A few observations and some conclusions...

Comments and questions about the APOD on the main view screen.
fpj

A few observations and some conclusions...

Post by fpj » Thu Dec 09, 2004 8:16 pm

I have made a few observations and made some conclusions based on them.

All 3 photos where taken with the same aperture and the same exposition time. Now if you look at all the photos, ignoring the streak, you can see that all pictures have roughly the same brightness. So the streak is darker then the rest of the picture and darker then the same areas in the other 2 pictures.

The first conclusion from this observation is that the streak could not be caused by the shadow of an additional source of light. If that was the case then the whole “target” photo would be brighter and the streak area would have the same brightness of the same areas on the other 2 photos (remember that all the pictures ware taken with the same aperture and exposition time).

So the streak can only be caused by less light reaching the camera from that area. The only 3 ways I can figure out to explain that is:

1) the shadow was in fact there, caused by some phenomena
2) something blocked light coming from the scene in is path to the camera
3) the streak is a camera artefact

I believe that the hypothesis 2 is the most plausible and that the bug theory is the one that best explains both the streak and the flash.