APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Comments and questions about the APOD on the main view screen.
Post Reply
User avatar
APOD Robot
Otto Posterman
Posts: 5345
Joined: Fri Dec 04, 2009 3:27 am
Contact:

APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by APOD Robot » Tue Jul 26, 2016 4:07 am

Image Puzzling a Sky over Argentina

Explanation: Can you find the comet? True, a careful eye can find thousands of stars, tens of constellations, four planets, three galaxies, and the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy -- all visible in the sky of this spectacular 180-degree panorama. Also, if you know what to look for, you can identify pervasive green airglow, an earthly cloud, the south celestial pole, and even a distant cluster of stars. But these are all easier to find than Comet 252P/LINEAR. The featured image, taken in el Leoncito National Park, Argentina in early April, also features the dome of the Jorge Sahade telescope on the hill on the far right. Have you found the comet yet? If so, good for you (it was the green spot on the left), but really the harder thing to find is Small Cloud of Magellan.

<< Previous APOD This Day in APOD Next APOD >>
[/b]

Boomer12k
:---[===] *
Posts: 2691
Joined: Sun Apr 22, 2007 12:07 am

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by Boomer12k » Tue Jul 26, 2016 5:35 am

Odd... I spotted the SMC right off....

The comet was much harder... I did not know where to look....

:---[===] *

User avatar
alter-ego
Serendipitous Sleuthhound
Posts: 1119
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2008 4:51 am
Location: Redmond, WA

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by alter-ego » Tue Jul 26, 2016 5:37 am

Boomer12k wrote:Odd... I spotted the SMC right off....

The comet was much harder... I did not know where to look....

:---[===] *
Funny, I spotted the comet about first. The colored circle gave it away :D
A pessimist is nothing more than an experienced optimist

User avatar
Joe Stieber
Science Officer
Posts: 215
Joined: Tue Aug 18, 2009 1:41 pm
Location: Maple Shade, NJ
Contact:

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by Joe Stieber » Tue Jul 26, 2016 6:38 am

Unfortunately, my mouse cursor was over the picture when the page opened, so the label for 252P was one of the first things I saw. I would have liked to have searched for it -- oh well. Regardless, based on the position of 252P, the picture was taken on the morning of 03-April-2016, several days before its closest approach to the globular cluster, M14, in Ophiuchus. The APOD of 11-April-2016 linked at "green spot" was taken on 05-April-2016 and is a close-up of the comet near M14.

I'm familiar with the patch of sky around the comet since I was visually observing and taking snapshots of 252P at the end of March into April 2016 as it approached M14. If I rotate today's APOD 90° clockwise and take the top quarter of the rotated picture, the view is much the same as I saw from 40°N latitude looking southeast a couple of hours after midnight at the end of March into early April.

User avatar
Indigo_Sunrise
Science Officer
Posts: 439
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2005 1:40 pm
Location: Md

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by Indigo_Sunrise » Tue Jul 26, 2016 11:37 am

Can someone please point out the fourth planet? I found Mars and Saturn (towards the left), and Jupiter (far right), but cannot locate the fourth one.
Any help? And TIA 8-)
Forget the box, just get outside.

GreyStripe

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by GreyStripe » Tue Jul 26, 2016 11:44 am

I believe the fourth planet is the earth:)

GreyStripe

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by GreyStripe » Tue Jul 26, 2016 12:01 pm

In keeping with the puzzle nature of today's APOD, I probably should have replied more cryptically.
If I had had my morning coffee, I would have said that I believe the fourth planet is the one that is always closest to you.

Tszabeau

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by Tszabeau » Tue Jul 26, 2016 12:38 pm

Awesome! As if on-cue... today's pics helps me to orient myself in yesterday's.

jimbo48
Ensign
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2011 2:48 pm

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by jimbo48 » Tue Jul 26, 2016 1:05 pm

Is it just me ... or does the feature in the photo described as "Jupiter" look more like the Andromeda galaxy? I really think it is. Can anyone confirm?

User avatar
Chris Peterson
Abominable Snowman
Posts: 18112
Joined: Wed Jan 31, 2007 11:13 pm
Location: Guffey, Colorado, USA
Contact:

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by Chris Peterson » Tue Jul 26, 2016 1:26 pm

jimbo48 wrote:Is it just me ... or does the feature in the photo described as "Jupiter" look more like the Andromeda galaxy? I really think it is. Can anyone confirm?
Nope, that's Jupiter. M31 is a northern object that doesn't ever get very far above the horizon from this location, and when the image was taken was very far below the horizon.

In this shot, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter all lie close to the line of the ecliptic. It's just that in projection, that line curves across the image - a big circle that goes up and to the left from Mars and Saturn, out of the frame at the top, and curves back down from the upper right through Jupiter.
Chris

*****************************************
Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
https://www.cloudbait.com

jimbo48
Ensign
Posts: 13
Joined: Wed Nov 23, 2011 2:48 pm

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by jimbo48 » Tue Jul 26, 2016 1:34 pm

Thanks Chris.

User avatar
Indigo_Sunrise
Science Officer
Posts: 439
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2005 1:40 pm
Location: Md

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by Indigo_Sunrise » Tue Jul 26, 2016 2:51 pm

GreyStripe wrote:I believe the fourth planet is the earth:)
:facepalm:
(I should've known.....) Thank you!
Forget the box, just get outside.

starsurfer
Stellar Cartographer
Posts: 5306
Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2012 7:25 pm

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by starsurfer » Tue Jul 26, 2016 5:11 pm

Can you find the Dark Doodad?

User avatar
RJN
Baffled Boffin
Posts: 1667
Joined: Sat Jul 24, 2004 1:58 pm
Location: Michigan Tech

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by RJN » Tue Jul 26, 2016 6:29 pm

I have been alerted that a post on MetaFilter is claiming that "Two new Twitter bots sending Pokémon into the depths of the New York Public Library Digital Collections and NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day." I am not sure what this means, and I am unaware of any presence of Pokémon on APOD presently. Here is the link: http://www.metafilter.com/161211/Pokmon ... n-the-NYPL . If someone can figure out what is going on, please post that here -- it that would be interesting! - RJN

User avatar
geckzilla
Ocular Digitator
Posts: 9180
Joined: Wed Sep 12, 2007 12:42 pm
Location: Modesto, CA
Contact:

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by geckzilla » Tue Jul 26, 2016 8:30 pm

RJN wrote:I have been alerted that a post on MetaFilter is claiming that "Two new Twitter bots sending Pokémon into the depths of the New York Public Library Digital Collections and NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day." I am not sure what this means, and I am unaware of any presence of Pokémon on APOD presently. Here is the link: http://www.metafilter.com/161211/Pokmon ... n-the-NYPL . If someone can figure out what is going on, please post that here -- it that would be interesting! - RJN
People sometimes create Twitter accounts with largely automated content. The link at the top of that metafilter page goes to the so-called bot: https://twitter.com/spacepokemon
Just call me "geck" because "zilla" is like a last name.

User avatar
rstevenson
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Posts: 2704
Joined: Fri Mar 28, 2008 1:24 pm
Location: Halifax, NS, Canada

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by rstevenson » Tue Jul 26, 2016 8:32 pm

Pokemon Go, the game, has the interesting ability to show a background other than the default game background behind the critters one is trying to catch. Mostly that means that when a critter is near enough to the player's avatar, the player's cell phone's camera comes on and shows a live view of wherever the player is as the background, with the cartoony critters seemingly in that setting. I'm guessing that other backgrounds, perhaps through some kind of game hack, can be shown too. In this case it looks like the APOD feed or maybe the archive is being used to put up backgrounds within the game of anyone who wants to use the hack. (I emphasize that I am guessing, not saying.) If that's the case, the main problem would be increased server load, so alert your server geeks to that. Being computer geeks, they may also have a better guess than mine. (I tend to be more of a general purpose geek.)

edit:
Taking geck's point into account, it may be that the APOD content and the critters are only assembled in the Twitter feed, not in a hacked version of the game. But it might still cause extra server load if it catches on.

Rob

User avatar
RJN
Baffled Boffin
Posts: 1667
Joined: Sat Jul 24, 2004 1:58 pm
Location: Michigan Tech

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by RJN » Wed Jul 27, 2016 1:21 pm

Interesting. Thanks!

heehaw

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by heehaw » Thu Jul 28, 2016 11:36 pm

GreyStripe wrote:I believe the fourth planet is the earth:)
It has taken me this long to puzzle over this mystery. I liked the idea that the "missing" one was Earth. But I just this minute (July 28) re-read the caption, and noticed the wording: "all visible in the sky of this spectacular 180-degree panorama" Now I don't think Earth is visible "in the sky." Well, now that I've typed that, I guess maybe it is. This computer I'm typing on "is visible in the sky - that I see a tiny bit of out the window." Sigh! These intellectual problems are most annoying. The next step would be to find just where the OTHER planets are: Venus, and Mercury. But they could hardly be visible in the sky of this spectacular 180-degree panorama. Sigh! Some intellectual questions just never get resolved!

User avatar
alter-ego
Serendipitous Sleuthhound
Posts: 1119
Joined: Mon Apr 21, 2008 4:51 am
Location: Redmond, WA

Re: APOD: Puzzling a Sky over Argentina (2016 Jul 26)

Post by alter-ego » Fri Jul 29, 2016 3:53 am

heehaw wrote:
GreyStripe wrote:I believe the fourth planet is the earth:)
It has taken me this long to puzzle over this mystery. I liked the idea that the "missing" one was Earth. But I just this minute (July 28) re-read the caption, and noticed the wording: "all visible in the sky of this spectacular 180-degree panorama" Now I don't think Earth is visible "in the sky." Well, now that I've typed that, I guess maybe it is. This computer I'm typing on "is visible in the sky - that I see a tiny bit of out the window." Sigh! These intellectual problems are most annoying. The next step would be to find just where the OTHER planets are: Venus, and Mercury. But they could hardly be visible in the sky of this spectacular 180-degree panorama. Sigh! Some intellectual questions just never get resolved!
Pluto is the only other (dwarf) planet in the field. It is in Sagarius, maybe 1° above the hills, but certainly not visible in the image.

..Ok, of the top 7 largest dwarf planets, Pluto and Quaoar are in the field. Considering the familiar smaller bodies, Ceres and Vesta are not in the field.
A pessimist is nothing more than an experienced optimist

Post Reply