WTPh?

April 26, 2006 6:07 PM

What is this cryptic image?

Two sets of RGB dots.
Greyscale swatches of light.
Directional arrows.

Disclaimer: This is not homework or any type of test or contest. My friends and I are curious but baffled. The image is not presented to us in context.

Image hosted at ImageShack

posted by maggieb to science & nature (17 comments total)

To me, it looks like commentary on lighting for a show.
posted by acoutu at 6:11 PM on April 26, 2006

I'd guess it has to do with either 1) astronomy or 2) lighting design.

Beyond that, I'm as baffled as you are.
posted by GrammarMoses at 6:12 PM on April 26, 2006

i was going to say maybe a filtered image of the space shuttle at high altitudes, but i think the booster/engine geometry is wrong for that. hmmm.
posted by sergeant sandwich at 6:17 PM on April 26, 2006

actually, it could be the shuttle if we're seeing the boosters separate from the main orbiter. maybe the little light-colored flecks with arrows pointing to them are pieces of the explosive bolts that hold it on there.

is this maybe the foam that came off columbia?
posted by sergeant sandwich at 6:19 PM on April 26, 2006

It looks like something reentering an atmosphere, like a comet. The arrows are pointing at the actual bits, and the cloudy stuff is them disintegrating. The RGB could be for post-processing color correction.
posted by smackfu at 6:20 PM on April 26, 2006

actually i think that may be it. perhaps this is from an infrared camera or had some kind of spectral monkeying done with it. look at this picture - the angle is about the same, and the 2nd booster would be blocked by the main fuel tank.
posted by sergeant sandwich at 6:22 PM on April 26, 2006

Looks like a comet to me. Multiple pieces, each piece indicated by an arrow, the fuzziness is the comet's "tail", pointing away from the Sun. The RGB dots are probably to indicate that the image contains all three channels or something like that.
posted by jellicle at 6:23 PM on April 26, 2006

It was the Astronomy Pic of the Day today.
posted by Who_Am_I at 6:27 PM on April 26, 2006

...It's a fragment from a comet that's going to pass close to the Earth soon.
posted by Who_Am_I at 6:30 PM on April 26, 2006

Good suggestions, all, on the what. Something in space seems reasonable.

smackfu & sgt: I threw the image into my Irfanview and pulled out R, B, G individually... so what I called greyscale is not that at all... the mist in the middle is RGB.
posted by maggieb at 6:31 PM on April 26, 2006

It is a picture of Comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3. Basically what Who_Am_I said, but with a permalink to APoD.
posted by KevCed at 6:33 PM on April 26, 2006

ahh, way to go who_are_you !
posted by sergeant sandwich at 6:33 PM on April 26, 2006

Thanks, everyone! Good show.
posted by maggieb at 6:34 PM on April 26, 2006

It looks like something reentering an atmosphere, like a comet

It's not entering, let alone re-entering, any atmosphere.
The solar wind creates the comet's tail.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 8:13 PM on April 26, 2006

The RGB dots are stars, surprisingly, and not artificially added. Because the comet is moving appreciably, and the FORS instrument on the VLT that took the picture can only image in one colour at a time they take separate frames with different filters one after another, and the comet is in a slightly different position each time.
posted by edd at 5:26 AM on April 27, 2006

Really, edd? I'd have guessed that they were physically placed in the camera's view in order to calibrate. They seem pretty big for stars. I know there's precedent.
posted by solotoro at 8:02 AM on April 27, 2006

The telescope will lock on to the stars or the comet to guide itself, but I've never observed an object with an appreciable motion myself so I couldn't say which they'd use for sure. Either way, when the different colour frames are combined they'll combine them such that the comet gets matched and the stars get 'split'.

It looks like they're using the comet as the stars seem slightly stretched in one direction, which you'd expect if they slid across the field of view. They may also appear larger than you might expect because they're bright, so pixels further out get a lot of light too.

ESO confirm that they're stars.
posted by edd at 8:45 AM on April 27, 2006