Starship Asterisk*

Downloaded Google Earth 4.2... which I'm calling Google Space.

Found an object I'm wondering about... sure looks like an image of a telescope.

Dec -13deg 30'08.89"
RA 6H39M34.39S

Anyone? And why's it there?

Of all the awesome pictures of the Pleiades, why did they not pick one to put in?

INTERESTING FIND

Wierd blue thing above canis major

There is another of these in Lyra:

The bluish features in both images are internal reflections in the telescope. When there is a very bright object in the field of view, the light can reflect around inside the telescope and camera before being recorded. The artifact is blue because both examples are from blue stars. There is probably a red artifact, too, but it is much fainter and more difficult to identify.

Canis Major contains the brightest star in the sky, Sirius. Vega is somewhere near the top 10 brightest stars. These are both likely to create reflection artifacts. The "spider" shaped shadow in the middle of the reflection is due to the secondary mirror of the telescope.

The blue streaks near the top of the APOD image on November 30, 2005 are due to light leakage from sigma Orionis (one of the bright stars in the belt of Orion).

nice sim. going to take some practice to get the feel of the controls

I was playing around in Google Space earlier.. and found something strange. It appears one of the stars in Canis Major (the base of the "neck") has been.. removed? There is just a big yellow dot that looks like somebody just roughly covered it in MS paint or something.. any ideas, or am I the only one seeing this?

The location is Dec -16deg 36'48.31" RA 6h45m08.32s, just southwest of the blue artifact shown in the shot from the previous post.. which doesn't appear to have the same issue as I'm seeing. If you want an image let me know.. feeling too lazy to upload right now. Thanks!

it looks like the star you are speaking of is Sirius. The artifact could be due to the inherent brightness of this hot star. The star itself is very bright and noticeable if you zoom way in on it, you also notice the colorful blue & yellow mask that is there too. I cannot say what the mask is about though.

Ah, I see. I appreciate your response.. The thing that is confusing me is that the image of it in Google Sky is coming up as a large imperfect yellow "blob" shape that doesn't correlate with any images I've seen in the past, with anything I can find elsewhere tonight, and with it being known as a white dwarf. When zooming in close I do see some detail that makes it appear to be star-like... Ah well, I'm utterly amateur with this. I have an on and off love for astronomy that's been perked up again thanks to the new feature.

No problems.

check out Betelgeuse in Orion it looks strange up close too