Starship Asterisk*

APOD Robot wrote:the picture demonstrates a stunning range of vision

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_%28constellation%29 wrote:

[b][color=#0000FF]Johannes Hevelius's depiction of Andromeda, from the 1690 edition of his Uranographia. As was conventional for celestial atlases of the time, the constellation is a mirror image of modern maps as it was drawn from a perspective outside the celestial sphere.[/color][/b]

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<<Andromeda is known as "the Chained Lady" or "the Chained Woman" in English. It was known as Mulier Catenata ("chained woman") in Latin and al-Mar'at al Musalsalah in Arabic. It has also been called Persea ("Perseus's wife") or Cepheis ("Cepheus's daughter"), all names that refer to Andromeda's role in the Greco-Roman myth of Perseus, in which Cassiopeia, the queen of Ethiopia, bragged that her daughter was more beautiful than the Nereids, sea nymphs blessed with incredible beauty. Offended at her remark, the nymphs petitioned Poseidon to punish Cassiopeia for her insolence, which he did by commanding the sea monster Cetus to attack Ethiopia. Andromeda's panicked father, Cepheus, was told by the Oracle of Ammon that the only way to save his kingdom was to sacrifice his daughter to Cetus. She was chained to a rock by the sea but was saved by the hero Perseus, who used the head of Medusa to turn the monster into stone; Algol (β Persei), the "Demon Star", marks the head of Medusa. Perseus and Andromeda then married; the myth recounts that the couple had nine children together – seven sons and two daughter – and founded Mycenae and its Persideae dynasty. After Andromeda's death Athena placed her in the sky as a constellation, to honor her. Several of the neighboring constellations (Perseus, Cassiopeia, Cetus, and Cepheus) also represent characters in the Perseus myth.>>

Nitpicker wrote:[wild speculation]

(apart from the widespread education of women, which is strongly correlated with wealth, which is strongly correlated with energy usage [damn it])

[/wild speculation]

geckzilla wrote:Just what are you trying to say, here?!

geckzilla wrote:Your statement was definitely worded confusingly enough for me to think you meant global warming was as dangerous as education of women. Haha, I just woke up. I accidentally edited your post instead of hitting quote at first, too.

bactame wrote:
<<Nice apod which refers to naked eye astronomy and mentions limits of vision to M31. If you have ever seen it you know it is quite an extended object even though it can only be seen by not looking directly at it. There are two pointer stars in the asterism that you can stare at and the ruddy red glow of M31 becomes evident. However the author fails to mention the Pinwheel supernova PTF11kly which is more than the 2.3 million lt. yrs. away. The Pinwheel is 25 million lt. yrs. away and several naked eye observers saw that.

I saw it on Sep 10 and its brilliant cobalt blue light was a sight to inspire beholding.>>

• You saw a 10th magnitude supernova with your naked eye!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_2011fe wrote:
<<SN 2011fe, initially designated PTF 11kly, is a star which perished in a Type Ia supernova event that is currently visible from Earth. The star was discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF) survey on 24 August 2011 during an automated review of images of the Messier 101 from the nights of 22 and 23 August 2011. The star, formerly a white dwarf, is located in Messier 101, the Pinwheel Galaxy, 21 million light years from Earth. It was observed by the PTF survey very near the beginning of its supernova event, when it was approximately 1 million times too dim to be visible to the naked eye. It is the youngest type Ia ever discovered. About 13 September 2011, it reached its maximum brightness of apparent magnitude +9.9 which equals an absolute magnitude of about -19, equal to 2.5 billion Suns. At +10 apparent magnitude around 5 September, SN 2011fe was visible in small telescopes. As of 30 September the supernova was at +11 apparent magnitude in the early evening sky after sunset above the northwest horizon. It had dropped to +13.7 as of 26 November 2011.>>

Cousin Ricky wrote:
Why have I never, ever, ever seen Princess Andromeda depicted as an Ethiopian?

neufer wrote:For the same reason that the Queen of Sheba is seldom depicted as an Ethiopian Greek

geckzilla wrote:

neufer wrote:
For the same reason that the Queen of Sheba is seldom depicted as an Ethiopian Greek

Fixed?

• Huh That's Ethiopian to me

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Sheba wrote:
<<The Queen of Sheba (Hebrew: מלכת שבא‎) was a monarch of the ancient kingdom of Sheba believed to have been in Ethiopia & Yemen.

Christian interpretations of the scriptures mentioning the Queen of Sheba in the Hebrew Bible, typically have emphasized both the historical and metaphorical values in the story. The Queen's visit to Solomon has been compared to the metaphorical marriage of the Church to Christ where Solomon is the anointed one or the messiah and Sheba represents a Gentile population submitting to the messiah; the Queen of Sheba's chastity has also been depicted as a foreshadowing of the Virgin Mary; and the three gifts that she brought (gold, spices and stones) have been seen as analogous to the gifts of the Magi (gold, frankincense and myrrh).

Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus refers to the Queen of Sheba as Saba, when Mephistopheles is trying to persuade Faustus of the wisdom of the women with whom he supposedly shall be presented every morning. [Hopefully these women weren't presented too early in the morning before they were fully awake.]>>

geckzilla wrote:
Sheba's depictions featured a lot more with dark skin than light skin when I looked at images of her, though.