Starship Asterisk*

Planets of the Solar System

Explanation: Simultaneous images from four cameras were combined to construct this atmospheric predawn skyscape. The cooperative astro-panorama captures all the planets of the Solar System, just before sunrise on June 24. That foggy morning found innermost planet Mercury close to the horizon but just visible against the twilight, below and left of brilliant Venus. Along with the waning crescent Moon, the other bright naked-eye planets, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn lie near the ecliptic, arcing up and to the right across the wide field of view. Binoculars would have been required to spot the much fainter planets Uranus and Neptune, though they also were along the ecliptic in the sky. In the foreground are excavations at an ancient Roman villa near Marina di San Nicola, Italy, planet Earth.

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I really like today's APOD, and I appreciate being told where Uranus and Neptune fit into the current planetary parade. But it should be pointed out that the APOD doesn't reflect "the true apparent brightness" of the planets in the Earth's skies, where Uranus and Neptune would not be visible at all.

The picture by Exodus Chun-Long Sit, taken from Hongkong, offers a better illustration of what the planetary parade really looks like to the human eye. You can see more of Exodus Chun-Long Sit's pictures and look at them at higher resolution here.

Ann

P.S. Note the blue color of Neptune in the APOD!

Ann, following the link you gave I found this image by Wright Dobbs:
There are no bright foreground lights to distract the viewer. Note that the Pleiades are just visible above and to the left of Venus. The bright star left of the telephone wires is Fomalhaut, which at best is a few degrees above the horiozon seen from here (northern Denmark).

Alas, the picture (from Facebook) does not show, can somebody more knowledgeble help with this?

screen sized! to fit my screen! Beautiful photo!

Holger Nielsen wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 12:41 pm Alas, the picture (from Facebook) does not show, can somebody more knowledgeble help with this?

Not at all sure what it is you are asking. What picture (from Facebook)?

Holger Nielsen wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 12:41 pm Ann, following the link you gave I found this image by Wright Dobbs:

Planetary grouping 2022-06-24 05:45

---

There are no bright foreground lights to distract the viewer. Note that the Pleiades are just visible above and to the left of Venus. The bright star left of the telephone wires is Fomalhaut, which at best is a few degrees above the horiozon seen from here (northern Denmark).

Alas, the picture (from Facebook) does not show, can somebody more knowledgeble help with this?

What link from Facebook? EDIT: oh, this one - https://www.facebook.com/astrofilipalid ... 962974429/. It works for me now. Perhaps it has been fixed since you tried it?

What I meant was, that the picture does not show here on the Asterisk page (such as Ann's pictures), but one can see it by clicking the image icon. I used the "img3" button in the editor: [ img3="Caption" ] Image URL [ /img3 ] (without the supplementary spaces). So, what should I have done?

Holger Nielsen wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 2:47 pm What I meant was, that the picture does not show here on the Asterisk page (such as Ann's pictures), but one can see it by clicking the image icon. I used the "img3" button in the editor: [ img3="Caption" ] Image URL [ /img3 ] (without the supplementary spaces). So, what should I have done?

I've found there to be some "idiosyncrasies" with what types of URLs are allowed for the various img tags. Or maybe I don't fully understand how to use them myself What is the URL for the image you are trying to post? (You can always just paste it without the tags.)

If you click the image icon, the picture will show and you can see its URL:

" https: //scontent.fcph2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/290190941_5507685332609343_4502699444870739134_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=kNY8kW6YFuwAX-WCqjp&_nc_ht=scontent.fcph2-1.fna&oh=00_AT8lpt38lN27RKlq440BH2cAoVacx2ReRHimJKeOkBf2mw&oe=62BCC7C5 "

(I added a space bofore // so the whole adress shows rather than a truncated one). This is what I used in the img3. Rather hefty, could the length be the reason?

I have questions about Uranus and Neptune. I was barely able to pick out Neptune with averted vision in a binocular last night, and it was next to a brighter star. There’s no way it could have been as bright as in this photo without a whole bunch of stars showing.

I haven’t seen Uranus yet—I haven’t been up for the sweet spot between when it rises and the sky starts getting light—but I’ve observed it in the past, and I doubt that it was as bright as in this photo.

Holger Nielsen wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 3:20 pm If you click the image icon, the picture will show and you can see its URL:

" https: //scontent.fcph2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/290190941_5507685332609343_4502699444870739134_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=kNY8kW6YFuwAX-WCqjp&_nc_ht=scontent.fcph2-1.fna&oh=00_AT8lpt38lN27RKlq440BH2cAoVacx2ReRHimJKeOkBf2mw&oe=62BCC7C5 "

(I added a space before // so the whole address shows rather than a truncated one). This is what I used in the img3. Rather hefty, could the length be the reason?

Yeah, that's a mouthful! Sometimes removing all the stuff after the .jpg can make it palatable to the img tags and still result in a valid URL, but that doesn't work in this case.

But using img2 works :

As does img1 :

And I got img3 to work just by adding an ="Caption" part to the tag. So that's either required, or the other equal signs in the URL are confusing the parser:

Cousin Ricky wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 3:34 pm I have questions about Uranus and Neptune. I was barely able to pick out Neptune with averted vision in a binocular last night, and it was next to a brighter star. There’s no way it could have been as bright as in this photo without a whole bunch of stars showing.

I haven’t seen Uranus yet—I haven’t been up for the sweet spot between when it rises and the sky starts getting light—but I’ve observed it in the past, and I doubt that it was as bright as in this photo.

Of course not. None of the relative brightnesses are accurate. There's really no way they can be. Venus is about 60,000 times brighter than Neptune! The data format used for images can only show a few hundred different brightness levels. So the image (made from different cameras, presumably using different exposures) has been selectively adjusted (as are most images, especially astronomical ones). The image or images that captured Uranus and Neptune would have also resulted in a very bright background. These objects are barely recoverable against a sky this bright, even photographically. I'd bet that the planets were isolated and the rest of the images removed. Thus, no surrounding stars. Not an unreasonable thing to do.

FWIW, the two stars above the Moon are mag 2 and mag 2 and 2.6; contrast that with the magnitude of Uranus, 5.8.

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 3:36 pm

Holger Nielsen wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 3:20 pm If you click the image icon, the picture will show and you can see its URL:

" https: //scontent.fcph2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/290190941_5507685332609343_4502699444870739134_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=kNY8kW6YFuwAX-WCqjp&_nc_ht=scontent.fcph2-1.fna&oh=00_AT8lpt38lN27RKlq440BH2cAoVacx2ReRHimJKeOkBf2mw&oe=62BCC7C5 "

(I added a space before // so the whole address shows rather than a truncated one). This is what I used in the img3. Rather hefty, could the length be the reason?

...
And I got img3 to work just by adding an ="Caption" part to the tag. So that's either required, or the other equal signs in the URL are confusing the parser:

Caption

---

Yes, the "Caption" is required in <img3>. That, after all, is its purpose, adding captions to images.

Holger, without seeing exactly what you were trying to post, I can't tell you what is wrong. Try including it in a [ code ] this is code [ /code ]

bystander wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 4:58 pm

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 3:36 pm

Holger Nielsen wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 3:20 pm If you click the image icon, the picture will show and you can see its URL:

" https: //scontent.fcph2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/290190941_5507685332609343_4502699444870739134_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=kNY8kW6YFuwAX-WCqjp&_nc_ht=scontent.fcph2-1.fna&oh=00_AT8lpt38lN27RKlq440BH2cAoVacx2ReRHimJKeOkBf2mw&oe=62BCC7C5 "

(I added a space before // so the whole address shows rather than a truncated one). This is what I used in the img3. Rather hefty, could the length be the reason?

...
And I got img3 to work just by adding an ="Caption" part to the tag. So that's either required, or the other equal signs in the URL are confusing the parser:

Caption

---

Yes, the "Caption" is required in <img3>. That, after all, is its purpose, adding captions to images.

Holger, without seeing exactly what you were trying to post, I can't tell you what is wrong. Try including it in a [ code ] this is code [ /code ]

You don't have to write "Caption". It's enough to use an equal sign after the img3 inside a pair of square brackets and then write two quotation marks after the equal sign (like this: =""). You fill in nothing between the two quotation marks, to signal that there will be no caption.

And then you have to add [/img3] after the right square bracket, of course. Except that you don't have to fill it in, because the [/img3] will turn up after the [img3] automatically when you click the img3 button.

Ann

bystander wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 4:58 pm

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 3:36 pm

Holger Nielsen wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 3:20 pm If you click the image icon, the picture will show and you can see its URL:

" https: //scontent.fcph2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/290190941_5507685332609343_4502699444870739134_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=kNY8kW6YFuwAX-WCqjp&_nc_ht=scontent.fcph2-1.fna&oh=00_AT8lpt38lN27RKlq440BH2cAoVacx2ReRHimJKeOkBf2mw&oe=62BCC7C5 "

(I added a space before // so the whole address shows rather than a truncated one). This is what I used in the img3. Rather hefty, could the length be the reason?

...
And I got img3 to work just by adding an ="Caption" part to the tag. So that's either required, or the other equal signs in the URL are confusing the parser:

Caption

---

Yes, the "Caption" is required in <img3>. That, after all, is its purpose, adding captions to images.

Holger, without seeing exactly what you were trying to post, I can't tell you what is wrong. Try including it in a [ code ] this is code [ /code ]

He was trying to post the image given by the " https: " URL he posted above. I thought maybe it confused the img3 tag parsing code because of the equal signs it contains. And, yes, apparently the img3 tag requires to ="" to be manually typed in. It would have helped if the required null caption portion was inserted automatically by the tag button. I think that would be trivial to do. If it had done that, this entire discussion might have been avoided! As Ann pointed out, when the ="" is included and null like that, the caption on the image is left blank.

[img3]https://www.scienceabc.com/wp-content/u ... earl-1.jpg[/img3]

PS - yes, I know the literal "Caption" string is not required. That was merely my example!

I thought I found my error: In my original post I did not place quotation marks around the caption text when using img3. However, adding them changes nothing. So I follow Ann's advice and post the code used, with quotation marks:
I just looked up this page on my iPhone and here the image shows up correctly at every instance, even without the quotation marks! Is this a browser issue? I use Firefox on my computer where the problem occurs.

And all I wanted was to call attention to a very nice image...

Holger Nielsen wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 10:32 pm

Code: Select all

[img3="Planetary grouping 2022-06-24 05:45"]https://scontent.fcph2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/290190941_5507685332609343_4502699444870739134_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=kNY8kW6YFuwAX-WCqjp&_nc_ht=scontent.fcph2-1.fna&oh=00_AT8lpt38lN27RKlq440BH2cAoVacx2ReRHimJKeOkBf2mw&oe=62BCC7C5[/img3]

I also use Firefox and the code you included here works fine.

A wonderful and opportune composition!

We discussed this once years ago. It was clear that you'd need different exposures to show all of the planets at once (for reasons Chris posted above). But I wondered if such an alignment was possible more than once in a person's lifetime. It's not as tightly aligned as I thought it would need to be -- I guess one just needs all of the planets to be in the same 50% of the "solar system planetary disk" at once. Or, maybe all in the same 40% or so, and the Earth needs to be at one edge of this. Still, that seems like quite a feat anyway. Our solar system is currently very lopsided!


Here's a screenshot from the
Fourmilab.ch site, showing
an online orrery view of the
planetary positions on June 24.

One can see that the Earth
(symbol looks like a plus sign in a circle)
is in a position that all of the other
planets are to one side of it in the
overall planetary orbit disk.

They might even have been able to
get Pluto into this picture, I think,
though it must have been a good ways
farther to the right of everything
else, if it was above the horizon
during today's APOD.

Once again, I think this image is a masterpiece.

bystander wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 10:40 pm

Holger Nielsen wrote: ↑Sat Jun 25, 2022 10:32 pm

Code: Select all

[img3="Planetary grouping 2022-06-24 05:45"]https://scontent.fcph2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/290190941_5507685332609343_4502699444870739134_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=730e14&_nc_ohc=kNY8kW6YFuwAX-WCqjp&_nc_ht=scontent.fcph2-1.fna&oh=00_AT8lpt38lN27RKlq440BH2cAoVacx2ReRHimJKeOkBf2mw&oe=62BCC7C5[/img3]

[img3="Planetary grouping "2022"-06-24 05:45"]https://scontent.fcph2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/ ... e=62BCC7C5[/img3]

[img3="Planetary grouping "2022-06-24 05:45"]https://scontent.fcph2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/ ... e=62BCC7C5[/img3]

I also use Firefox and the code you included here works fine.

Yeah, I'm not not clear about what the original problem was. One thing I will point is that if the text you try to include in the caption includes any quotes (an odd or even number of them), the parser has trouble, as shown above.

As I mentioned on facebook, it is difficult to understand how this image adheres to the APOD's ethic's statement: "APOD accepts composited or digitally manipulated images, but requires them to be identified as such and to have the techniques used described in a straightforward, honest and complete way."

1) Uranus and Neptune appear MUCH brighter than their actual brightness. We can barely see stars of magnitude 4, and yet, Neptune *which is at magnitude 7.88) is clearly "visible". Same goes for Uranus, which looks brighter than magnitude 2.60 Beta Ari (and to make things worse, atmospheric extinction is worse for Uranus).

2) Mercury is pure and simple digital editing intended to mislead. The bright "star" just above the "Mercurio" label does not exist. This "star" marks a position roughly half way between 43 and 50 Tau. There is no bright star at this location. Mercury is actually much further away (about twice as far from Venus as what this image lets you believe), hidden in the clouds/haze/horizon.
So, why is there a bright "star" at this location in the image? The only explanation is that the author(s) simply added a star (who knows how?) roughly at the location were Mercury should be (and they did not even get it right).

Looking at the full resolution, one can easily see that some bright stars are missing (where are the Pleiades???) while a number of suspiciously sharp stars with a sharp black border appear randomly at places where there should be no stars.

The fact that all of these manipulations are absent from the description clearly shows that they authors of this image tried to hide it. I'm sure the authors of APOD are extremely busy, so it's on us (the astrophotography community) to point out this type of fakery. I can already see in the facebook comments some beginners wondering why Uranus and Neptune are not visible in their images. They might think that they have a bad technique, or that they need better equipment, when the reality is just that the image selected by APOD had been digitally manipulated far beyond what is acceptable.

jf

jfgout wrote: ↑Sun Jun 26, 2022 8:54 pm ...

Looking at the full resolution, one can easily see that some bright stars are missing (where are the Pleiades???) while a number of suspiciously sharp stars with a sharp black border appear randomly at places where there should be no stars.
...

jf

This object surely is odd looking:

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Sun Jun 26, 2022 9:06 pm
This object surely is odd looking:

object near mars.png

Yes, and there are plenty such fake stars throughout the image (visible on the full resolution). Even some that are visible in the ground!!!! That's because these stars come from a completely different image that was added as a layer. Layer, layer, pants on fire...

jf

jfgout wrote: ↑Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:14 am

johnnydeep wrote: ↑Sun Jun 26, 2022 9:06 pm
This object surely is odd looking:

object near mars.png

Yes, and there are plenty such fake stars throughout the image (visible on the full resolution). Even some that are visible in the ground!!!! That's because these stars come from a completely different image that was added as a layer. Layer, layer, pants on fire...

jf

There's nothing wrong with constructing an image like this out of stacked layers.

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:27 am
There's nothing wrong with constructing an image like this out of stacked layers.

Using stacked layers can be an acceptable method, but not the way it was done here! Maybe you are still under the impression that they simply used layers to cover a wider field of view than what camera can record (which would be fine).

But no, here, they must have used a layer from a picture of who knows what to add a star at the position where they would have liked to see Mercury. This goes against the ethic's statement from APOD and against simple principles of honesty.

I obviously have no problem with people using layers, such as in the recent analemma APOD.

jf

jfgout wrote: ↑Mon Jun 27, 2022 1:03 pm

Chris Peterson wrote: ↑Mon Jun 27, 2022 2:27 am
There's nothing wrong with constructing an image like this out of stacked layers.

Using stacked layers can be an acceptable method, but not the way it was done here! Maybe you are still under the impression that they simply used layers to cover a wider field of view than what camera can record (which would be fine).

But no, here, they must have used a layer from a picture of who knows what to add a star at the position where they would have liked to see Mercury. This goes against the ethic's statement from APOD and against simple principles of honesty.

I obviously have no problem with people using layers, such as in the recent analemma APOD.

jf

How are you so certain that the image of Mercury shown in the APOD is actually a star? I didn't understand your first explanation above. Also, there's a bright object - a star? - very close to Venus and being partially eclipsed by it, that I'm not clear about either.