Starship Asterisk*

I looked at the APOD for February 5, and was struck by the fact that there are three very independent and transient phenomena in the same photo:

The man-made fireworks light up the left,
Comet McNaught holding forth in the center,
and
Lightning flashing on the right.

A triple conjunction of some sort?

(granted it's a three photo mosaic, but it's cool anyway!)

Should have been on Earth Sciences Picture of the Day I think though.

They must be getting hard up for good space pics here.

Norval

Unless I'm missing something, this is at best a composite and not a 'three photograph panorama'.
The exposure time required for the fireworks / lightning would mean that the people would be blurred.
Also, the shadows from the people on the beach would indicate that they are facing towards the north rather than the south, so the comet cannot have been there for a panorama photo.

It's still a nice picture, but I just wanted to see if I was missing something...

What you are missing is the sunset directly ahead of the beach viewers (indicating they are facing west) http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap070205.html and the fact that their shadows all merge towards the brilliant fireworks display instead of the already set sun.

Interesting. I had thought of that, but thought that the two sets of fireworks (low and left on the picture and the burst in the sky) wouldn't be bright enough to cast such defined shadows. If they were, I expected to see a double shadow, as they come from two different angles.

Also, the sky to the left of the picture is much brighter than that in the centre, leading me to believe that the sun was setting further to the left of the picture. This could be a combined effect from the fireworks and the approaching storm, so I guess it could go either way.

I'm not sure where McNaught was visible from Perth, but if the sun was towards the centre of the shot, doesn't that mean the comet is almost due West (maybe a little south). In Victoria, the comet was quite a bit further south I thought.


Any other opinions greatly appreciated

I just noticed that this picture has been posted again today:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080705.html

AlexTh wrote:I just noticed that this picture has been posted again today:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080705.html

That's all right this one is a repeat also.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080616.html

APOD does that from time to time. They still bring a lot of interest though.

Orin

One time I brought a telescope that fit in my suitcase on vacation with me to the beach. The beach was safe to lie upon in the daytime - the sand was presumably too hot for insects. It also seemed to be free of insects at night as long as I was standing up. But with this little telescope and a homemade travel mount (I didn't know beforehand that the beach itself would be the only place with dark skies), I had to lie down to view an object overhead. And was immediately eaten alive by very many little creatures that live in the sand at night. And never tried that again.

So are Australians or Australian beaches safe from this kind of danger? I see a lot of people in the picture sitting in the sand at night. Or maybe it's still early evening - I can't guess what exposure I'm looking at very well.

apodman wrote:One time I brought a telescope that fit in my suitcase on vacation with me to the beach. The beach was safe to lie upon in the daytime - the sand was presumably too hot for insects. It was also free of insects at night as long as I was standing up. But with this little telescope and a homemade travel mount (I didn't know beforehand that the beach itself would be the only place with dark skies), I had to lie down to view an object overhead. And was immediately eaten alive by very many little creatures that live in the sand at night. And never tried that again.

So are Australians or Australian beaches safe from this kind of danger? I see a lot of people in the picture sitting in the sand at night. Or maybe it's still early evening - I can't guess what exposure I'm looking at very well.

They're all wearing copious amounts of RID!

http://www.rid.com.au/company.htm

From memory of watching nesting turtles near Bundaberg many moons ago, I can vouch for the sandflies' sharp teeth!

I can also remember going to see the baby turtles hatching out and crawling down the beach. Apparently they usually hatched out at or near full moon in order to see the way to go to the sea. But the light pollution from nearby Bundaberg was so bad at one point that the turtles were crawling inland instead of out to sea. They corrected this with tree and bush screens.

There are motion-blurred people in the image, btw. You can see faint ghosting of them near the waterline.

Hello craterchains,

Good to see you still out there! After about 4.5 hrs. or so I finally got my eyes unstuck after staring at the APOD 7/6 anaglyph, at least well enough to post this.