APOD: Deep Orion Over the Canary Islands (2012 Jan 23)

[APOD Robot]

Deep Orion Over the Canary Islands

Explanation: Which attracts your eye more -- the sky or the ground? On the ground are rocky peaks in Teide National Park on Tenerife Island of the Spanish Canary Islands off the northwestern coast of Africa. The volcanic landscape features old island summits and is sometimes used as a testbed for instruments on future Martian rovers. The lights of a nearby hotel shine on the far left. Storm clouds are visible on the horizon, artificially strutted from multiple exposures. Dividing the sky, across the middle of the above deep image, is the vertical band of the Milky Way Galaxy. The red circle on the right is Barnard's Loop, near the center of which are the famous belt stars of the constellation Orion. Soon after the above image was taken, during an evening earlier this year, storm clouds rolled across, and indoor locations began to attract eyes the most.

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[Beyond]

I see that the 'ghosts' of constellations present, are up and about.

[Wolf Kotenberg]

WINNER !

[starstruck]

Great start to the week. Beautiful image!

[Ann]

This is a fantastic image. I love how the sky is aflame with yellow light of the Earth, man-made or otherwise, and then the brilliantly clear blue and pink band of the Milky Way cuts vertically through the image. Note, apart from Barnard's Loop, the large circular emission nebula centered on Lambda Orionis (to the upper right of orange Betelgeuse), the small relatively bright Rosette Nebula (to teh lower left of Betelgeuse) and the nebulosity of the Christmas Tree cluster and S Monocerotis (to the upper left of the Rosette Nebula).

But wait, the picture is most beautifully annotated!

Ann

[Boomer12k]

WICKED!

:---[===] *

[neptunium]

Amazing. Simply astounding image. What a scene!

[DJE44]

Fantastic image. How I wish I had a clear canvas sky like that to shoot on.

-----------------------------------
http://www.drewjevans.com/astronomy

[orin stepanek]

The house on the hill looks precariously located! http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l0iso ... o1_500.png

[Beyond]

That's what i thought also, orin, until i looked closer and could tell that it's built on a tiny little level space. But at first glance it gives the appearence of actually being built at a downward angle.

[moonstruck]

A beautiful picture. I often wonder what kind of imagination our ancestors had that could see all these constellations and give them names that I suppose are used all around the world. They sure couldn't communicate like we do today. I suppose the earliest ones only had a stone tablet

[Guest]

I often wonder what kind of imagination our ancestors had that could see all these constellations and give them names that I suppose are used all around the world. They sure couldn't communicate like we do today. I suppose the earliest ones only had a stone tablet

Never thought of it this way, but the constellations are an ancient artifact, not quite like an architectural ruin, more like an ancient extinct language. A quick glance at wikipedia shows known origins date back to 4th and 5th century BC in Babylonian, Greek and Chinese culture.

At night, our ancestors focused their attention on fewer things, the skies among them. With the dubious luxury of our technology, our attention is scattered among dozens of manifestations of electronic media. If suddenly we all unplugged and had fewer things to focus on, we'd probably go back to staring at the skies at night with curiosity and for entertainment. The would probably be a birth of new constellations, though much different than those of our ancestors. What do you think we'd see? An Iphone, a playstation 3 controller, a BMW?

[owlice]

HA! That would be fun: constellations for the 21st century!

[Patio Plasma]

I searched my dictionaries and online dictionaries as well, could someone please define "Strutted" as it is used here in reference to the appearance of objects in a photograph?

[geckzilla]

I searched my dictionaries and online dictionaries as well, could someone please define "Strutted" as it is used here in reference to the appearance of objects in a photograph?

The definition you are looking for is this one:

any of various structural members, as in trusses, primarily intended to resist longitudinal compression.

It's just referring to the clouds' appearance looking similar to struts or trusses.

[Ann]

I think Leo really does look like a lion, maybe like a lying-down sphinx. Scorpius looks vaguely like a scorpion, perhaps. The Big Dipper looks like a plow. The Pleiades (not a constellation, I know, I know) looks like a tiny plow. Cassiopeia looks like a W. Sagittarius does look like a teapot. Pegasus sure looks like a square. Orion just looks pretty. So does Lyra.

Ann

[saturn2]

This a beautiful image 10/10

[Tom B]

Nice, but Cancer is a crab, not a lobster.

[Chris Peterson]

Nice, but Cancer is a crab, not a lobster.

Sort of. Certainly, Cancer is identified with a crab in Greek mythology. But the constellation has been associated with various arthropods, including lobsters, and in medieval images depicting the constellations, it is often drawn as a lobster (as in today's overlay).

[moonstruck]

I kinda rest my case

[TNT]

The clouds on the right side seem to be mammatus clouds.

[Chris Peterson]

The clouds on the right side seem to be mammatus clouds.

I think they are something in the cirrus family, distorted by the stacking of multiple exposures.

[TNT]

The clouds on the right side seem to be mammatus clouds.

I think they are something in the cirrus family, distorted by the stacking of multiple exposures.

You're probably right, although the anvil of a cumulonimbus cloud is as high as the cirrus clouds. It may be composed slightly if cirrus, just like an incus anvil.

[neufer]

Nice, but Cancer is a crab, not a lobster.

Sort of. Certainly, Cancer is identified with a crab in Greek mythology. But the constellation has been associated with various arthropods, including lobsters, and in medieval images depicting the constellations, it is often drawn as a lobster (as in today's overlay).

<<While Hercules was busy fighting the multi-headed monster, Lernaean Hydra, the goddess Hera, who hated her step-son Hercules, sent the Crab to distract him. Cancer grabbed onto the hero's toe with its claws, but barely breaking the rhythm of his great battle with Hydra, Hercules crushed the crab with his foot. Hera, grateful for the little crustacean's heroic but pitiful effort, gave it a place in the sky; but none of its stars were bright because the crab had failed to accomplish its given task.

The modern symbol for Cancer represents the pincers of a crab, but Cancer has been represented as various types of creatures, usually those living in the water, and always those with an exoskeleton. In the Egyptian records of about 2000 BC it was described as Scarabaeus (Scarab), the sacred emblem of immortality. In Babylonia the constellation was known as MUL.AL.LUL, a name which can refer to both a crab and a snapping turtle. On boundary stones, the image of a turtle or tortoise appears quite regularly and it is believed that this represent Cancer as a conventional crab has not so far been discovered on any of these monuments. There also appears to be a strong connection between the Babylonian constellation and ideas of death and a passage to the underworld, which may be the origin of these ideas in much later Greek myths associated with Hercules and the Hydra. In the 12th century, an illustrated astronomical manuscript shows it as a water beetle.

Albumasar writes of this sign in the work published in 1489 as a large crayfish. Jakob Bartsch and Stanislaus Lubienitzki, in the 17th century, described it as a lobster.>>

[c]A "scorpion" on Venus, according to
Leonid Ksanfomaliti, Solar System Research[/c]

Is there life on Venus? Not in reprocessed Venera-13 images.
The Planetary Society Blog Jan. 23, 2012
By Emily Lakdawalla

<<At the end of last week, a rather sensational article appeared in both the Russian- and English-language sites of the Russian news agency, RIA Novosti. "Life Spotted on Venus - Russian Scientist," ran the English headline; a Google translation of the Russian one goes: "The Soviet probes may have photographed creatures on Venus." Accompanying the article are photos from the Venera-13 lander, one blown up to a rather ridiculous extent, with a blob circled, labeled "Scorpion."

The story is so obviously ridiculous that I would ordinarily not give it a second thought. But one thing gave me pause, and that's the author. Leonid Ksanfomaliti is a senior statesman of Russian planetary science. In addition to his scientific and technical contributions, he is also a popularizer, a speaker and writer who brings space science to the public.>>

<<In Greek Mythology the myths associated with Scorpio almost invariably also contain a reference to Orion. According to one of these myths it is written that Orion boasted to goddess Artemis and her mother, Leto, that he would kill every animal on the earth. Although Artemis was known to be a hunter herself she offered protection to all creatures. Artemis and her mother Leto sent a scorpion to deal with Orion. Zeus, who later raised the scorpion to heaven and afterwards, at the request of Artemis, did the same for Orion to serve as a reminder for mortals to curb their excessive pride. Every winter Orion hunts in the sky, but every summer he flees as the constellation of the scorpion comes.

In another Greek story involving Scorpio without Orion, Phaeton (the mortal male offspring of Helios) went to his father, who had earlier sworn by the River Styx to give Phaeton anything he should ask for. Phaeton wanted to drive his father's Sun Chariot for a day. Although Helios tried to dissuade his son, Phaeton was adamant. However, when the day arrived, Phaeton panicked and lost control of the white horses that drew the chariot. First, the Earth grew chill as Phaeton flew too high and encountered the celestial scorpion, its deadly sting raised to strike. Alarmed, he dipped the chariot too close, causing the vegetation to burn. By accident, Phaeton turned most of Africa into desert and darkened the skin of the Ethiopian nation until it was black. Eventually, Zeus was forced to intervene by striking the runaway chariot and Phaeton with a lightning bolt to put an end to its rampage and Phaeton plunged into the River Eridanos.

The Babylonians called this constellation MUL.GIR.TAB - the 'Scorpion', the signs can be literally read as 'the (creature with) a burning sting'. The Claws of the Scorpion were also known as the Scales in Babylonia.>>

[Beyond]

That Russian 'scorpion' looks more like a humanoid shape to me. Perhaps humanoid shaped aliens use Venus as a cemetary for their dead