Starship Asterisk*

Puzzling a Sky over Argentina

Explanation: Can you find the comet? True, a careful eye can find thousands of stars, tens of constellations, four planets, three galaxies, and the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy -- all visible in the sky of this spectacular 180-degree panorama. Also, if you know what to look for, you can identify pervasive green airglow, an earthly cloud, the south celestial pole, and even a distant cluster of stars. But these are all easier to find than Comet 252P/LINEAR. The featured image, taken in el Leoncito National Park, Argentina in early April, also features the dome of the Jorge Sahade telescope on the hill on the far right. Have you found the comet yet? If so, good for you (it was the green spot on the left), but really the harder thing to find is Small Cloud of Magellan.

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Odd... I spotted the SMC right off....

The comet was much harder... I did not know where to look....

:---[===] *

Boomer12k wrote:Odd... I spotted the SMC right off....

The comet was much harder... I did not know where to look....

:---[===] *

Funny, I spotted the comet about first. The colored circle gave it away

Unfortunately, my mouse cursor was over the picture when the page opened, so the label for 252P was one of the first things I saw. I would have liked to have searched for it -- oh well. Regardless, based on the position of 252P, the picture was taken on the morning of 03-April-2016, several days before its closest approach to the globular cluster, M14, in Ophiuchus. The APOD of 11-April-2016 linked at "green spot" was taken on 05-April-2016 and is a close-up of the comet near M14.

I'm familiar with the patch of sky around the comet since I was visually observing and taking snapshots of 252P at the end of March into April 2016 as it approached M14. If I rotate today's APOD 90° clockwise and take the top quarter of the rotated picture, the view is much the same as I saw from 40°N latitude looking southeast a couple of hours after midnight at the end of March into early April.

Can someone please point out the fourth planet? I found Mars and Saturn (towards the left), and Jupiter (far right), but cannot locate the fourth one.
Any help? And TIA

I believe the fourth planet is the earth:)

In keeping with the puzzle nature of today's APOD, I probably should have replied more cryptically.
If I had had my morning coffee, I would have said that I believe the fourth planet is the one that is always closest to you.

Awesome! As if on-cue... today's pics helps me to orient myself in yesterday's.

Is it just me ... or does the feature in the photo described as "Jupiter" look more like the Andromeda galaxy? I really think it is. Can anyone confirm?

jimbo48 wrote:Is it just me ... or does the feature in the photo described as "Jupiter" look more like the Andromeda galaxy? I really think it is. Can anyone confirm?

Nope, that's Jupiter. M31 is a northern object that doesn't ever get very far above the horizon from this location, and when the image was taken was very far below the horizon.

In this shot, Mars, Saturn, and Jupiter all lie close to the line of the ecliptic. It's just that in projection, that line curves across the image - a big circle that goes up and to the left from Mars and Saturn, out of the frame at the top, and curves back down from the upper right through Jupiter.

Thanks Chris.

GreyStripe wrote:I believe the fourth planet is the earth:)

(I should've known.....) Thank you!

Can you find the Dark Doodad?

I have been alerted that a post on MetaFilter is claiming that "Two new Twitter bots sending Pokémon into the depths of the New York Public Library Digital Collections and NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day." I am not sure what this means, and I am unaware of any presence of Pokémon on APOD presently. Here is the link: http://www.metafilter.com/161211/Pokmon ... n-the-NYPL . If someone can figure out what is going on, please post that here -- it that would be interesting! - RJN

RJN wrote:I have been alerted that a post on MetaFilter is claiming that "Two new Twitter bots sending Pokémon into the depths of the New York Public Library Digital Collections and NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day." I am not sure what this means, and I am unaware of any presence of Pokémon on APOD presently. Here is the link: http://www.metafilter.com/161211/Pokmon ... n-the-NYPL . If someone can figure out what is going on, please post that here -- it that would be interesting! - RJN

People sometimes create Twitter accounts with largely automated content. The link at the top of that metafilter page goes to the so-called bot: https://twitter.com/spacepokemon

Pokemon Go, the game, has the interesting ability to show a background other than the default game background behind the critters one is trying to catch. Mostly that means that when a critter is near enough to the player's avatar, the player's cell phone's camera comes on and shows a live view of wherever the player is as the background, with the cartoony critters seemingly in that setting. I'm guessing that other backgrounds, perhaps through some kind of game hack, can be shown too. In this case it looks like the APOD feed or maybe the archive is being used to put up backgrounds within the game of anyone who wants to use the hack. (I emphasize that I am guessing, not saying.) If that's the case, the main problem would be increased server load, so alert your server geeks to that. Being computer geeks, they may also have a better guess than mine. (I tend to be more of a general purpose geek.)

edit:
Taking geck's point into account, it may be that the APOD content and the critters are only assembled in the Twitter feed, not in a hacked version of the game. But it might still cause extra server load if it catches on.

Rob

Interesting. Thanks!

GreyStripe wrote:I believe the fourth planet is the earth:)

It has taken me this long to puzzle over this mystery. I liked the idea that the "missing" one was Earth. But I just this minute (July 28) re-read the caption, and noticed the wording: "all visible in the sky of this spectacular 180-degree panorama" Now I don't think Earth is visible "in the sky." Well, now that I've typed that, I guess maybe it is. This computer I'm typing on "is visible in the sky - that I see a tiny bit of out the window." Sigh! These intellectual problems are most annoying. The next step would be to find just where the OTHER planets are: Venus, and Mercury. But they could hardly be visible in the sky of this spectacular 180-degree panorama. Sigh! Some intellectual questions just never get resolved!

heehaw wrote:

GreyStripe wrote:I believe the fourth planet is the earth:)

It has taken me this long to puzzle over this mystery. I liked the idea that the "missing" one was Earth. But I just this minute (July 28) re-read the caption, and noticed the wording: "all visible in the sky of this spectacular 180-degree panorama" Now I don't think Earth is visible "in the sky." Well, now that I've typed that, I guess maybe it is. This computer I'm typing on "is visible in the sky - that I see a tiny bit of out the window." Sigh! These intellectual problems are most annoying. The next step would be to find just where the OTHER planets are: Venus, and Mercury. But they could hardly be visible in the sky of this spectacular 180-degree panorama. Sigh! Some intellectual questions just never get resolved!

Pluto is the only other (dwarf) planet in the field. It is in Sagarius, maybe 1° above the hills, but certainly not visible in the image.

..Ok, of the top 7 largest dwarf planets, Pluto and Quaoar are in the field. Considering the familiar smaller bodies, Ceres and Vesta are not in the field.