APOD: Arches Across an Arctic Sky (2021 Jan 13)

[APOD Robot]

Arches Across an Arctic Sky

Explanation: What are these two giant arches across the sky? Perhaps the more familiar one, on the left, is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. This grand disk of stars and nebulas here appears to encircle much of the southern sky. Visible below the stellar arch is the rusty-orange planet Mars and the extended Andromeda galaxy. For a few minutes during this cold arctic night, a second giant arch appeared to the right, encircling part of the northern sky: an aurora. Auroras are much closer than stars as they are composed of glowing air high in Earth's atmosphere. Visible outside the green auroral arch is the group of stars popularly known as the Big Dipper. The featured digital composite of 18 images was captured in mid-December over the Lofoten Islands in Norway.

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[zeecatman]

ArcticSky_Cobianchi_2048_(annotated).jpg

Beautiful composite image!

Given the location and approximate date, I gave my best shot at identifying some of the other bright objects visible in the image. Please let me know if I made any mistakes. Does anyone have any idea what the bright-ish spot just above the horizon on the far left of the milky way could be?

[orin stepanek]

ArcticSky_ Beautiful composite image! Given the location and approximate date, I gave my best shot at identifying some of the other bright objects visible in the image. Please let me know if I made any mistakes. Does anyone have any idea what the bright-ish spot just above the horizon on the far left of the milky way could be? [/quote] [attachment=0]ArcticSky_Cobianchi_1080_annotated.jpg

ArcticSky_Cobianchi_1080_annotated.jpg

Don't know if this is what you are looking for?

[Bill Adair]

Beautiful photo! One of the best I've seen in the fifteen years (or so) I've been following this site.

What might the person with the flashlight be doing?

I grew up on a farm in Missouri USA with no running water, so figured he might have had too much water or other liquids to drink before retiring for the night.

There appears to be a very tiny typo at the end of the last sentence of the photo description. To your credit it's the very first typo I've ever noticed on this site in all the years I've been watching!

Bill Adair

[Glasterpiece]

Why would the Milky Way ever appear as a tight arc like that rather than something closer to a straight line? Would latitude do that?

Thank you.

[Chris Peterson]

Why would the Milky Way ever appear as a tight arc like that rather than something closer to a straight line? Would latitude do that?

Thank you.

Because you're seeing a large section of a sphere projected onto a plane.

[geoffrey.landis]

Yeah, I'm a little puzzled by the photo being described as "arches".
There are no arches in the picture. What visually looks like arches is simply the image being badly distorted, due to compressing about 300 degrees of panorama onto a flat page.

[Chris Peterson]

Yeah, I'm a little puzzled by the photo being described as "arches".
There are no arches in the picture. What visually looks like arches is simply the image being badly distorted, due to compressing about 300 degrees of panorama onto a flat page.

So... if you were standing directly underneath the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, you wouldn't describe it as an arch?

[BillBixby]

Beautiful photo! One of the best I've seen in the fifteen years (or so) I've been following this site.

What might the person with the flashlight be doing?

I grew up on a farm in Missouri USA with no running water, so figured he might have had too much water or other liquids to drink before retiring for the night.

There appears to be a very tiny typo at the end of the last sentence of the photo description. To your credit it's the very first typo I've ever noticed on this site in all the years I've been watching!

Bill Adair

The person in the photo is demonstrating that the stars are not so far away as we are led to think. One has been taken from the sky and is being held in hand to enlighten us of the impossibilities. Let us hope it does not go nova while being held so close.

[WWW]

A small building with "two giant arches" in the background? Where have we seen that before? Looks like there might also be a drive through lane along the front of that building!

[neufer]

A small building with "two giant arches" in the background? Where have we seen that before?

Looks like there might also be a drive through lane along the front of that building!

<<The Lexus and the Olive Tree : Understanding Globalization is a 1999 book by Thomas L. Friedman that posits that the world is currently undergoing two struggles: the drive for prosperity and development, symbolized by the Lexus LS, and the desire to retain identity and traditions, symbolized by the olive tree. The book puts forward a capitalist peace theory, first published as an opinion piece in The New York Times in December 1996, called the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention; although slightly tongue-in-cheek, it states: No two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's.

He supported that observation, as a theory, by stating that when a country has reached an economic development where it has a middle class strong enough to support a McDonald's network, it would become a "McDonald's country", and will not be interested in fighting wars anymore.

Shortly after the book was published, NATO bombed Yugoslavia. On the first day of the bombing, McDonald's restaurants in Belgrade were demolished by the Serbian people and were rebuilt only after the bombing ended. In the 2000 edition of the book, Friedman argued that this exception proved the rule: the war ended quickly, he argued, partly because the Serbian population did not want to lose their place in a global system "symbolised by McDonald's".>>

[zeecatman]

ArcticSky_Cobianchi_1080_annotated.jpg

Don't know if this is what you are looking for?

Yes, this one's perfect

[VictorBorun]

why violet?

[geoffrey.landis]

So... if you were standing directly underneath the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, you wouldn't describe it as an arch?

Exactly the opposite. This APOD image is something that is not actually an arch, but looks like an arch in the picture. What you are describing is something that is an arch, but would not look like an arch in the picture.

[Chris Peterson]

So... if you were standing directly underneath the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, you wouldn't describe it as an arch?

Exactly the opposite. This APOD image is something that is not actually an arch, but looks like an arch in the picture. What you are describing is something that is an arch, but would not look like an arch in the picture.

Well, an arch is just a disc (or half of one) with a non-uniform radial density. Just like the Milky Way.