APOD: A Massive Star in NGC 6357 (2013 Oct 22)

[geckzilla]

Yeah, I think their strategy differs from yours a little. They want to draw people in with an amazing image and show the least confusing information possible so that the average Joe looking at the site comes away feeling that the continued funding of Hubble is a worthy cause. It's definitely more about being inspiring and rapid avulsion of socks through mere viewing of images. It's sort of funny that when viewing a Hubble image it's almost guaranteed that north isn't up because it almost always looks more presentable if the image is rotated so that the areas without data can be nicely cropped of. I get happy on the rare occasion I don't have to rotate them away from north up.

Of course, I'm not suggesting that they fill the main caption with excessive detail about the imaging process itself. But there's already a sidebar for technical information. That's the place to provide details- more than they typically do. Avulsion of socks is great, but it shouldn't come at the expense of avulsion of basic information.

I don't care if the images are displayed north up. When the intent is aesthetic (or partly so) it's fine to rotate the image. But tell us the rotation angle and image scale! I can't count the times over the years that myself or somebody else has had to painfully work that out for an APOD image in order to identify some secondary feature.

Yeah, it'd probably help. I've actually been wondering what type of things people actually give a crap about when I write the description for my own HLA processing. It's rare so see useful criticism for things like this so I just muddle through it on my own. Talk about working in a vacuum.

[Psnarf]

Is it serendipity that we are looking into the cave, or would the image appear pretty-much the same from another direction? That is, if the nebula is about the same thickness all around, or are we lucky that the hole is aimed our way? Would it appear similar if our Sun was on the other side of our galaxy?

[jmaiz]

Hi, I am the author of this image. Can you please correct my name? It is "J. Maíz Apellániz", not "J. M. Apellániz".

OK. Fixed. Sorry. - RJN

Thanks - JMA

[jmaiz]

Is it serendipity that we are looking into the cave, or would the image appear pretty-much the same from another direction? That is, if the nebula is about the same thickness all around, or are we lucky that the hole is aimed our way? Would it appear similar if our Sun was on the other side of our galaxy?

Mostly (but not completely) serendipity. Yes, if you were to look from the opposite direction you would see the other side of the molecular cloud and we do not really know if the radiation from Pismis 24 ionizes that or not. On the other hand, chances are that over a relatively large solid angle you would see the "cave".

JMA

[jmaiz]

For details on filters, orientations, and size, see http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... fastfacts/ . One thing that needs to be mentioned is that the people at the OPO at STScI did a wonderful job with this mosaic. My original ACS data included only the top part of the full mosaic but not the part shown in today's APOD. they found a complementary WFPC2 field in the archive with different filters and were able to make a seamless image (in 2006, when tools were not as complete and powerful as today).

[MarkBour]

Is it serendipity that we are looking into the cave, or would the image appear pretty-much the same from another direction? That is, if the nebula is about the same thickness all around, or are we lucky that the hole is aimed our way? Would it appear similar if our Sun was on the other side of our galaxy?

Mostly (but not completely) serendipity. Yes, if you were to look from the opposite direction you would see the other side of the molecular cloud and we do not really know if the radiation from Pismis 24 ionizes that or not. On the other hand, chances are that over a relatively large solid angle you would see the "cave".

JMA

How can you tell that we are on the near side of the cave, or that there is not a lot of material between us and the star?

[AnthonyK]

Personally I think you should name this Nebula the Wicked Witch Nebula. It looks like The Wicked Witch from Wizard of Oz