Starship Asterisk*

DavidLeodis wrote:Having originally thought that the yellow strip below that red area was the glow of the street lights (but not appearing green) I then assumed that the short yellow bit further right is the exploding lava but I now think the lava may be the longer yellow strip beneath the red area where the Sun is rising. What the short yellow strip is I therefore do not know unless it is a small area of exploding lava.

DavidLeodis wrote:In the description of the photo in Wally Pacholka's website it was very interesting to read that the yellow glow (on my monitor, but said to be a red glow in the description) through the clouds to the right "is lava exploding into the ocean". Wow!

PS. In the APOD explanation it states "illumination from the city lights of Hilo creates an eerie, greenish glow in the clouds" but it is reddish, not greenish, on my monitor so I wonder if that is incorrectly set or does it not appear greenish to others?

Bob wrote:Suggestion: go to the Institute for Astronomy, Univ. of Hawaii webpage and download the pdf map of the summit of Mauna Kea. Note the direction of north (the arrow at bottom center in the pdf). Note also the positions of the CFHT and Gemini North domes at the right part of the map. Look at the panorama, and realize that from the position of the camera (which is aimed roughly southeast), only part of the CFHT dome is visible. Then ask yourself, how could the background possibly include Polaris, which is within one degree of true north? From the position of the camera, Polaris is either behind the CFHT dome or would appear to the left of the dome. This is a nice photomontage, made up of two separate images and combined. It is not real. Many if not all of Pacholka's images are similar photomontages. They're well done, pretty, and interesting, and if he was up front that they are constructions, that would be fine. But he claims they are real, single exposures. If you look at the geometry of the summit, the domes, and the sky, it is physically impossible for this to be one exposure. Yet people continue to be taken in. People who should know better.

Czerno -1 wrote: - what is the /average/ height of emerged land (above sea level) ?
- what is the /average/ depth of ocean floor (below sea level, duh) ?
- what is the average level of (both emerged and drowned) the Earth surface, relative to average sea level ?

BDanielMayfield wrote:

greatguyinsf wrote:1st of all - Wow.
2ndly - They get snow in Hawaii?

Up on 4200 meter Mauna Kea, sure. Measured from it's base where it rises from the sea-floor it's the world's tallest mountain.

greatguyinsf wrote:1st of all - Wow.
2ndly - They get snow in Hawaii?

owlice wrote:

Q4: Have some APOD pictures been run more than once?
A4: Yes. Many of our readers have been with us less than a year and are unaware of some really spectacular or important astronomy pictures. New information about old pictures is becoming available over the WWW. The text and links for rerun pictures will make use of this newly available information. So although the picture might be old, some of the text and links of each APOD will be new. Also, more web surfers have larger bandwidth connections, which allows us to post higher-resolution image files that can be transferred conveniently. Software to handle more sophisticated image file formats has also become more common, so the picture's size and/or format might be new. Lastly, rerunning APODs saves us time and helps us update our archive. In general, our rerun policy currently is to only rerun APODs more than one year old to keep the pictures relatively "new" to new APOD viewers. We will almost never rerun more than two pictures in any given week. So when you load the current APOD,it is still, most probably, a new picture.

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

It would be unkind, I suppose, to point out that the complaint about a repeated APOD has been seen before (many times), so I won't...