oldrcd wrote:PLEASE lose the "artists conception" illustrations. They are rampant nonsense; they ignore physics.
There are "millions" of amazing astro-photos. You don't need invented artwork.
I recommend apod.com to people who can learn the reality. If you keep adding non-scientific artwork, I'll stop recommending this site.
aljo wrote:Is anyone else irritated by the lack of realism of the image? The right hand moon is blotting out the light from the sky, even though the moon is much further away, which is obviously impossible.
I believe I see where both of you are coming from, but please consider the following. This is a fantastic astronomical discovery, and will result in a lot of further investigation. APOD could easily have put up an image from TRAPPIST itself, and I think they've had a superb mix of imagery types over time. But these worlds have captured our imagination in alignment with a deep and abiding quest of the human race. To get at that, a luminosity graph will never do. This view, which obviously had to be artist-rendered, is every bit as worthy of our consideration as other APODs. And I see it has sparked a lively discussion in terms of some possible improvements. Actually, the questions it raised for discussion were not so easy. I see one contributor attempted a specific improved picture, and it has drawn as much fire as the original opus.
I want to give the artist some license on the size and ascension/declination of the sister planets ... we could view it as a schematic of the system in that sense. How fun would it be to have just shown 2 dim dots? But I welcome the education from those here discussing some facts of how they must actually be. I see some comments, but I'm not sure how reliable they are. This would take us back to the data that gives detailed information about the orbits insofar as TRAPPIST, or others, have measured them. Again, that just proves that this rendering is a great springboard for discussion and education. I'm wondering how the TRAPPIST-1 system fits with a Titius-Bode rule. It may, or may not. The orbit of 1d seems not to be well determined, yet. Still, the sizes shown in the sky seem possible to me. It should look like a couple of Earths near a Jupiter, right? (
https://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/geol21 ... s/04a.html)