Starship Asterisk*

First, it's a pleasure to be back. As to Ann's examination of anomalous star colors, I put their green/cyan cast down to casual (which is to say imperfect) color correction of a strong cast and gradient in the original image. I can barely see the Milky Way from here on a good night, so there's a pre...

Ann, as Cousin Ricky pointed out, epicycles (and epi- epicycles within epicycles) were the key. They are requrired to make the Ptolemaic system reflect what we see in the unmagnified sky. In the simpified version you posted, Venus could appear at any distance from the Sun, even opposite the Sun in t...

Not to be TOO picky (is that possible?), but it wasn't the _crescent_ phases of Venus that did the trick. The full and gibbous phases were the problems for Ptolemy's followers. See, for example:
http://astro.unl.edu/classaction/animat ... emaic.html

And that is what Jonathan Kern and Wendy Carlos had in mind all those years ago using radial masks and endless darkroom work. Lovely.

Loops over AR1520 http://www.davidcortner.com/slowblog/20120717s.php#st Copyright: David Cortner http://www.ipoolx.com/dc/slowblog/20120717_loop9_allsa.jpg Loop arcade following an M1 flare on July 17, 2012. Modified Lunt 60THa, PGR Chameleon, best 50 out of 1940 frames stacked. Full res and colori...