Starship Asterisk*

Trails in the Morning Sky

Explanation: Brilliant Venus and bright Jupiter still rise together before dawn. The peaceful waters by a small lakeside house near Stuttgart, Germany reflect their graceful arcing trails in this composited series of exposures, recorded on the morning of July 26. A reflection of planet Earth's rotation on its axis, the concentric trails of these celestial beacons along with trails of stars are punctuated at their ends by a separate final frame in the morning skyview. Easy to pick out, Venus is brightest and near the trees close to the horizon. Jupiter arcs above it, toward the center of the image along with the compact Pleiades star cluster and V-shaped Hyades anchored by bright star Aldebaran. One trail looks wrong, though. Not concentric with the others and so not a reflection of Earth's rotation, the International Space Station streaks off the right side of this scene, glinting in sunlight as it orbits planet Earth.

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Nice picture, though I would disagree about this being a "small" house. It looks more like a palace to me. That is all the nitpicking I can do as I otherwise thoroughly enjoy all these photos in the APOD series.

epf wrote:... I would disagree about this being a "small" house. It looks more like a palace to me ....

Right! Please click to the link 'lakeside house' and you see that actually it is a small castle/palace, built in 1760.

''One trail looks wrong, though. Not concentric with the others and so not a reflection of Earth's rotation, the International Space Station streaks off the right side of this scene, glinting in sunlight as it orbits planet Earth. ''

The space station streaks IN FROM the right side, disappearing into the pre-dawn glow in the east, but not before it's orbit appears to briefly parallel the star trails, then begins to diverge again before it is lost in the glow.

michael o'brien wrote:The space station streaks IN FROM the right side, disappearing into the pre-dawn glow in the east, but not before it's orbit appears to briefly parallel the star trails, then begins to diverge again before it is lost in the glow.

Perfectly written.

A daylight image of that "small" house. Would that I could afford such a small house!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... epos_1.jpg

what is the longest period that APOD has gone without publishing a photograph of "star trails plus picturesque landscape elements"?

i'd encourage the editors to try to beat that record.

Psnarf wrote:A daylight image of that "small" house. Would that I could afford such a small house!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... epos_1.jpg

And the staff to help take care of it!

drollere wrote:what is the longest period that APOD has gone without publishing a photograph of "star trails plus picturesque landscape elements"?

i'd encourage the editors to try to beat that record.

How should they do that? Showing the "pillars of creation" by HST again and again?

If not, I'd encourage you to run a website by yourself without any startrail images.

off topic here but I cannot contain myself in anticipation of a successful MARS landing. I will eat all my vegetables for a month if they pull off this incredible sequence

But are not all the stars moving the wrong way? They seem to rotate counterclocwise, which would be right on the southerne hemisphere, but surely not i Germany?

Gotmar the norwegian wrote:But are not all the stars moving the wrong way? They seem to rotate counterclocwise, which would be right on the southerne hemisphere, but surely not i Germany?

Stars rotate counterclockwise around the celestial north pole. (There's no way in the still image to tell which way the stars are moving; we're dependent on the caption telling us that the longer endpoint exposure was made at the end and not the beginning.)

Gotmar the norwegian wrote:
But are not all the stars moving the wrong way?

They seem to rotate counterclocwise, which would be right on the southerne hemisphere, but surely not i Germany?

The sun & stars appear to move counterclockwise around Polaris but clockwise around the Southern Pole.

The sun & the sun's shadow both move clockwise around the BASE of a sundial which essentially represents the Southern Pole.

Chris Peterson wrote:

Gotmar the norwegian wrote:But are not all the stars moving the wrong way? They seem to rotate counterclocwise, which would be right on the southerne hemisphere, but surely not i Germany?

Stars rotate counterclockwise around the celestial north pole. (There's no way in the still image to tell which way the stars are moving; we're dependent on the caption telling us that the longer endpoint exposure was made at the end and not the beginning.)

Of course, the camera is facing north!
I stumbled in the caption stating that the stars in the picture are rising in the morning sky, and made the wrong mental connection: Sunrise equals star rise equals clocwise movement. Which would have been true facing south...

Gotmar the norwegian wrote:Of course, the camera is facing north!

Actually, it is more the East than the North.