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Artifacts in the sky

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Krush Posted: 05-06-2008 9:26 PM

Artifacts in the sky

Within the data of WorldWide Telescope there are occasionally artifacts in the sky that look like they should not be there. The most typical cases are artifacts caused by light reflections from telescope mirrors and by airplane trails caused by airplanes passing over while a long-exposure image is being taken. Examples of different types of artifacts and where to find them in WorldWide Telescope are below.

Telescope mirrors

The “crosshairs” is called the “spider” and the blue area is the star’s light reflecting off the telescope’s mirror. The black thing in the middle is a secondary mirror. Examples in WWT:  Link to Example of telescope star’s light reflecting off telescope mirror

Lines in the sky from airplanes

Some aircraft lines which are either red or blue since they only appear on one of each pair of photographic plates. For each part of the sky, the astronomers took a picture using a red filter then another picture of the same area with a blue filter - the aircraft will appear in only one of the photos.  

Link to Example of airplane artifacts on blue plate in WorldWide Telescope

Link to Example of airplane artifacts on red plate in WorldWide Telescope

 

Top 25 Contributor
Posts 28

Your statements about the artifacts are correct. The only thing I'll add is that the dataset that they are visible in is called the Digitized Sky Survey and that they occur on the original plates taken decades ago.

Oh, and nice use of WWT links.

Data Curator, WorldWide Telescope
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I'm not entirely sure if this belongs here bur it's all I could find, When I switch the "look at" tab at the bottom left corner of the screen to planet, then switch the "Imagery" tab to something called Mandelbrot. I'm not entirely sure just what that is, or if it even really exists, only that it just creeps the hell out of me. Any idea what it is?  

"There is no stir or walking in the streets; And the complexion of the element In favour's like the work we have in hand, Most bloody, fiery, and most terrible." Tis a dark night for dark deeds.
Top 10 Contributor
Posts 187

BS1:

I'm not entirely sure if this belongs here bur it's all I could find, When I switch the "look at" tab at the bottom left corner of the screen to planet, then switch the "Imagery" tab to something called Mandelbrot. I'm not entirely sure just what that is, or if it even really exists, only that it just creeps the hell out of me. Any idea what it is?  

 

Hi BS1,

Mandelbrot is not a planet. Smile Here is a Wikipedia article on Mandelbrot: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandelbrot_set Check out some of the images and you will see they are quite beautiful.

Thank you,

Chuck

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds the most discoveries, is not 'Eureka!', but 'That's funny...'" Isaac Asimov Microsoft Research<

Not Ranked
Posts 1

Fantastic! :) congrats for the idea to put in the Mandelbrot set.

For those interested but not willing to read the wiki article, just zoom in at the black edge and if you keep zooming in you will see even smaller "mandelbrots". At some point you cannot zoom in anymore, but it's interesting to knoq that the sets keep repeating to infinity. 

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