APOD: The Wizard Nebula (2020 Sep 04)

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APOD: The Wizard Nebula (2020 Sep 04)

Post by APOD Robot » Fri Sep 04, 2020 4:06 am

Image The Wizard Nebula

Explanation: Open star cluster NGC 7380 is still embedded in its natal cloud of interstellar gas and dust popularly known as the Wizard Nebula. Seen on the left, with foreground and background stars along the plane of our Milky Way galaxy it lies some 8,000 light-years distant, toward the constellation Cepheus. In apparent size on the sky, a full moon would cover the 4 million year young cluster and associated nebula, normally much too faint to be seen by eye. Made with telescope and camera firmly planted on Earth, the image reveals multi light-year sized shapes and structures of cosmic gas and dust within the Wizard though, in a color palette made popular in Hubble Space Telescope images. Recorded with narrowband filters, the visible wavelength light from the nebula's hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur atoms is transformed into green, blue, and red colors in the final digital composite.

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Re: APOD: The Wizard Nebula (2020 Sep 04)

Post by Ann » Fri Sep 04, 2020 8:16 am

Let's see. Here we have a mapped color image of a nebula that is 8,000 light-years distant but still large enough in the sky to cover the full Moon. Sounds big. This thing must have a powerful stellar engine driving it. What is said about the stellar engine?
APOD Robot wrote:

Open star cluster NGC 7380 is still embedded in its natal cloud of interstellar gas and dust popularly known as the Wizard Nebula.
Hmmm. Enlightenment.
Wikipedia wrote:

NGC 7380 (also known as the Wizard Nebula) is an open cluster discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1787.
...
Located 7200 light years away, the Wizard nebula, surrounds developing open star cluster NGC 7380. Visually, the interplay of stars, gas, and dust has created a shape that appears to some like a fictional medieval sorcerer. The active star forming region spans about 100 light years, making it appear larger than the angular extent of the Moon.
Hmmm. More enlightenment.
Sneh Lata, A. K. Pandey, Neelam Panwar, W. P. Chen, M. R. Samal and J. C. Pandey wrote:

This cluster has been an interesting and important object because it contains a massive binary system DH Cep (=HD 215835; V = 8.58) which is a double-lined, massive spectroscopic binary having a pair of O5–6 V stars with an orbital period of 2.111 d (Pearce 1949; Lines et al. 1986; Semeniuk 1991). This star is located at the centre of the cluster and found to be an ionizing star for the emission nebula (Underhill 1969).
Well, that's by far the most enlightenment I've had so far. What is said about the other massive members of NGC 7380?
We find NGC 7380 an interesting object as it is an extremely young open cluster which contains several PMS stars, massive stars O/B-type stars as well as other main-sequence (MS) stars.
Yes, that's enlightening... maybe...

So I'm left with a single star to find information about, namely binary O-type star DH Cephei.
Universeguide wrote:

Based on the star's spectral type of O5.5 , DH Cephei's colour and type is blue - white variable star. The star has a B-V Colour Index of 0.33 which means the star's temperature is about 6,656 Kelvin.
Eh. No. :facepalm:

The temperature of an O-type star is 30,000 K or more. It ought to have a B-V color index or -0.20 or more. If it has a B-V index of +0.33, that just means that the star is heavily reddened by dust that is located between ourselves and the star.

I think perhaps the most useful thing I learned here is that DH Cephei is the chief ionizing star of NGC 7380, in the same way that Theta 1 C Orionis is the chief ionizing star of the Orion Nebula.

Ann
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Re: APOD: The Wizard Nebula (2020 Sep 04)

Post by orin stepanek » Fri Sep 04, 2020 11:26 am

AndrewKlinger_wizard_sho_res25_sig1024.jpg

Does it look like a wizard? Well; it does kinda look like a face; maybe a
wizard's! O.K. :mrgreen: Got some blue there!---Ann! :D
Orin

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Re: APOD: The Wizard Nebula (2020 Sep 04)

Post by Cleve C. » Fri Sep 04, 2020 11:39 am

There is an array of stars whose radiant appears to be a spot a little down and a little right of image center. Several rays appear to be dispersed in the direction of slightly upper right, and a further, somewhat less defined one, directly down from the radiant. No doubt this is all an optical illusion, but it is interesting nonetheless. The appearance is stronger in my iPad's image than on my laptop.

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Re: APOD: The Wizard Nebula (2020 Sep 04)

Post by De58te » Fri Sep 04, 2020 12:47 pm

Orin wrote, Does it look like a wizard?

Well I don't see it in today's APOD. But on Wikipedia, article about NGC 7380, their first photo. I think with imagination I can see it. The top left the dim red spot looks like a wizards hat. Below is a fat face with a pointed nose. His left arm is sweeping around the blue part of the nebula like a cape and ending with a dark black hand. His right arm is the reddish thing in the foreground and he seems to be pointing to the right to a couple of voodoo dolls.

Today's APOD is just a close up of the bigger nebula.

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Re: APOD: The Wizard Nebula (2020 Sep 04)

Post by BDanielMayfield » Fri Sep 04, 2020 1:30 pm

Ann wrote: Fri Sep 04, 2020 8:16 am Let's see. Here we have a mapped color image of a nebula that is 8,000 light-years distant but still large enough in the sky to cover the full Moon. Sounds big. This thing must have a powerful stellar engine driving it. What is said about the stellar engine?
APOD Robot wrote:

Open star cluster NGC 7380 is still embedded in its natal cloud of interstellar gas and dust popularly known as the Wizard Nebula.
Hmmm. Enlightenment.
Wikipedia wrote:

NGC 7380 (also known as the Wizard Nebula) is an open cluster discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1787.
...
Located 7200 light years away, the Wizard nebula, surrounds developing open star cluster NGC 7380. Visually, the interplay of stars, gas, and dust has created a shape that appears to some like a fictional medieval sorcerer. The active star forming region spans about 100 light years, making it appear larger than the angular extent of the Moon.
Hmmm. More enlightenment.
Sneh Lata, A. K. Pandey, Neelam Panwar, W. P. Chen, M. R. Samal and J. C. Pandey wrote:

This cluster has been an interesting and important object because it contains a massive binary system DH Cep (=HD 215835; V = 8.58) which is a double-lined, massive spectroscopic binary having a pair of O5–6 V stars with an orbital period of 2.111 d (Pearce 1949; Lines et al. 1986; Semeniuk 1991). This star is located at the centre of the cluster and found to be an ionizing star for the emission nebula (Underhill 1969).
Well, that's by far the most enlightenment I've had so far. What is said about the other massive members of NGC 7380?
We find NGC 7380 an interesting object as it is an extremely young open cluster which contains several PMS stars, massive stars O/B-type stars as well as other main-sequence (MS) stars.
Yes, that's enlightening... maybe...

So I'm left with a single star to find information about, namely binary O-type star DH Cephei.
Universeguide wrote:

Based on the star's spectral type of O5.5 , DH Cephei's colour and type is blue - white variable star. The star has a B-V Colour Index of 0.33 which means the star's temperature is about 6,656 Kelvin.
Eh. No. :facepalm:

The temperature of an O-type star is 30,000 K or more. It ought to have a B-V color index or -0.20 or more. If it has a B-V index of +0.33, that just means that the star is heavily reddened by dust that is located between ourselves and the star.

I think perhaps the most useful thing I learned here is that DH Cephei is the chief ionizing star of NGC 7380, in the same way that Theta 1 C Orionis is the chief ionizing star of the Orion Nebula.

Ann
Thank you for running down and sharing more salient details about today’s subject. The stars illuminating a nebula are often way more interesting than what a nebula might resemble.
Just as zero is not equal to infinity, everything coming from nothing is illogical.

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ZOFYVM WIZARD

Post by neufer » Fri Sep 04, 2020 2:02 pm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atbash wrote:
<<Atbash is a monoalphabetic substitution cipher originally used to encrypt the Hebrew alphabet. It can be modified for use with any known writing system with a standard collating order. The Atbash cipher is a particular type of monoalphabetic cipher formed by taking the alphabet (or abjad, syllabary, etc.) and mapping it to its reverse, so that the first letter becomes the last letter, the second letter becomes the second to last letter, and so on. For example, the Latin alphabet would work like this:

Code: Select all

Plain    A   B   C   D   E   F   G   H   I   J   K   L   M   N   O   P   Q   R   S   T   U   V   W   X   Y   Z
Cipher   Z   Y   X   W   V   U   T   S   R   Q   P   O   N   M   L   K   J   I   H   G   F   E   D   C   B   A
WIZARD NEBULA
DRAZIW MVYFOZ
http://users.uoa.gr/~nektar/arts/tributes/antoine_de_saint-exupery_le_petit_prince/the_little_prince.htm wrote:
  • Antoine de Saint Exupéry - The little prince
Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal.

In the book it said: "Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion."

I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing Number One. It looked something like this:

I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them.

But they answered: "Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat?" My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of a boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My Drawing Number Two looked like this :arrow:

The grown-ups' response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar. That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.
Art Neuendorffer

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Re: APOD: The Wizard Nebula (2020 Sep 04)

Post by johnnydeep » Fri Sep 04, 2020 8:18 pm

De58te wrote: Fri Sep 04, 2020 12:47 pm Orin wrote, Does it look like a wizard?

Well I don't see it in today's APOD. But on Wikipedia, article about NGC 7380, their first photo. I think with imagination I can see it. The top left the dim red spot looks like a wizards hat. Below is a fat face with a pointed nose. His left arm is sweeping around the blue part of the nebula like a cape and ending with a dark black hand. His right arm is the reddish thing in the foreground and he seems to be pointing to the right to a couple of voodoo dolls.

Today's APOD is just a close up of the bigger nebula.
Sadly, that didn't help me see a wizard at all :ssmile: I can maybe see a witch on a broom in neufer's broader view WISE pic above. She's wearing a hat (of course) and heading toward the lower right.

I'd probably suck at a Rorschach ink-blot test too. Most would probably look like unidentified nebulae to me :cry:
--
"To B̬̻̋̚o̞̮̚̚l̘̲̀᷾d̫͓᷅ͩḷ̯᷁ͮȳ͙᷊͠ Go......Beyond The F͇̤i̙̖e̤̟l̡͓d͈̹s̙͚ We Know."{ʲₒʰₙNYᵈₑᵉₚ}

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Re: ZOFYVM WIZARD

Post by johnnydeep » Fri Sep 04, 2020 8:26 pm

neufer wrote: Fri Sep 04, 2020 2:02 pm
<<Atbash is a monoalphabetic substitution cipher originally used to encrypt the Hebrew alphabet. It can be modified for use with any known writing system with a standard collating order. The Atbash cipher is a particular type of monoalphabetic cipher formed by taking the alphabet (or abjad, syllabary, etc.) and mapping it to its reverse, so that the first letter becomes the last letter, the second letter becomes the second to last letter, and so on. For example, the Latin alphabet would work like this:

Code: Select all

Plain    A   B   C   D   E   F   G   H   I   J   K   L   M   N   O   P   Q   R   S   T   U   V   W   X   Y   Z
Cipher   Z   Y   X   W   V   U   T   S   R   Q   P   O   N   M   L   K   J   I   H   G   F   E   D   C   B   A
WIZARD NEBULA
DRAZIW MVYFOZ
That's pretty neat about wizard mapping to its reverse in the Atbash cipher. I wonder how many other words do that?

As for this cluster, just how many stars are supposed to be in it? In the APOD pic I would have hard time picking any stars as members. Your WISE pic shows a bunch of distinct blue stars that I would think are them, but where is the supposedly magnificent DH Cephei?
--
"To B̬̻̋̚o̞̮̚̚l̘̲̀᷾d̫͓᷅ͩḷ̯᷁ͮȳ͙᷊͠ Go......Beyond The F͇̤i̙̖e̤̟l̡͓d͈̹s̙͚ We Know."{ʲₒʰₙNYᵈₑᵉₚ}

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Re: APOD: The Wizard Nebula (2020 Sep 04)

Post by neufer » Fri Sep 04, 2020 8:41 pm

johnnydeep wrote: Fri Sep 04, 2020 8:18 pm
De58te wrote: Fri Sep 04, 2020 12:47 pm
Orin wrote, Does it look like a wizard?

Well I don't see it in today's APOD. But on Wikipedia, article about NGC 7380, their first photo. I think with imagination I can see it. The top left the dim red spot looks like a wizards hat. Below is a fat face with a pointed nose. His left arm is sweeping around the blue part of the nebula like a cape and ending with a dark black hand. His right arm is the reddish thing in the foreground and he seems to be pointing to the right to a couple of voodoo dolls.
Sadly, that didn't help me see a wizard at all :ssmile: I can maybe see a witch on a broom in neufer's broader view WISE pic above. She's wearing a hat (of course) and heading toward the lower right.

I'd probably suck at a Rorschach ink-blot test too. Most would probably look like unidentified nebulae to me :cry:
Those who suck at Rorschach ink-blot tests can't see "monsters from the Id."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wizard_of_Id wrote:

<<The Wizard of Id is a daily newspaper comic strip created by American cartoonists Brant Parker and Johnny Hart. Beginning November 16, 1964, the strip follows the antics of a large cast of characters in a shabby medieval kingdom called "Id". The title is a play on The Wizard of Oz, combined with the Freudian psychological term Id, which represents the instinctive and primal part of the human psyche.

The Wizard of Id deals with the goings-on of the rundown and oppressed mythical kingdom of Id. It follows people from all corners of the kingdom, but concentrates on the court of a tyrannical, dwarfish monarch known only as "the King". The strip's humor occasionally satirizes modern American culture, and deliberate anachronisms are rampant. Technology changes to suit whatever a gag requires; a battle with spears and arrows might be followed by a peasant using an ATM.

In some strips the king is elected to his monarchial position (albeit through rigged ballots). The aspects that stay the same, however, are that Id is in the middle of nowhere, home to a large castle surrounded by a moat. The king and his subjects run an inept army perpetually at war with "the Huns", while the unhappy, overtaxed peasants (or "Idiots") make little money as farmers and stablehands to keep modest lifestyles.>>
Art Neuendorffer

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