APOD - Impressive!

[saturn5]

It always amuses me, when I come to a scene in 'hard' SF involving intergalactic travel (presumably via some sort of 'hyperspace'), in which our intrepid voyagers, peering through a rear-facing porthole, glimpse 'the spiral arms of the Milky Way blazing forth in all their splendour' or somesuch words... Dammit, M31 is a close enough galaxy, it's easy enough to see with the naked eye, it subtends a fairly large angle in our skies, its structure is well known and very familiar thanks to countless images. But we all know that you can't see any detail with the naked eye, nor with bins nor even a modest telescope. Just a fuzzy oval. And that's all our SF travellers would see of the MW I reckon.

But maybe our sf travellers have more sensitve eyesight and colour vision than we do,in fact they could have astrophotography vision.

[ashenlight]

I am JEALOUS of these sf travellers!

[FLO]

Very nice picture indeed.

If you have an iGoogle desktop there are a number of useful gadgets available including one for APOD.

[ashenlight]

ooh, thanks Steve

[saturn5]

Well i'm sure we could actually get a view like this one,no probs with surface brightness here............er second thoughts,the tidal pull of a huge/mega close moon would mean massive and destructive tide heights,in fact it would have such an effect on the earth it could well cause massive volcanic activity.

Mind you the castle wall has withstood the extreme tides.

[661-pete]

Oooohhh! The classic oversized moon! Quick everyone down to the beach, to choose the pebble that'll be the same size as the Moon when held at arm's length (under the watchful eye of Sir Patrick of course, the only one who'll get it right...)

Nice picture, mind!

[ashenlight]

Nice one saturn