Pluto conspiracy

[Chew]

Gazpar, if you're worried about people knowing where you live then you should edit your post and erase the last 3 digits of your latitude and longitude (and crop off the top of the photo); otherwise people can find out where you are to within 11 meters.

[Chew]

Is an older photo, the coordinates are not the same.

Then it won't help identify the stars. Which direction where you facing when you took the photo? From your location and the direction I can identify the stars.

[Gazpar]

Gazpar, if you're worried about people knowing where you live then you should edit your post and erase the last 3 digits of your latitude and longitude (and crop off the top of the photo); otherwise people can find out where you are to within 11 meters.

Done

Is an older photo, the coordinates are not the same.

Then it won't help identify the stars. Which direction where you facing when you took the photo? From your location and the direction I can identify the stars.

I posted it wrong.
The coordinates I used for:
Moon photo:  RA: 40  DEC: -2
2 Star Photo: RA: 12  DEC: 55
Are the ones I took with the direction I was facing.

The other from the picture is just from there, I was showing you that Rigel is in Centaurus too, not just Orion. The coords of above are the ones you are looking for.

[Chew]

RA changes 15.04° an hour with respect to the stars. If it is an old photo and you don't know the exact date and time it was taken then it will not help identify the stars. Which direction (north, northeast, southwest, etc) where you facing when you took the photo of the stars?

[twik]

I think Gazpar's pictures are a very good example of why people don't try to photograph stars with a moon or planet in the same shot. In his pictures, the Moon is an indistinguishable blob of light, without even gross detail of the surface, and the star is a mere blip, with again no detail (in fact, it could be an artifact of some sort). From a scientific viewpoint, you would get no useful information about either the Moon or the star. It's sort of a "worst of both worlds" situation.

Since we can get very good information on the stars from other sources, it's obvious that NASA would be more interested in exposing for Pluto, rather than to pick up the stars.

[Andromeda]

The other from the picture is just from there, I was showing you that Rigel is in Centaurus too, not just Orion. The coords of above are the ones you are looking for.

Then there is an error in whatever sky map app that is.  There is only one star named Rigel and it is in Orion.  The one in your image should be labelled "Rigel Kentaurus" or "Rigil", as pointed out before, and cannot correctly be called "Rigel".

[Gazpar]

RA changes 15.04° an hour with respect to the stars. If it is an old photo and you don't know the exact date and time it was taken then it will not help identify the stars. Which direction (north, northeast, southwest, etc) where you facing when you took the photo of the stars?

210º Southwest

[Gazpar]

Now I get it. Pluto should have to look like the moon in my photo to see any stars. Overexposed.

[Zakalwe]

Now I get it. Pluto should have to look like the moon in my photo to see any stars. Overexposed.

Correct. Which is what I pointed out earlier.

As Pluto is the object of interest, the image exposure has been set to show it and not the stars. There'd be no point whatsover in sending a $multi-billion probe on a 10-year journey to take a photo of stars, would there?
The hoax-believers can't seem to get this simple point into their thick skulls. "Why are there no pictures of the stars?" they cry. "Because we can take perfectly good pictures of stars from here...why would we spend billions on sending someone to the Moon with a crummy hand-held camera to take poor quality images" is the answer, but of course, their minds are closed.
 

[Zakalwe]

I think Gazpar's pictures are a very good example of why people don't try to photograph stars with a moon or planet in the same shot. In his pictures, the Moon is an indistinguishable blob of light, without even gross detail of the surface, and the star is a mere blip, with again no detail (in fact, it could be an artifact of some sort). From a scientific viewpoint, you would get no useful information about either the Moon or the star. It's sort of a "worst of both worlds" situation.

It can be done, by taking two pictures and layering them together in something like Photoshop. One exposed for the stars, one for the Moon. There's very little to be gained though, as the Moon is so bright that it swamps out the near stars


Remember that knuckle-dragger Weisbecker? He couldn't get his peabrain around an image that was a composite of at least three different images....
http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=602.0

[Chew]

The other from the picture is just from there, I was showing you that Rigel is in Centaurus too, not just Orion. The coords of above are the ones you are looking for.

Then there is an error in whatever sky map app that is.  There is only one star named Rigel and it is in Orion.  The one in your image should be labelled "Rigel Kentaurus" or "Rigil", as pointed out before, and cannot correctly be called "Rigel".

The app also reverses the sign of the declination. Point it Polaris and it reads -90.

[Zakalwe]

The app also reverses the sign of the declination. Point it Polaris and it reads -90.

It sounds like a rubbish app.

I use two different planetariums, both of which are free. Stellarium is the prettiest one, is intuitive, very powerful and is cross platform:
http://www.stellarium.org/en_GB/
I believe that there is a mobile app too, but the last time I tried it it was pretty poor.

I use Cartes du Ciel in my observatory to interface with my telescope mount. It's not as pretty, a fair bit mre difficult to use, but it works better as an observatory application:
http://www.ap-i.net/skychart/en/start

There are others, but those two should cover most needs.

[Chew]

The app also reverses the sign of the declination. Point it Polaris and it reads -90.

It sounds like a rubbish app.

Yeah but it's free!

[Dalhousie]

Alan Stern disagrees with Tyson.  So do I.  As Pluto would say, Tyson is no Carl Sagan.

Actually, I've been saying for some time that not only is Tyson the first to fill Carl Sagan's shoes, he's arguably doing an even better job. Tyson seems totally at ease in front of an audience; Sagan never did.

I find him a pretentious git. Unlike Sagan, he has done very little science, he is now an educator, rather than a scientist.  Nothing wrong with that, but he gets passed off as an expert on everything, which he isn't.  His ignorance in some areas, such as philosophy, is appalling.

The IAU decision was a farce with risible justification.  A "dwarf" planet is still a planet. Just as a "giant" planet is still a planet.

There are 8 planets in our solar system, and that's a very reliable number. If we merge dwarf planets into the planet category, then the number will be "large and unknown". Either way, never again will the count be the "9" we were taught in school.

Scientific understanding changes, and people have to adapt to that.
[/quote]

I don't think you understand the problem with the IAU decision, the flaws in process and scientific reasoning.

[Dalhousie]

Actually, I've been saying for some time that not only is Tyson the first to fill Carl Sagan's shoes, he's arguably doing an even better job. Tyson seems totally at ease in front of an audience; Sagan never did.

100%. NDT did a great job of the COSMOS reboot, and I understand he was Ann Druyan's first choice.

The only thing I disliked about the new COSMOS was the cheap, poorly animated cartoons. One of the key appeals and strengths of the original COSMOS was the mini-documentaries that told the stories of individuals and their contributions to science, e.g. Johannes Kepler and Jean-François Champollion

There are 8 planets in our solar system, and that's a very reliable number. If we merge dwarf planets into the planet category, then the number will be "large and unknown". Either way, never again will the count be the "9" we were taught in school.

Scientific understanding changes, and people have to adapt to that.

Agree with this too. I used to be in the "Pluto is a planet" camp, but three things have convinced me that the IAU have got this right...

1. Pluto's orbit is highly eccentric (so much so that it crosses the orbit of  another planet. No other planet does this.). It is also highly inclined to the orbits of the 8 planets

2. This diagram

Orbitally, Pluto has more in common with the Kuiper Belt object Eris than it has with any of the planets


3. This comparison

Pluto is not much bigger that the Kuiper Belt object Eris, and is actually less massive!! If Pluto is a planet, then Eris is also a planet, and any other Kuiper belt object the size of Eris or bigger (and there could be thousands of them) would also have to be classed as planets.

Nothing wrong with bodies large enough to have achieved hydrostatic equilibrium but too small to have deuterium fusion being planets.  As a classification is is far more rational than the IAU one, with the risible nonsense about "clearing the neighbourhood".  I would doubt however that there are thousands of them, in our solar system at least.