Starship Asterisk*

Joe Stieber wrote:
As a follow-up to my earlier post, here's
a correctly labeled version of the picture...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigma_Sagittarii wrote:
<<Sigma Sagittarii (Sigma Sgr, σ Sagittarii, σ Sgr) is the second brightest star in the constellation Sagittarius. Its modern name Nunki is an Assyrian or Babylonian name recovered by archaeologists and made public by R. H. Allen. Nunki is a B-type main sequence star with an apparent magnitude of +2.05. The distance to this star, determined using parallax measurements from the Hipparcos astrometry satellite,yields an estimated value of 70 parsecs from Earth.

The total luminosity of σ Sgr is 3300 times that of the Sun while it has a surface temperature of 18,890 K. X-ray emission has been detected from this star, which has an estimated X-ray luminosity of 1.2 × 10²⁸ erg/s. Sigma Sgr has a magnitude +9.5 optical companion (Donna Rice ) located 5.2 arcminutes away.

Because it is close to the ecliptic, Nunki can be occulted by the Moon and very rarely by planets. The last occultation of Nunki by a planet took place on November 17, 1981, when it was occulted by Venus. Furthermore, Nunki is the brightest star that can be principally occulted by an exterior planet. However, only Mars can do this, and only rarely; the last time was on September 3, 423.>>

DavidLeodis wrote:In view of what is stated in some posts could someone please confirm or not that the labelled image is correctly labelled ('labeled' in US spelling ) and is it Saturn that is the very bright object towards the top right? Thanks.

DavidLeodis wrote:In view of what is stated in some posts could someone please confirm or not that the labelled image is correctly labelled ('labeled' in US spelling ) and is it Saturn that is the very bright object towards the top right? Thanks.

WolfmanSF wrote:The "crater" of Haleakala is actually an erosional feature, not a volcanic caldera.

Chris Peterson wrote:

Nitpicker wrote:

revloren wrote:I'm trying to figure out which direction this photo was taken. The Southern Cross on the right indicates that this was shot to the east. But there is very little development on the SE side of Maui to account for the city lights shining through the clouds in that direction.

Crux is just west of south in this pic. The lights could be from the big island of Hawaii, maybe Waimea, to the SSE. (10,000 feet is pretty high.)

I'd say it's the lights of the Kona coast on the Big Island.

ta152h0 wrote:The star labeled " Vega " is the pulsar noted in APOD's previously, right ? And can Geminga be seen here ?

superwillbee wrote:Not mars but delta ophiuchi, right? And to the right of Antares we see Saturn...

Nitpicker wrote:

revloren wrote:I'm trying to figure out which direction this photo was taken. The Southern Cross on the right indicates that this was shot to the east. But there is very little development on the SE side of Maui to account for the city lights shining through the clouds in that direction.

Crux is just west of south in this pic. The lights could be from the big island of Hawaii, maybe Waimea, to the SSE. (10,000 feet is pretty high.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_cross_%28betrayal%29#Double_cross wrote:

[b][color=#0000FF]Pauline Moore & Wally Pacholka[/color][/b]

---

Double cross is a phrase meaning to deceive by double-dealing.

The phrase originates from the use of the word cross in the sense of foul play; deliberate collusion to lose a contest of some kind.

It has also been suggested that the term was inspired by the practice of 18th-century British thief taker and criminal Jonathan Wild, who kept a ledger of his transactions and is said to have placed two crosses by the names of persons who had cheated him in some way.

More recently, the phrase was used to refer to either of two possible situations:

• A competitor participating in the fix who has agreed to throw their game instead competes as usual, against the original intention of their collaborators - one "cross" against another.
  
  Two opposing parties are approached, urging them to throw the game and back the other. Both parties lose out, and the perpetrators benefit by backing a third, winning party.

This use has passed into common parlance, so that, for example, in World War II, British Military Intelligence used the Double Cross System to release captured Nazis back to Germany bearing false information.>>

Nitpicker wrote:Crux is just west of south in this pic. The lights could be from the big island of Hawaii, maybe Waimea, to the SSE. (10,000 feet is pretty high.)

FLPhotoCatcher wrote:Somehow this looks like a composite of two photos - the sky and the ground, with the sky more distorted or 'compressed' than the ground.
I may be wrong of course, and it's a great photo regardless.

revloren wrote:I'm trying to figure out which direction this photo was taken. The Southern Cross on the right indicates that this was shot to the east. But there is very little development on the SE side of Maui to account for the city lights shining through the clouds in that direction.

revloren wrote:I'm trying to figure out which direction this photo was taken. The Southern Cross on the right indicates that this was shot to the east. But there is very little development on the SE side of Maui to account for the city lights shining through the clouds in that direction.