Starship Asterisk*

Stars and Lightning Over Greece

Explanation: It may appear, at first, like the Galaxy is producing the lightning, but really it's the Earth. In the foreground of the above picturesque nighttime landscape is the Greek Island of Corfu, with town lights surrounding Lake Korrision. Visible farther in the distance are lights from the town of Preveza on the Greek mainland. In the more distant sky a thunderstorm is threatening, with two lightning strokes caught together during this 45 second wide-angle exposure taken in mid-May. The lightning branch on the left appears to be striking near Preveza, whereas the lightning strike on the right appears to be striking near Mount Ainos on the Greek Island of Cephalonia. Much farther in the distance, strewn about the sky, are hundreds of stars in the neighborhood of our Sun in the Milky Way Galaxy. Furthest away, arching over the entire panorama, are billions of stars that together compose the central band of our Milky Way.

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Awesome!!! Looks like trouble comin' this a way....

If I was an ancient, and I saw something like that, I would think Zeus was angry too....

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Bravo Bill!!!
Excellent photo!

First of all many thanks for publishing "Stars and Lightning Over Greece" as APOD
It was a very difficult photo, Ι had to carry 70kg equipment on top of the mountain Ag.Mantheos, and had to be done quickly, Zeus was very angry and lightning and thunder was coming from the north and I was next to the lightning rod!! Fortunately Zeus gave me the grace and kept the thunderstorm away but still my waist hurts
Many thanks Chris!

Here is the Galaxy from the same night at Chalikounas beach, Lake Korission
http://asterisk.apod.com/download/file. ... &mode=view

Very nice photo Bill!

That is scary, more like what I would image a nuclear strike would look like at night.

Congratulations Bill!
Stefano

Very nice photo Bill Metallinos. Thank you for carrying all that heavy equipment up the mountain!

I have to agree with Boomer12k, Zeus does come to mind pretty readily, given the locale. Having an astronomy photo that stirs up thoughts of mythology brings art and science together. Nice work.

Fantastic image, congratulations!!!

Great Photo! One question though. Since you write that is a 45 sec. exposure, why are the stars not in a small arch going around the polar star? Wouldn't the 45 sec. be enough to show this effect?

Stunning photo!

Looks like some greek deity is taking a leak on the right one.

Sr71de wrote:Great Photo! One question though. Since you write that is a 45 sec. exposure, why are the stars not in a small arch going around the polar star? Wouldn't the 45 sec. be enough to show this effect?

A small amount of (diagonal) star-trailing is visible in the upper left region where the longest arcs should be (around 0° declination). The horizontal field of view ≈80° and the horizontal image size = 1000 pixels, or a resolution of ~5 arcminutes per pixel. At 0°declination, the stars move 15 arcminutes per minute of time, or approximately 3 pixels per minute. Therefore, a rough estimate for the maximum expected star trail length is 2 pixels (or ~1/500 of the field of view).
The region of visibility, small trail length and trail orientation is right in line with expectation for a 45-sec exposure.

xerhino wrote:I have to agree with Boomer12k, Zeus does come to mind pretty readily, given the locale. Having an astronomy photo that stirs up thoughts of mythology brings art and science together. Nice work.

A lot of the Constellations, even some stars, are Mythology...which was not just someone's story telling in old times, but was someone's religion after all....The "gods" and even people who became "gods"...Hercules...

Planet names are Greco-Roman Myth and Religion. Some if not all had a Temple or Shrine. Astronomy, has a Mythological and Religious past...That has become a Science.

I am wondering....what constellation was the constellation of Hercules, before it became the constellation of Hercules...because those stars no doubt existed before that...so what did they break up, or change to make it Hercules???

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Astrology never became science. It is still practiced to this day as some form of magical divination. Astronomy was born and ceased having anything to do with astrology once tools and techniques for measurement and observation were invented and this knowledge spread. In that way you can make the distinction between the two and assert that one has very little to do with the other. Astrology only ever had the head start on things by virtue of being available to anyone who could look up at the night sky and have an imagination.

Boomer12k wrote:

xerhino wrote:I have to agree with Boomer12k, Zeus does come to mind pretty readily, given the locale. Having an astronomy photo that stirs up thoughts of mythology brings art and science together. Nice work.

A lot of the Constellations, even some stars, are Mythology...which was not just someone's story telling in old times, but was someone's religion after all....The "gods" and even people who became "gods"...Hercules...

Planet names are Greco-Roman Myth and Religion. Some if not all had a Temple or Shrine. Astronomy, has a Mythological and Religious past...That has become a Science.

I am wondering....what constellation was the constellation of Hercules, before it became the constellation of Hercules...because those stars no doubt existed before that...so what did they break up, or change to make it Hercules???

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Hi Boomer. I've been in the mountains, away from the internet, and now that I'm back I'm catching up on apod's. The constellation that the Greeks called Herakles (Hercules to the Romans) was probably adopted from the Babylonians, who may have inherited it from the Sumerians before them, but the original story seems to have been lost in transit, so this constellation was originally rather mysterious to the Greeks. The wikipedia article on Hercules gives a good summary.

The Babylonians were accomplished astronomers and astrologers, by the way. They calculated the saros cycle of solar and lunar eclipses and were able to predict when and where they would occur, which would be partial and which full, etc. http://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=a ... _astronomy