Starship Asterisk*

chadai wrote:The "green mist" is airglow- ionized oxygen emitting at 5577. It is a common feature of the night, and when bright has sometimes been called the "black aurora". The airglow accounts for about half the natural night sky brightness.

Ann wrote:I love the 1876 Charcoal kilns under the Milky Way image. What a juxtapostion of cosmic majesty with the products of an intelligent and technological civilization on a non-interstellar communication level!

Imagine, 1876. Back then, it was known that the stars were far away, and the first star to have its parallax measured, 61 Cygni, had been shown by Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel to have a parallax already back in 1838.


Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel.

On the other hand, it was a complete mystery what made the stars shine - one belief, generally abandoned in 1876 but not really replaced with any other hypothesis, was that the stars shone by burning coal.



Who shovelled coal into the Sun to make it shine? If coal had been the energy source of the Sun, our star would have used up its energy source in 6300 years! See http://www.ucolick.org/~bolte/AY4_00/we ... nergy.html

Let's return to 1876. Back then, nobody had yet seen this famous engraving:



That famous engraving was first published in Camille Flammarion's L’Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888).

But as early as 1686, Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, a French astronomer, wrote his book, Entretiens sur la Pluralité des Mondes (Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds), where he argued that the Moon was an inhabited world, full of life and hardly different at all from the Earth:

What accounts do you receive? enquired she. Those, I replied, that are given us by the learned who travel there every day by assistance of telescopes. They tell us they have discovered in the moon, earth, seas, lakes, elevated mountains, and profound abysses.

Click to view full size image

Fontenelle meditating on the plurality of worlds, painting from 1791.

Let's return to the technology of 1876. The Otto/Langen atmospheric engine existed - in fact, it was constructed in 1876:



But the four-stroke engine-powered car did not yet exist in 1876:



1876. What a year that was. And the Milky Way shone so brightly in the dark, dark non-light polluted sky, above the charcoal kilns. And the passenger pigeon was not yet extinct.

Ann

chadai wrote:The "green mist" is airglow- ionized oxygen emitting at 5577. It is a common feature of the night, and when bright has sometimes been called the "black aurora". The airglow accounts for about half the natural night sky brightness.

the kilns were soon abandon..

noah@wise.tau.ac.il wrote:One would have to know where the picture was taken ...

guest too wrote:

Guest wrote:The kilns are interesting but this image is hard on the eyes. It's not a night sky shot worthy of APOD.

Agreed that this is not APOD quality... star fields are weak, and it is a poor panorama of the kilns, as well.

Aaaaaay... you shutta you mowtts, hey

http://www.nevadadaytrips.com/ward-charcoal-ovens.html wrote:

[url=http://guzzimomma.com/2011/05/07/the-murals-of-ely-nevada/]This mural[/url] [color=#0000FF][b]recognizes the efforts of [u]Italian workers[/u] who built the Ward Charcoal ovens to provide charcoal to operate a silver smelter.[/color][/b]

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<<The Ward Charcoal ovens were operational from 1875 until 1879 – the silver boom years of the Ward Mines. Silver ore was discovered in 1872 when freighters were looking for oxen that were grazing in the Willow Creek Basin area near Ely Nevada. At one time Ward was the largest town in White Pine County with a population of 1500. The ovens are made from quartz welded tuff that was quarried from the nearby hills. Charcoal was only made here for a few years; the silver smelters were shut down and they was no need for the charcoal.Through the years the bee hive ovens have been used as a hideout for stagecoach bandits and a shelter for stockmen and prospectors. Today the Ward Charcoal Ovens are a Nevada State Historic Park. Along with viewing the ovens visitors can enjoy camping at Willow Creek Campground, Fishing in Willow Creek, hiking or have a picnic. Tables and grills located throughout the park. The park is at an elevation of about 7,000 feet and is open year-round, however, access in the winter months may be hampered by snow and mud. Summer temperatures often reach 90 degrees, winter 40 degrees with lows often well below freezing.>>

bystander wrote:Thanks, geckzilla! I must admit I like your version better.