On the move..

[Peter Ward]

During the 2018 Malin award presentation I was overawed by the depths to which DM analysed images for their veracity.

During the presentation showed a USGS geological survey image of the Moon and overlaid it on the excellent lunar image by Stefan Buda and indeed verified the colours of the lunar terrain matched the documented geology, and were not a "Photoshop" fudge.

During the recent wash-up to this year's awards David let slip that my M42 image underwent similar scrutiny: there are stars in M42 that have significant proper motion. This was news to me.

But which one(s)? I recently decided to find out.

Using the Hipparcos satellite data within TheSkyX I located a suitable candidate, then up-scaled my image data to match that of a high-resolution ESO/Hubble image and created a .html rollover image.

The results are here

The roving star was indeed not at the same location as in the Hubble image and proved to be a very good thing as far as I was concerned!

[Atmos (Colin)]

That is fascinating Peter! It also appears as if the fainter star at 3 o'clock is moving "up" while the brighter one is moving "down".

[glend (Glen)]

Good to know the entries are properly vetted to prevent presentation of material which does not match recent positioning, or positioning that matches the date supposedly captured. Now that this is known, someone will likely find a way to move the appropriate stars to the location which corresponds to their supposed capture date, if they haven't already. Perhaps there needs to be a category for "Best Fake".

[Peter Ward]

Originally Posted by Atmos

That is fascinating Peter! It also appears as if the fainter star at 3 o'clock is moving "up" while the brighter one is moving "down".

Ta.

Unfortunately with distortion from two totally different optical systems the image registration by Pixinsight is not perfect....hence I'd only have confidence in larger apparent shifts

[multiweb (Marc)]

That's good to know he's very thorough. With all the montaged crap that goes around these days I'm not surprised. Top shot.

[Peter Ward]

Originally Posted by multiweb

That's good to know he's very thorough. With all the montaged crap that goes around these days I'm not surprised. Top shot.

Yep...DM doesn't miss much and is a stickler for accuracy.

[RobF (Rob)]

Fascinating!
(said with raised Vulcan eyebrow)

[kinetic (Steve)]

That is just an amazing animation, Peter!
I love this sort of stuff!


Steve

[dave_galera (Dave)]

Fascinating Peter!

[Geoff45 (Geoff)]

Interesting. Glad to see that photos are so well vetted.

[multiweb (Marc)]

Originally Posted by Peter Ward

Yep...DM doesn't miss much and is a stickler for accuracy.

Could be an interesting project to shoot that star every year and make an animation.

[h0ughy (David)]

Well that certainly stops adding years of Data together . Interesting and informative

[Peter Ward]

Originally Posted by glend

Good to know...... Perhaps there needs to be a category for "Best Fake".

Funny you should mention that, as it was raised/suggested by DM... not totally tongue-in-cheek...but more due exasperation due a number of entries that, shall we say, were altered for "creative purposes"

[Placidus (Mike and Trish)]

Bravo, Peter.

One of the reasons I felt attracted to science, astronomy, and astrophotography: In earliest (right wing, authoritarian) school we were taught a lot of absolute crap (such as "sport builds character and makes you a man, (see any newspaper for sledging, drugging, knobbling, goosing, and other manipulations, not to mention the number of famous sportsmen up on assault charges), similar errors in Politics and Religion, etc. But what we were taught in science seems to have basically held true. To see Triton orbiting Neptune (at amazing speed - just one day is more than enough) is very reassuring. Your image shows that unlike elections races and boxing matches, the Fixed Stars are not fixed.

From memory, Menkent has quite a brisk proper motion. We must look up our Position and Proper Motion catalogue and find some other goodies.

Once again, Bravo.

Best,
Mike

[Peter Ward]

Thanks one and all for your feedback. I was frankly taken aback by the level of interest shown.

I guess it also demonstrates what can be done with truly high-resolution data (BTW I would not try this with my FSQ106) ...something the pros do with the likes of Hipparcos to the extreme, but certainly I guess it shows it's not out to the realm of amateur data.

[Andy01 (Andy)]

Very cool - so we're not just pretty pictures, there's some real science going on there.
Well done!

[Slawomir (Suavi)]

Very interesting - thank,you for sharing Peter.

Originally Posted by h0ughy

Well that certainly stops adding years of Data together . Interesting and informative

Actually I think quite the opposite - data stacked from years apart could potentially be used for identification and estimation of such star movements - Panta Rhei indeed