Starship Asterisk*

The Galaxy Tree

Explanation: First came the trees. In the town of Salamanca, Spain, the photographer noticed how distinctive a grove of oak trees looked after being pruned. Next came the galaxy. The photographer stayed up until 2 am, waiting until the Milky Way Galaxy rose above the level of a majestic looking oak. From this carefully chosen perspective, dust lanes in the galaxy appear to be natural continuations to branches of the tree. Last came the light. A flashlight was used on the far side of the tree to project a silhouette. By coincidence, other trees also appeared as similar silhouettes across the relatively bright horizon. The featured image was captured as a single 30-second frame earlier this month and processed to digitally enhance the Milky Way.

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That's a pretty picture! Thanks for the picture, César Vega Toledano, and thanks for the annotation, Geck. I really like the way Altair is peeking out in teh "crook" of that crooked tree branch. It's just generally a gorgeous picture. Stunning colors, great detail and a fabulous composition.

But I think you got Deneb and Sadr mixed up, Geck.

Ann

So I did, Ann... so I did. I mailed Bob a new version. We'll have to wait until he replaces the old one for it to be fixed.

BTW, is the rollover image too dark? It occurs to me that I made it dark on my screen and that usually needs to be a bit lighter to look good on most other screens. Oops.

Geck wrote:
BTW, is the rollover image too dark? It occurs to me that I made it dark on my screen and that usually needs to be a bit lighter to look good on most other screens. Oops.

I thought the dark version looked good, because it was easier to see the stars that way. But that is just my opinion.

Ann

Yeah, that was intentional. I learned to do it in order to find the stars in the first place. Then I thought, why not leave it darkened so the labels and things are easier for other people to see too? So that happened.

The resemblance can't be coincidental --- it is clear that there are interstellar tree branches!

Another remarkable APOD!

Though 'majestic looking' for the severely pruned and stunted oak tree is a jarring adjective to use when set against the natural majesty of the galaxy.

The 'Angel Oak' in South Carolina is truly majestic:
http://fineartamerica.com/featured/1-an ... lhano.html
Even if the photographer dialed up the HDR a bit much

There are also many other such wonderful, and majestic, trees as this one by the side of the road in Diablo Hills California:
http://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/diablo-f ... YgyIdEHYIA
(nb - if you use NoScript (who wouldn't) you will need to enable the two 'Yelp' scripts to view the image)

And then, there is the magical oak growing in the woods towards the back of our property - so surrounded by other oaks and cedars that it only comes slowly to consciousness that there is one really big tree with branches reaching out throughout the other trees in that small wood. One which I have never successfully captured on film.

Oak trees represent one species that lives long and prospers and humans have sought to do the same. Research may be getting closer and mitochondria could be one key. I ran across an infomercial but will spare you the time of watching it. This will get you the same place in a lot less time.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/gue ... g-nad-fad/

Is the oak a Cork oak?

hoohaw wrote:The resemblance can't be coincidental --- it is clear that there are interstellar tree branches!

Yggdrasil.

I like to see annotations to see where things are in relation to the galaxy...

:---[===] *

Boomer12k wrote:I like to see annotations to see where things are in relation to the galaxy...

:---[===] *

I'm not exactly sure what you mean, Boomer. Do you mean something like what you can find on this page?

Ann

geckzilla wrote:So I did, Ann... so I did. I mailed Bob a new version. We'll have to wait until he replaces the old one for it to be fixed.

Replaced. Sorry for the delay!

- RJN

There's a spelling mistake in the mouseover, Ophiuchus is spelt as "Ophiucus".

starsurfer wrote:There's a spelling mistake in the mouseover, Ophiuchus is spelt as "Ophiucus".

Hah. I'm just gonna let that one slide since you caught it so late. (sorry!)

geckzilla wrote:

starsurfer wrote:There's a spelling mistake in the mouseover, Ophiuchus is spelt as "Ophiucus".

Hah. I'm just gonna let that one slide since you caught it so late. (sorry!)

Was I fashionably late?