#also if u look at their photos together 90% of the time max is on the left daniel is on the right

[yesloulou]

🤍🤍🤍 they just

[astrogeoguy]

Jupiter at Peak Planet, a Late-night Lunar X, and Mars and Mercury Hang Out in the West!

(Above: At this first quarter, a feature called the Lunar X will be visible in strong binoculars and small telescopes. For a few hours, the illuminated rims of the craters Parbach, la Caille, and Blanchinus will form a small, but very obvious X-shape located at moon coordinates 2° East and 24° South. This image was taken by Jerry Lodigruss, NASA APOD for March 11, 2009)

Hello, Stargazers!

Here are your Astronomy Skylights for the week of June 9th, 2019 by Chris Vaughan. Feel free to pass this along to your friends and send me your comments, questions, and suggested topics. I repost these emails with photos at http://astrogeoguy.tumblr.com/ where all the old editions are archived. You can also follow me on Twitter as @astrogeoguy! Unless otherwise noted, all times are Eastern Time. Please click this MailChimp link to subscribe to these emails. If you are a teacher or group leader interested joining me on a guided field trip to York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory or the David Dunlap Observatory, visit www.astrogeo.ca.

I can bring my Digital Starlab inflatable planetarium to your school or other daytime or evening event. Contact me, and we’ll tour the Universe together! 

Public Astro-Events

Taking advantage of the moon and other bright objects in the sky this week, the RASC Toronto Centre astronomers will hold their free monthly public City Sky Star Party in Bayview Village Park (steps from the Bayview subway station), starting around 8 pm on the first clear weeknight this week (Mon through Thu only). You don’t need to be an RASC member, or own any equipment, to join them – looks are free! Check here for details, and check the banner on their website home page or Facebook page for the GO or NO-GO decision around 5 pm each day. 

Every Monday evening, York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory runs an online star party - broadcasting views from four telescopes/cameras, answering viewer questions, and taking requests! Details are here. On Wednesday nights they offer free public viewing through their rooftop telescopes. If it’s cloudy, the astronomers give tours and presentations. Details are here. 

To celebrate the best views of Jupiter for 2019, York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory will hold a free public Jupiter-viewing session on top of the Arboretum Parking Structure on Monday or Tuesday (whichever night is clear first). Viewing runs from 10 pm to midnight, and details are here. Follow @yorkobservatory on social media for the GO/no-GO notices. Usual parking fees will apply. 

Weather permitting, on Tuesday, June 11 from 9 to 10:30 pm, astronomers from RASC – Mississauga will hold a free public star party at the Riverwood Conservancy, 4300 Riverwood Park Lane, Mississauga. Details are here. 

On Wednesday evening from 7 to 9 pm at the Michael DeGroote Centre for Learning at McMaster University, Dr. Sarah M Hörst from Johns Hopkins University will present a free lecture entitled Titan: Ingredients for Life. Details and registration are here. 

On Thursday, June 13, starting at 7 pm, U of T’s AstroTour will present their planetarium show Grand Tour of the Cosmos. Tickets and details are here. 

On Friday evening from 7:30 to 10 pm at the Hamilton Spectator building, the Hamilton astronomers will present a free public talk by Brian McNamera entitled 1919-2019: A Century of Black Holes. Details are here. 

On Friday, June 14 from 8 to 11 pm, adults can enjoy some suds with their science at Astronomy on Tap T.O. at the Great Hall on Queen Street West, a free event hosted by the U of T’s Dunlap Institute. Talks, trivia, contest giveaways, and more! Details are here. 

The Annual General Assembly of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada will be held at York University this weekend. Saturday and Sunday will be devoted to free, fun, hands-on activities for space-enthusiasts of all ages. View the sun safely (weather permitting), spend some time in an inflatable planetarium, make your own comet or create some messy moon craters, and make some space art and crafts. Details are here. 

The next RASC Lecture Night at the David Dunlap Observatory will be on Saturday, June 15. There will be sky tours in the Skylab planetarium room, space crafts, a tour of the giant 74” telescope, and viewing through lawn telescopes (weather permitting). The doors will open at 8:30 pm for a 9 pm start. Attendance is by tickets only, available here. If you are a RASC Toronto Centre member and wish to help us at DDO in the future, please fill out the volunteer form here. And to join RASC Toronto Centre, visit this page. 

The Moon and Planets

Both the moon and Jupiter will be dominating our night skies this week, worldwide. Here are the Skylights! 

The moon will tempt you to view it throughout this week. Sunday evening will feature the nearly half-illuminated moon tucked a palm’s width below the stars that form the eastern, back half of Leo (the Lion). Hours later, at 2 am Eastern Time on Monday morning, the moon will officially reach its First Quarter phase. At that time, it will be positioned 90 degrees away from the sun. 

The term expresses that the moon has completed the first quarter of its orbit around Earth since the previous New Moon. The relative positions of the Earth, sun, and moon cause us to see the moon half-illuminated - on its eastern side. At first quarter, the moon always rises around noon and sets near midnight, so it is also visible in the afternoon daytime sky, too. The evenings around first quarter are the best times to see the lunar terrain while it is dramatically lit by low-angled sunlight.

 At this first quarter, a feature called the Lunar X will be visible in strong binoculars and small telescopes. For a few hours, the illuminated rims of the craters Parbach, la Caille, and Blanchinus will form a small, but very obvious X-shape located at moon coordinates 2° East and 24° South. That point is on the terminator (the pole-to-pole line that divides the lit and dark hemispheres) and about one third of the way up from the southern pole of the moon. The “X” should start to develop around midnight on Sunday. 

From Monday through Thursday, the moon will pass head-to-foot through the large constellation of Virgo (the Maiden). Every night, our natural satellite will fill up with light and set later as it swings wider from the sun. On Thursday and Friday, the nearly full moon will cross Libra (the Scales). 

On the weekend, the moon will hop past Jupiter, landing on Jupiter’s upper right on Saturday and then dropping to Jupiter’s lower left on Sunday. On both nights, notice the relative positions of the two objects while they are over the eastern horizon, and compare that to the way they look hours later. Earth’s rotation causes constellations and planets to flip by 180 degrees as they cross the sky from east to west. The June full moon will occur in the wee hours of next Monday, so the moon will look full on Sunday evening, too. 

This is a big week for Jupiter – literally! On Monday, June 10, Earth’s faster orbit will pass Jupiter on the inside track, causing Jupiter to be positioned exactly opposite the sun in our sky, worldwide. Planets at opposition always rise at sunset, and remain visible all night long. On Monday, Jupiter will also be closer to Earth than on any other date this year – only 640.9 million km, or 4.284 Astronomical Units from us. (1 A.U. is the average sun-Earth separation.) The planet’s light will be taking 36 light-minutes to reach us – meaning that we are seeing Jupiter more than half an hour in the past! 

Jupiter will also shine at its brightest (visual magnitude -2.6) for 2019, and its apparent disk diameter will max-out at 46 arc-seconds. (That’s 2.5% of the full moon’s diameter.) Don’t worry if your skies are cloudy on June 10. Jupiter will be about as good for a week surrounding that date, and then it will slowly start to shrink in size and brightness. We’ll be enjoying Jupiter through our telescopes all summer long! 

(Above: Starting late on Tuesday evening, observers in the Americas can see the black shadows of two of Jupiter’s moons on Jupiter at the same time! At 11:29 pm EDT, Ganymede’s shadow will join Io’s shadow already in transit. The two shadows will cross Jupiter for 64 minutes until Io’s shadow moves off the planet at 12:33 am. This image shows Jupiter at midnight EDT.)

Around opposition, Jupiter’ moons are more visible, too. From time to time, the small, round black shadows cast by Jupiter’s four Galilean moons become visible in amateur telescopes as they cross (or transit) Jupiter’s disk. Starting late on Tuesday evening, observers in the Americas can see two of those shadows on Jupiter at the same time! At 11:29 pm EDT, Ganymede’s shadow will join Io’s shadow already in transit. The two shadows will cross Jupiter for 64 minutes until Io’s shadow moves off the planet at 12:33 am. Ganymede’s shadow will continue to transit the northern polar region of Jupiter until 1:50 am EDT. 

Due to Jupiter’s rapid 10-hour rotation period, the Great Red Spot (or GRS) is only observable from Earth every 2nd or 3rd night, and only during a predictable three-hour window. The GRS will be easiest to see using a medium-sized, or larger, aperture telescope on an evening of good seeing (steady air). If you’d like to see the Great Red Spot in your telescope, it will be crossing the planet after midnight tonight (Sunday). More GRS viewing opportunities occur in the hours surrounding 9:45 pm EDT on Monday evening, 11:15 pm EDT on Wednesday, and 1 am EDT on Saturday.

(Above: Jupiter will reach peak visibility for 2019 on June 10, when it reaches opposition. Jupiter and dimmer Saturn (at lower left) will spend the next several months in the southern evening sky, on opposite sides of the Milky Way, as shown here for midnight this week.)  

Yellowish Saturn will be rising in the east-southeast a little before 11 pm local time this week. Its position in the sky is just to the left (east) of the stars that form the teapot-shaped constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer). Saturn is quite a bit dimmer than Jupiter. To find it, look about 2.5 fist diameters to the lower left (east) of Jupiter. Dust off your telescope - because even a small one will show its rings and several of its brighter moons!

(Above: The ice giant planets Uranus and Neptune are both in the eastern pre-dawn sky among the stars of Aries and Aquarius, respectively, as shown here at 4:30 am local time.)  

Distant and dim, blue Neptune is in the southeastern pre-dawn sky, among the stars of Aquarius (the Water-Bearer). The planet will rise before 2 am local time. After mid-June, Neptune will become part of the evening sky. Brighter, blue-green Uranus is rising at about 3 am local time, and is sitting among the stars of Aries (the Ram). 

Last to rise is our bright, next-door neighbour Venus. She is sitting low in the east-northeastern pre-dawn sky this week, creeping ever-closer to the rising sun. Venus will shine with a steady, unmoving light - unlike airplanes.

(Above: Mercury and Mars are situated low in the western sky after sunset this week, as shown here for 10 pm local time on Friday. Mercury will be drawing closer to Mars all week.)  

Mars and Mercury are hanging out just above the northwestern horizon after sunset this week. Mercury will become easier to spot every night because it is climbing away from the sun and brightening. The best time to look for it falls between 9:45 and 10:15 pm local time. Mercury is heading directly towards dimmer Mars. Tonight, Mars will be about a palm’s width to the upper left of Mercury. By Sunday, that will reduce to a finger’s width! And next week, those two planets will “kiss”!  

The Big Dipper as a Sky Tool

If you missed last week’s information about measuring the sky using the Big Dipper asterism, I posted it here. 

Satellites

There are no visible Iridium Flares predicted for the GTA this week. The ISS (International Space Station) will not be visible over the GTA this week. 

Keep looking up, and enjoy the sky when you do. I love questions and requests - so, send me some!

[the-beautiful-1]

3 Chains O’ Gold

Released August 16, 1994

If you haven’t seen 3 Chains O Gold, I’m going to need you to seek it out immediately because it is one of Prince’s most glorious accomplishments. Released in 1994, it expands on the Love Symbol album and attempts to give us Mayte’s back story, I guess? Either way it’s a real treat, so lets get right to my attempt to break down what’s going in this beautiful mess.

Opening Credits First of all, I wanted to make this not too terribly long and include only events relevant to the plot, but it’s worth noting that the “Warner Reprise Video” is arguably the MOST DATED LOGO IN HISTORY. If this doesn’t scream 1994 at you, I guess you weren’t alive then. If anyone from the future is like “what were the 90s like?” just show them this 10 second clip.

We open with the credits over several clips of what I’m confident is a show on the Paisley Park soundstage, with Prince in a glorious halter top backless jumpsuit, but that’s not important right now - we cut to Princess Mayte in Egypt doing her thing, which I guess is skinny dipping with four nameless women who call her Mai Tai? Either way, full nudity right out of the gate, interspersed with clips of who we find out is her father being stabbed. She holds him as he dies of one stab wound, which I guess you would if no doctor was called. Oh well, dead forever, so she grabs her title 3 Chains O Gold from a vault and we go from Cairo, Egypt, to Minneapolis, Minnesota! Unclear where Mayte is now staying, but it appears to be a small barren room with only candles and a small tv, which is playing Kirstie Alley reporting on a riot in the same alley where conveniently half of Graffiti Bridge takes place.

My Name is Prince The chain hat is here! As is an extended rap from Tony M, while Prince dances atop several cars in an inexplicably damp alley. He’s so stompy! Mayte has apparently seen this on the news and made her way through the crowd to hand him a bedazzled VHS case containing what is revealed to be the actual tape of her performance on That’s Incredible AS AN 8 YEAR OLD. This is problematic at best, but he’s interrupted by Tony M’s insistence that they have a car party to attend to.

Sexy MF The car party turns out to be the members of the NPG playing cards in the smoke filled garage of Paisley Park, and their involvement is that Prince shows up, demands 3 women leave with himself, Tony M and Kirky J, and then ridicules the rest of his band for a little bit. Kind of an asshole, but also… have you seen him in this?? Looking like a real snack. Forgiven. Moving on. My favorite thing about all Prince stories is that it’s like, Prince wants the girl, Prince gets the girl, and this is no different. Prince and his gold gun microphone want Troy Beyer in her pearl cage dress (can you call that a dress?) as they make out in various hotel hallways.  They go to the movies and make out for a bit and engage in some heavy petting, but Troy knows something is up and that there’s someone else (spoiler alert, it’s Mayte), and he responds with a very intent Purple Rain-esque moody stare.

Love 2 the 9s Mayte gets a card slipped under her hotel room door with audition times for the NPG, so I guess Love 2 the 9s is her audition?? But wait, some of the NPG guys are in jail slash Prince’s office at Paisley. This is like… the Hard Times, if the Hard Times had a budget? Anyway it would appear that the audition is a photoshoot, with Prince in the highest of high waisted red pants and an open lace bolero top. Again, he looks DECADENT. I digress. Tony M proceeds to interview Mayte with some inane questions, until she is is finally permitted to make the booty boom. Thank god. Sidebar: her makeup!!!!! So perfectly 90s, complete with a brown lip and thin eyebrows. Perfection.

Morning Papers Cut to the zoo! Why?? I DON’T KNOW. Here’s P and Mayte walking through the zoo hand in hand, being real sweet paired with a song that makes the whole thing problematic, but again, choosing to overlook the whole “why is age more than a number” with a shot of Mayte riding on a carousel. YIKES. Cut to Paisley Park where P is dressed in white pants, white heels, a floor length white trench coat, and a SLEEVELESS PLAID FLANNEL SHIRT unbuttoned all the way down to his waist. This is a GOOD. LOOK. Someone has been working out, and he is eager to show it off. Ugh back to the carousel for some kind of trippy sequence involving Mayte whispering into a mirror in a Blossom hat.

The Max Dramatic cut to footage of what I’m pretty sure is one of the 1993 Radio City Music Hall shows from the Love Symbol tour mixed with some backstage footage and whatever was shot at Paisley. Prince’s ability to create euphamisms and use them like literally anyone else in the world would ever even bother never fails to amuse me. He’d like to “shuffle the cards in that stack!” …. okay. Before or after you drive me/us/Mayte to Tennessee? Anyway I guess this is to show she did indeed get the job? Here’s a picture from one of the Radio City shows because one I can’t get a good screen cap, and two it’s important for.... reasons.

Blue Light I’m not sure whose bedroom we are in, but Prince is sitting there I guess waiting for Kirstie Alley to call so he can hang up on her. You can tell this video was shot later than most of the other footage as his typhoon is really out of control here and reached peak mushroom, but it’s fine since it’s mostly face close ups of him and Mayte as they roll around on a bed while she rejects his advances. Girl. Get your shit together. Also he’s wearing light pink silk pajamas. Or it could just be a regular suit he wears on stage, jury still out, either way it looks comfy af and I’d like one.

I Wanna Melt With U Aw man. Mayte falls asleep, while Prince packs a suitcase with all his essentials for a tour (chains, a chain hat, and one shirt) and sneaks out. This is my favorite thing, omg. So Mayte has fallen into a fitful sleep and is currently having a sexual nightmare about her flirtatious encounter with P that involves a lot of naked ladies distorted in funhouse mirrors and Prince wearing maybe boxer shorts?? Umbros??, a black and white vertical striped robe, and ROLLER SKATES. Not only roller skates, but knee pads as well because even when you are haunting someones dreams in a sexual way, safety first. Oh also flashbacks to dad. There is SO MUCH GOING ON HERE, my god. I would pay good money to be haunted by Prince on roller skates and safety pads in my dreams, I tell you what.

Sweet Baby Mayte wakes up from her nightmare to realize P has left her with a note that says only “Sweet baby don’t cry.” Wait I thought she was in the band, but he went on tour without her? From Minneapolis, to Japan, by train? Unclear. Anyway she packs her bags and stands despondent, weeping on some train tracks for the duration of the song until she hops on a plane back to Egypt to be a princess again.

The Continental Prince arrives by train in Tokyo, where he is visibly distraught and his band starts talking shit about him as they have a pre-show gambling sesh? The Ghost of Mayte shows up to haunt him during soundcheck where he is again very Purple Rain levels of pensive and moody, but NOT IN THE SHOW! The Continental is 3 Chain’s O Gold’s Darling Nikki - overtly sexual, many thrusts incorporated into the dancing, lots of face touching with finger flutters, proving he doesn’t require his main love interests attention, he can get it from anyone anywhere, and they’ll thank him for it. Ok so here we have two seemingly concurrent events happening I think? One is Mayte dancing in Egypt, while Prince gets some in his chain hat. This is legit a porn at this point, wait why does he have a sword??? Anyway so again with the making out and the heavy petting, but right as it gets started, Mayte has been overcome with… I don’t know, but she collapses, and Prince is simultaneously unable to perform sexually. I think to show they are spiritually connected??? Do I GET Prince’s visions now?????? I am so proud.

Damn U Back in Egypt, an old man tells Mayte she looks like a girl he used to bang. Okay. Prince has returned to Paisley Park where he is performing a one man show for a dinner party in the sound stage, I think. Again, a real treat. Black jumpsuit with a white collared shirt & white tie, yes this is a good look. Oh Tommy Barbarella must have gone on a cruise to the Bahamas on the way back, he has some hair wraps and braids now. Ugh that baritone. Damn U, damn me, this song is so good. Here’s a screen shot that could double as his Bar Mitvah photo.

Mayte has received a letter!! It’s the lyrics to Damn U. Her reaction is to go to her dress maker to get a fancy coin dress, and then hop on the next flight to LA, where they will be shooting the 7 music video, but not before there is a 5 minute segment with members of the NPG talking shit about Mayte. No, really. First up is Tony M and his date, who is Mayte? Where did she come from, what did she do? The rest of the NPG is in the gym, also talking shit about her??!! WHY IS THIS INCLUDED. I guess to show he loves her in spite of his entire band hating her? Michael Bland wants to know “What is her purpose, what does she do?” Honestly. What is this doing here. And it goes on for SO LONG!!!

7 Maybe my favorite Prince music video??? So we see past versions of Prince trapped in a time traveling cryogenic tube… The Continental yellow suit is here, the chain hat, the Morning Papers Sleeveless Grunge Shirt, some insane bolero top with a cowboy hat that unfortunately is not seen in its full glory.. each of them is electrocuted to show that he has no past, he has sown all his oats and he is ready to be faithful to Mayte and maybe now she will reciprocate his sexual advances. Also there are seven pairs of TINY CHILDREN PRINCE AND MAYTES WIELDING SWORDS AND COIN DRESSES IT IS VERY ADORABLE!!!! God he’s so intense. Oh and the “one day all 7 will die” is in reference to the 7 men that killed her father, whom he has casually assassinated by his bodyguards as he and Mayte waltz off into the sunset/another smoke filled room at Paisley Park.

End Credits Mayte calls Kirstie Alley to finally grant her long sought after interview with him, which was clearly written by him. Most of her responses are “oh.” I think this is the letter he wrote as her as his press release for why he changed his name? Again, UNCLEAR. Anyway, we’re left with shots of Prince making some kind of business deal in a smoky conference room, and then he ends up signing a contract written in Japanese with the Love Symbol. Dramatic cut to a cemetery, where we see a shallow grave containing the chain hat and the 3 chains o gold.

THAT’S IT! That’s all! Really! Any questions? I HAVE SEVERAL.

[tinyplanetsandscreenshots]

How to make Tiny Planets [and Panoramas]

Make fancy looking things without going broke buying Creative Cloud.

By now, you’ve probably seen a lot of those fancy looking panoramas, 3D photospheres, or images that look like Tiny Planets / a Super Mario Galaxy  level / King Kai’s Planet. The way this is done is similar to how NVIDIA Ansel creates 360 pictures, but isn’t automated (yet…).

You’ll need: Microsoft Research’s Image Composite Editor (ICE) A first-person camera

You’ll want: Image Editing Software (Paint.NET or FastStone Image Viewer are my go-to) Access to a Dedicated Capture Mode – OR – the ability to use Time-stop, No HUD, No First Person Player Model, FOV control, and Free cam/No Clip.

Game and Camera Setup

Have a look through your library, and find a game where you’ve got access to a First-Person camera. While any FPS will work here, many other games have these hidden away as a debug camera. For instance, XCOM2 and ABZU have these, despite not being first-person games. Third-Person cameras won’t work with this method, since the “pivot point” of the camera is out in the scene, rather than at the “lens” of the camera. If a game has a dedicated Capture Mode (Mad Max , Shadow Warrior 2, or anything that has NVIDIA Ansel), use this. If the game doesn’t have a dedicated capture mode, see if you can make one with the console (Things like Noclip, Time-stop, Disabling HUD), using GeDoSaTo to get rid of HUD items or great big things that say “PAUSED” in the middle of the screen, or using Cheat Engine to take control of the camera when I shouldn’t. I tend to check things like DeadEndThrills or PCGamingWiki for an idea of what I’ve got available to work with.

If the game doesn’t have either of these, don’t worry! This process will still work, you’ll just have a few extra steps (These are covered in the Tips section).

Image quality is the highest priority when making these things. We’re not trying to be playable, we’re after capturing the mood of the environment. That said, I tend to turn off post-processing effects that add things like dirt or scratches to the lens, such as the psuedo Bokeh effect in XCOM2, but that’s up to you. On FOV and Capture Resolution: Wider angles will make the capturing process *much* faster at the expensive of image quality, but tighter FOV will give you more environmental detail (Most games don’t include Perspective Distortion, so it’s like cruddy version of supersampling that won’t turn your GPU into molten slag). Our software can do Gigapixel resolution panoramas if you’ve got the RAM (and ability to open the final image), but for most games, you’ll have massively diminishing returns for FOVs below 80. You may also note that I didn’t mention the resolution of your screenshots. While this is normally a big deal in screenshots, higher resolutions have diminishing returns when you’re making panoramas this way. Worry about getting the smallest object you care about in the scene looking good, rather than trying to force as many pixels as you can into each shot. Feel free to use GeDoSaTo to capture at 16K if you want, but it probably won’t be worth the effort / fire hazard.

Capture Method

With your scene all set up, start taking screenshots in all directions. I like to start at the horizon, do a 360 degree (Azimuth, in Spherical Coordinates) sweep, capturing about every 45 degrees for an FOV of 90 (i.e. take a shot, look at the objects at the edge of the screen, move the camera so those are now in the middle, take another shot.). Once I’m back to the start, change the elevation (Altitude, in Spherical Coordinates), and repeat this process until you’ve got a screenshot of every single direction. If you’re not sure that you’ve got a shot, take an extra one. The more photos, the better (provided your scene isn’t moving).

Stitching

When you’re reasonably satisfied that you’ve got everything, quit the game and look at the collection of screenshots you’ve got. Open Image Composite Editor (ICE), and drag-and-drop them into the main window. Once you’ve got them all in there, check that Camera Motion is set to AutoDetect, then click Next. This will start the stitching process, where ICE does some quick optical object recognition, and finds a way to overlap as many of the images as it can. This can take a while, so go have a nice cuppa tea, a Bex, and a lie down (Don’t worry, it never takes more than 3 minutes on my machine, even with a few hundred images).

Projection

When the stitching is complete, you should see something like this:

The Spans 360 degree Horizontally and 180 degree Vertically underneath tells you that ICE was able to find enough information in all directions to recreate the entire scene.

Now comes the most important part: Choose a projection.

To Make a Planet: we select Stereographic, and set the Orientation to: Roll 0 Degrees Pitch -90 Degrees Yaw 0 Degrees

If this works, you should have a little planet! You can adjust the shape of this using the mouse, but I tend just rotate the scene instead so I don’t introduce additional distortions.

[Alternatively, if you just want a fancy panorama like you see of GTA V or The Witcher 3 on Steam Community with several hundred likes: try another projection then just crop out the area you want. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy! YOUR WINNER!]

Cropping

So, you’ve got your pretty pretty all set up, now it’s time to get it into a saveable format. Select Crop from u the top, and after the panorama is projected, you’ll have your scene again. Looking at the Width and Height, you’ll probably notice that the full image is a mite over 15000x15000 pixels. That’s great and all, but a lot of programs will flat out refuse to deal with files this big. Also, there’s probably a lot of extra space around the interesting parts that you’ll want gone, or maybe missing bits of the sky if you didn’t get Zenith. If you’ve followed the guide and only rotated the planet scene, the middle of the planet will be the centre of the image, making auto-centering and cropping super easy. Here, a 10000x10000 pixel crop looks good to me, but this is down to personal taste. My general advice is to see if 7500x7500 will contain everything of interest to your scene. Once you’re happy with the crop, hit Next and move on to Export.

File Formats

I do two exports here. The first is a high quality PNG at 100% scale copy of the scene. I’ll then make a 95-100 Quality JPEG with a Width and Height between 4500-5500 pixels. This is to keep the image size under the 8MB that Steam requires, and to prevent Steam from throwing up additional errors (I’ve had a lot of problems getting it to accept images above 30 megapixels, but your experience may differ).

Alternatively, use a good image editor to downsample the PNG to something under 30 megapixels and below 8MB. I really like FastStone Image Editor for this, the Crop board is excellent.

Sharing

Upload your JPEG to the Steam Community Hub / Flickr / Imgur / Tumblr /, give it a name, and feel the glow of adding something beautiful to this world. Or just print it out and throw it out the window at a passing dog. That works too.

Troubleshooting

Sometimes ICE will get confused by a scene and fail to project properly. In this case, you can try importing the bare minimum number of images, as something in the scene might have moved or asset reuse in the game will have caused a problem. If this fails again, I often just recapture the scene.

ICE comes with a very basic Autocomplete function for filling in gaps in panoramas. If you notice Grey holes (or if the Autocrop button doesn’t select the whole image), these are missing bits. If they’re not in your scene when you crop at the end, you can ignore them, but otherwise you can try the (quite computationally intensive) Autocomplete system. This will produce variable results, but can work in a pinch. Otherwise, load up a dedicated image editor (Paint.NET or GIMP if you’re broke like me) and clean up the errors in that.

Tips

Everything ICE does, Adobe’s Creative Cloud can do. But ICE is free, extremely easy to use, doesn’t require an internet connection, and can run on any version of Windows newer than XP.

Get Steam to screenshot in PNG, and use these instead of the default JPEGs. Since ICE accepts PNGs as inputs, you can cut out bad parts of the inputs and leave them transparent.

The general rule of thumb: avoid scenes where you’ll have big objects 30 degrees above the horizon. Buildings or Mountains will distort like crazy, and you’ll have this weird bulbous mass that can look very weird. Sometimes trees will look ok though, so experiment and you should get a good idea.

The closer an object is to the camera, the greater the distortion. If you want an object to look relatively normal (Say, a car or a person), try to keep it at least 5 meters from the camera and within 15 degrees of the horizon. However, distortion on people can look *really good* if you’ve got a good eye for composition (See this GTAV shot by a very clever peep).

Another rule of thumb is try to avoid putting anything too interesting directly underneath the camera. Keep this part of the scene relatively boring and go for more eye-catching detail around the horizon. If you’ve got something like a highlighted path in your scene, capturing the scene directly on top of the path doesn’t look as nice as being a few meters away.

Some games will have HUDs that you can’t turn off. In this case, crop out the HUD before stitching, and just take your screenshots a little closer together. Same goes for games with really strong Vignetting that can’t be disabled at all (Looking at you, Mass Effect 2).

There will be games where you’ve got no access to anything that makes capturing a scene easy (The Long Dark is my favourite example. There’s no console, subtle vignetting, no pause, and the player’s breathing makes little clouds in the middle of the screen). In these cases, I do my best to try and capture as quickly as possible. Things like moving clouds and horrible animals coming to gnaw on my guts will mostly be dealt with by ICE, or can be photoshopped out later. Or use it to turn one deer into a distributed herd. Up to you!

This technique will work in the real world, too. Camera + Tripod + the ability to edit out shadows = Good Times.

Worried about Perspective Distortion making everything look weird? ICE should be able to compensate for it in almost all cases, unless you’ve somehow turned your camera into a Duck eye. I’ve done a real-world shot with a 14mm fisheye lens, and ended up with a panorama that had no noticeable perspective effects on it with ICE.

Don’t worry about needing a powerful PC. I used to do this on my first gen i7 with 8GB of RAM and an ATi 5870 (“ Top of the line in ’09! ”), and got the same quality as I get with my NVIDIA GTX 1070 and 32GB of RAM. Image projection, stitching, and editing can be computationally intensive, but if you can run Steam on Windows, you can make pretties.

Example Materials

Here’s a link to the source materials I used to make this. You’ll notice there’s a hole at the top of the scene, but the Autocorrect can fix it for you if you want to use that. Try playing with a few projections to see how these things work without stressing about the capture process, but most of all, have fun trying this stuff!

[astrogeoguy]

Max Morning Mercury, Mars, Moon and M45, Jupiter Season Starts, and See Peak Pallas!

(Above: Earthshine, sunlight reflected off the Earth and onto the dark hemisphere of the moon, was captured in this image taken on March 8, 2019 by Michael Watson of Toronto.)

Hello, Stargazers!

Here are your Astronomy Skylights for the week of April 7, 2019 by Chris Vaughan. Feel free to pass this along to your friends and send me your comments, questions, and suggested topics. I repost these emails with photos at http://astrogeoguy.tumblr.com/ where all the old editions are archived. You can also follow me on Twitter as @astrogeoguy! Unless otherwise noted, all times are Eastern Time. Please click this MailChimp link to subscribe to these emails. If you are a teacher or group leader interested joining me on a guided field trip to York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory or the David Dunlap Observatory, visit www.astrogeo.ca.

I can bring my Digital Starlab inflatable planetarium to your school or other daytime or evening event, visit DiscoveryPlanetarium.com and request me. We’ll tour the Universe together!

Public Astro-Events

Taking advantage of the moon, Mars, and other bright objects in the sky this week, the RASC Toronto Centre astronomers will hold their free monthly public City Sky Star Party in Bayview Village Park (steps from the Bayview subway station), starting around 7 pm on the first clear weeknight this week (Mon, Tue, or Thu only). You don’t need to be an RASC member, or own any equipment, to join them – looks are free! Check here for details, and check the banner on their website home page or Facebook page for the GO or NO-GO decision around 5 pm each day. 

Every Monday evening, York University’s Allan I. Carswell Observatory runs an online star party - broadcasting views from four telescopes/cameras, answering viewer questions, and taking requests! Details are here. On Wednesday nights they offer free public viewing through their rooftop telescopes. If it’s cloudy, the astronomers give tours and presentations. Details are here. 

At 7 pm on Tuesday, April 9, the North York Central Library will present a free public talk by Canadian Astronaut Dave Williams entitled Defying Limits. Check here for details. 

Weather permitting, on Tuesday, April 9 from 8:30 to 10 pm, astronomers from RASC – Mississauga will hold a free public star party at the Chappell House Lawn at the Riverwood Conservancy, 4300 Riverwood Park Lane, Mississauga. Details are here. 

At 7:30 pm on Wednesday, April 10, the RASC Toronto Centre will hold their free monthly Speaker’s Night Meeting at the Ontario Science Centre, and the public are welcome. This month, the speaker will be Dr. Sarah Symons, Associate Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Science and an associate member of the Departments of History and Physics & Astronomy at McMaster University. Her topic will be It's Sirius O'Clock: Astronomical Timekeeping in Ancient Egypt. Check here for details. Parking is free. 

On Thursday, April 11, starting at 7 pm, U of T’s AstroTour will present their planetarium show The Life and Death of Stars. Tickets and details are here. 

Eastern GTA sky watchers are invited to join the RASC Toronto Centre and Durham Skies for solar observing and stargazing at the edge of Lake Ontario in Millennium Square in Pickering on Friday evening, April 12, from 6 pm to 11 pm. Details are here. Before heading out, check the RASCTC home page for a Go/No-Go call in case it's too cloudy to observe. The rain date is Saturday. 

On Friday, April 12, starting at 7 pm, U of T’s AstroTour will present their planetarium show Grand Tour of the Cosmos. Tickets and details are here. 

On Friday, April 12 at 7:30 pm in the Hamilton Spectator Building in Hamilton, the Hamilton local astronomers will present a free public talk entitled SETI: An Exploration of Space and Astronomy. Details are here. 

If it’s sunny on Saturday morning, April 13 from 10 am to noon, astronomers from the RASC Toronto Centre will be setting up outside the main doors of the Ontario Science Centre for Solar Observing. Come and see the Sun in detail through special equipment designed to view it safely. This is a free event (details here), but parking and admission fees inside the Science Centre will still apply. Check the RASC Toronto Centre website or their Facebook page for the Go or No-Go notification. 

The Moon and Planets

This is the perfect week in April to view our natural satellite in all of its splendor. After last Friday’s New Moon phase, the young crescent moon will be waxing fuller and climbing the western sky after sunset. Tonight (Sunday) and tomorrow, look for Earthshine to brighten the unlit portion of the moon. Earthshine is sunlight that has been reflected off the Earth and back onto the near side of the moon. My mother used to call it “the Old Moon in the New Moon’s Arms”. 

As the moon waxes fuller every evening, the sun is rising over the lunar surface. All along the terminator, the pole-to-pole boundary that separates the lit and darkened hemispheres, sunlight is striking the moon at a very shallow angle – casting long, deep, black shadows from every elevated part of the lunar terrain. That includes crater rims and central peaks, mountain chains, faults, and even lava flows. The sights change hour by hour and night by night as the sun rises, and are perfect for viewing in binoculars and backyard telescopes – all at a convenient time of the evening!

(Above: Mars continues to linger in the western evening sky this week. It’s recently been close to the bright open star cluster called the Pleiades (at right). On Monday night, the waxing crescent moon will land below Mars, as shown here at 9:30 pm local time.) 

Monday evening will also see the moon land about a palm’s width below reddish Mars and the bluish stars of the Pleiades Cluster. That cluster, named Subaru in Japan, also serves as the logo for the well-known car maker. On Tuesday night, the moon will hop to sit to the upper left of Mars, between the horns of Taurus (the Bull). On either night, look for the very bright reddish star Aldebaran (the Bull’s eye) sitting a generous palm’s width to the left of Mars. 

On Wednesday evening, the moon’s generous crescent will sit near the stars that mark the upraised club of Orion (the Hunter). The following evening will place the moon between the twins of Gemini. Look for the stars Mekbuda and Mebsuta, each sitting about three finger widths above and to either side of the moon. Those stars mark the hips of Pollux and Castor, respectively. 

The moon will reach its First quarter phase, in daylight, on Friday afternoon. At that time, the angle between the sun, you, and the moon will form a 90° angle. (Point at the sun and the moon at the same time, and note the angle between your outstretched arms.) 

In the southwestern sky after dusk on Saturday, the waxing gibbous moon will be positioned a few finger widths to the upper left (east) of the large open star cluster in Cancer (the Crab) known as the Beehive, Praesepe, and Messier 44. Binoculars will encompass both the moon and the cluster in the same field of view, but to see the clusters’ stars, position the moon just outside of your binoculars’ field of view. A few hours earlier, at approximately 19:30 GMT, observers in Western Europe, the Middle East, and eastern Africa can see the moon pass directly through the cluster. 

(Above: As shown here at 9 pm EDT, on Saturday evening, the waxing gibbous moon will appear near the large star cluster known as the Beehive, in Cancer. Hours earlier, observers in Western Europe, the Middle East, and eastern Africa can see the moon pass directly through the cluster.)

On Sunday night, the moon will sit less than a palm’s width to the right of the bright, white star Regulus. See if you can find the backwards question mark of stars extending upwards from Regulus. Those five stars form the front end of Leo (the Lion). The shape measures about 1.5 fist diameters, top to bottom. 

As I mentioned above, the planet Mars will continue to be easily visible every evening this week, but only for a couple of hours after dusk. Mars will set in the west at about 10:45 pm local time. Once the sky has darkened, look for Mars as a medium-bright, reddish pinpoint of light sitting one-third of the way up the western sky. Mars has been slowly shrinking in size and brightness as we increase our distance from it little-by-little. Mars has been sliding a bit farther from the Pleiades cluster every night.

(Above: The gas giant planets are visible in the pre-dawn southern sky this week, as shown here at 4:45 am local time. This week, Jupiter will officially begin to rise before midnight.)

Hooray! For the first time in months, Jupiter will officially enter the evening sky this week. Tonight, the king of planets will be rising just after midnight. But the motion of the Earth around the sun causes celestial objects to rise four minutes earlier every night, so Jupiter will be available for evening star parties in time for the warm weather. By 5 am, Jupiter should still be visible in the sky over the southern horizon. 

Yellowish Saturn will rise after 1:30 am local time this week - but, being dimmer than Jupiter, it will become lost in the southeastern twilight before 5 am. Look for Saturn sitting approximately 2.5 fist diameters to the left of Jupiter. 

Mercury and Venus are both low in the eastern sky just before sunrise this week. For some time now, very bright Venus has been descending and moving eastward toward Mercury (and the sun). Speaking of which, look for the elusive innermost planet sitting only about a palm’s width to the lower left of Venus. On Thursday morning, Mercury will reach its widest separation 28° west of the Sun. Due to Mercury’s position well below a slanted morning ecliptic, this will be a very poor pre-dawn appearance for Northern Hemisphere skywatchers, but a very good one for those viewing Mercury from the Southern Hemisphere.

(Above: On Wednesday evening, the large main belt asteroid designated (2) Pallas will reach opposition, its brightest and closest appearance for 2019. Look for the asteroid (yellow path) sitting near the naked-eye star Murphrid in Bootes, which is located a slim palm’s width to the upper right of very bright Arcturus.) 

If you’ve ever wanted to see an asteroid, this week offers a fantastic opportunity. On Wednesday, the main belt asteroid designated (2) Pallas (i.e., the second asteroid discovered, in 1802) will reach opposition, its closest approach to Earth for this year. On the nights around opposition, Pallas will shine with a peak visual magnitude of 7.9, well within reach of binoculars. As a bonus, the asteroid will be situated only a quarter of a finger’s width to the left (east) of the bright double star named Murphrid in Boötis (the Herdsman). That star is also designated Eta Boötis (η Boötis). (Murphrid is always situated about a slim palm’s width to the right of the very bright star Arcturus.) 

(Above: On Wednesday night, the large main belt asteroid designated (2) Pallas will pass with 0.25 degrees to the east (left) of the naked-eye double star Murphrid, as shown here at midnight local time. Each yellow circle represents six hours of time.)

Pallas and the star will easily fit within the field of view of a backyard telescope. The duo will already be climbing the eastern sky after dusk and will spend the night crossing the sky together. Asteroids move so fast that you should see Pallas’ distance from Murphrid vary in as little as half an hour! 

Bright Galaxies for Dark Nights

If you missed last week’s information about spring galaxies, I posted photos of some galaxies and a sky chart here.

Keep looking up, and enjoy the sky when you do. I love questions and requests - so, send me some!