Weirdness above Sirius

www.google.com...=-13.368243250897287&longitude=-80.15213012695312&zoom=10&Spitzer=0.00&ChandraXO=0.00&Galex=0.00&IRAS=0.00&WMAP=0.0 0&Cassini=0.00&slide=1&mI=-1&oI=-1
Can anyone shed some light on this?

Dude, time to get www.worldwidetelescope.org. Check out the detail and things you can do with it.

World Telescope

[edit on 21-5-2008 by jetxnet]

Jetxnet! That rocks! Thanks for the link I never knew existed. Thank you thank you. How very cool.

sorry for sounding dumb but what am I meant to be looking at....

Thanks

Sadly I use a mac so world telescope is out of the question, thanks though!

Thats the question, what the hell is that?!

Fixed link

The black crosshairs are caused by the "spiders" in telescopes, thin struts that support the secondary mirror on a reflecting telescope.

Newtonians have a central obstruction due to the secondary mirror in the light path. This obstruction and the diffraction spikes caused by the support structure (called the spider) of the secondary mirror reduces contrast. Visually, these effects can be reduced by using a two or three-legged curved spider. This reduces the diffraction sidelobe intensities by a factor of about four and helps to improve image contrast, with the potential penalty that circular spiders are more prone to wind-induced vibration. Although a four-legged spider causes less diffraction than a three-legged curved spider, the three-legged curved spider often gives a more aesthetically pleasing view.

Sources:
Newtonian Telescope - Answers.com

Google Earth Community

How informative! Thanks!

reply to post by Nefilim


Ever wonder why in all the hubble images the stars are always + signs or in most reflectors? It is the 4 spider vanes. Same thing applies to your finding in your google image. If you look closely at other amateur astro photog, you might even see some images with 3 spider vanes as their sec. mirror holder only has 3 vanes.