Hi All,
Yeah it have me a big chuckle too -- and then a frown. Seriously, there are so many flaws in this piece of "space art", it's hard to know where to begin.
Off the top of my head:
(1) Stars in the "daytime" sky -- the red-giant "parent" star is above the local horizon yet the sky is in twilight mode and there are "night-time" stars in the sky.
(2) This planet has an atmosphere dense enough to support thick clouds in the sky and has liquid on the ground (I'll assume it's not Mercury or some form of liquid metal. Why?? Look at the waves!). Considering the parent star apparently subtends more than 5, more likely 10-15 degrees of sky, this planet would be so hot no liquid could survive on the surface and with the intense heat (in the order of 100s of times more than here on Earth), there and it certainly would be manifestly unlikely to have an appreciable atmosphere that close to a red giant.
(3) The opposing crescents in the sky are shown no further apart than the diameter of the giant. They would not show crescents at all let alone thick ones that oppose each other. The orientations of the crescents is also wrong considering the angle of illumination from the red giant. Why are they white?
(4) The clouds are dark in a daytime sky (unless they are carbon clouds perhaps).
(5) The uneven nature of the surface-brightness of the red giant would not be readily visible to the naked eye. The colour is probably too "red" as well.
(6) The material streaming off the red giant and crossing to the white dwarf would be invisible at optical wavelengths and certainly not visible in a daytime sky.
(7) The accretion disc wouldn't be visible in a daytime sky and certainly not as big as shown relative to the red giant star. The detail (concentric spirals) in the accretion disc wouldn't be visible.
(8) The white dwarf is much too far away from the red-giant to be gravitationally "tractoring" material off it's surface in the first place -- there is no way the red giant has a roche-lobe so small considering most white dwarfs are about 0.4-0.6 solar-masses and ones over 1 solar mass are rare. The white dwarf is (at very best) at least 1 red-giant diameter away from the surface of the giant. The material on the surface of the red giant is closer to the centre of mass of the giant than the white dwarf. why is it streaming away? Maybe push gravity is a work here.
(Sorry Alex
)
(9) The red giant is much, much too round -- if it is loosing material being stripped off by a white dwarf, the white dwarf would be making it somewhat ovoid.
If I look hard, there are probably other problems.
In my opinion only, not worthy of APOD -- almost complete rubbish. APOD should be beautiful, perhaps occasionally "arty" science not pseudo-science art. Perhaps art here should also be placed in inverted commas too.
Big thumbs down from me!
Best,
Les D
Don't know about the "clouds" then. I also thought modelling suggests that it is difficult for planets to have stable orbits in a binary star system?
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