things I like most about APOD -- those moments when I see/read something and go "Wow!" or "Huh! Didn't know that!" (I say that a lot) or am completely gobsmacked, or have "Cooooooooooooooool!!!!!" come to mind. And finding poetry, art, music, history, and those laugh-out-loud lines tucked into the explanations... well, it's easy to see why APOD is as popular as it is!

Congratulations, Alex! And welcome to the Asterisk!

Hey, biddie, join me on my Australia trek! I've got three more years of college to pay for, and then it's off to see (more of) the world!

Chris Peterson wrote:It's a stupid and useless convention

Use of the Latin genitive shows a bit of education, perhaps as well as appreciation of (western) language heritage. I see no need to intentionally use the wrong words, especially when talking about subjects restricted to any professional field, scientific or otherwise.
It is #47 of Tucana; Tucana's 47, if you will. It's only right to reflect the genitive case.
If you're using the Flamsteed designation, you should do so as he described his list, using the Latin genitive of the constellation it lies in, even if the list was first published a long time ago (1712).

Case wrote:Use of the Latin genitive shows a bit of education, perhaps as well as appreciation of (western) language heritage.

That argument was used to force scientists to publish in Latin until not all that long ago. Pretty silly, IMO. Using Latin genitives when you are speaking English is simply illogical. It's a convention, and nothing else. Very few astronomers who inflect star names this way actually know enough Latin to be considered educated in that subject!

I see no need to intentionally use the wrong words, especially when talking about subjects restricted to any professional field, scientific or otherwise.

Neither do I. So I choose to use words that are correct. But where there are multiple correct choices, I'll choose which I prefer.

It is #47 of Tucana; Tucana's 47, if you will. It's only right to reflect the genitive case.

Do you use the genitive with dates? It is still common in some places, but most of the English speaking world has largely dropped it. How about street addresses? There are many examples of an implied genitive where it isn't used explicitly.

Anyway, feel free to follow the convention. I have no objection to your doing so. But for myself, I feel it serves no purpose, adds no value, but does slightly obfuscate things for many people. So I'll advocate for a simpler system the easy way... by using it.

I also avoid using Latin plurals when there is an accepted alternative- thus, novas, nebulas, etc. (Or should I say and so forth <g>.)

Alex,

Is there an interesting back story behind the taking of this picture? For example, did you expend some effort finding just the right spot? Did you research just the right time to take the image? Was anyone else there with you helping out? How many similar images did you take that night? Did you think this was a good image from the start? What did your friends think of the image? Did you do much post-processing of the image? If so, what? Thanks, for giving this image a greater human dimension with your answers, if you can.

- RJN

Hi Robert,

Well, I guess there is some kind of a story behind almost any picture.

Our passion with astronomy started when my daughter asked if we can find aliens three years ago, she was four at that time. So we got a department store Newtonian telescope and a pair of binoculars. When I looked at Venus and Saturn I knew there was no coming back.The small Newtonian telescope made room for a Dobsonian, then a larger one and again... I am not sure what aperture is needed to find those aliens but we keep trying.

During a Border Stargaze Astrofest last year (held near Albury on the border of New South Wales and Victoria) I borrowed a tripod and pointed my DSLR at the sky and that added another dimension to my hobby. We are lucky in Australia and have access to true dark skies and amazing landscapes not too far away from the major cities and I aim to show familiar landscapes under the night skies.

I always plan my night photography a few days or even weeks ahead and try to go out every new moon if the weather permits. In June I wanted to get Moon and Venus conjunction above the ocean to capture the water-reflected light path from both, so that was the prime objective for the trip to Cape Schanck. Here are two images from the same night at the Cape:
Moon, Venus and Lighthouse
Moon and Venus light path

We like to go there with our family in summer and I know the place reasonably well. After taking the Moon shots I walked down to the ocean and tried to find the right angle, which took a while and I waited for the Milky Way centre to rise a bit higher. The taller rocks were lit by the lighthouse but the beach wasn't and the image looked unbalanced. So I experimented with light-painting it using an ordinary torch. With that image, I took eight 30-second exposures whilst painting with the torch to make the effect smooth and subtle. I then stacked the 8 images together and used a single 30-second exposure of the sky. Other than stacking the foreground images I did not need to post-process it much because the skies were quite dark and the red-coloured glow was a bonus. I had to finish early though as the dew was forming too fast on the lens near the ocean.

I am quite happy with the result and my family liked it. I usually post my images on the Australian astronomy forum IceInSpace and this image got positive feedback, so I knew it was a good one.

Thank you so much for choosing it to display on the APOD page and showing to so many people in the world!

Cheers,
Alex

Great photo, Alex.
You could spend a few moments and imagine this could be taken from a probe that landed on a distant rocky/water planet light years away from earth.
The Sun being the yellowish star below Alpha Centauri.
Mario

Owlice - what an adventure!! I'd loved to plan for a month's walkabout - I've wanted to visit Australia/New Zealand ever since the last ice age .... ((grin)) I'll be 72 in 3 years but hopefully, I'll still have enough git-up in my git-along .....

Alex, thank you very much for sharing your story! How cool that your family goes with you, too!

Biddie, that means you have a 70th birthday to celebrate between now and then; here's how one woman celebrated hers: http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page ... 96915&v=9f

How do you feel about making it a cycleabout?