Starship Asterisk*

As a burgeoning skygazer (my 8" Dob is scheduled to arrive this very afternoon), I always appreciate the photos with the "roll-over" text and constellation demarkations. Is this something the photographer provides, or is this part of the APOD staff's value-add to the process?

Either way, thanks for the efforts, folks. There are some out here who really appreciate it.

And FWIW, aesthetically this is yet another wonderful photo!

~The Meal
[edited to add link to today's APOD]

The false dawn picture is indeed magnificent. However, I was put off by the caption which said this phenomenon was "once considered" to be a false dawn whereas it is "actually" the zodiacal light. It would have been okay if the writer was discussing, say, an ancient myth about eclipses being caused by wolves eating the Sun or Moon: we know eclipses are "actually" something else. But to call an early light on the horizon a false dawn is not to make a claim about anything physical. It is a very common figure of speech to say that B is a "false A" when A and B look similar. There is a mushroom popularly called a false morel because, well, because it's not a real morel. "False dawn" was used in the same way, as a metaphor. There's no way a "false dawn" could be a hypothesized something-or-other about which we know better than to believe; it just says it isn't the real dawn, and who can argue with that? The use of "once considered" and "actually" here is just flag-waving for the 21st century, declaring how much smarter we are than those silly ancients.

It can be seen here:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040825.html

cheers and have a nice day

Wolfgang

wow,
what a picture - more are from Stefan Seip on his galery
http://www.photomeeting.de/astromeeting/_index.htm
Happy days D.

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The Meal wrote:As a burgeoning skygazer (my 8" Dob is scheduled to arrive this very afternoon), I always appreciate the photos with the "roll-over" text and constellation demarkations. Is this something the photographer provides, or is this part of the APOD staff's value-add to the process?

Either way, thanks for the efforts, folks. There are some out here who really appreciate it.

And FWIW, aesthetically this is yet another wonderful photo!

~The Meal
[edited to add link to today's APOD]

Does someone know, whether or not it is possible to get the right to use this pic (http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap040825.html) on a private internet site?
Tks a lot
............ Wolfgang

The photographer's name is shown on the APOD page and is a link; please click the link to get to Stefan's website. His email address is available there, so it's easy to ask him.