Triple Sunrise Illusion

Here is another illusion found on the Astronomy Picture of the Day. I stumbled upon it via Tricks and Illusions.

Triple Sunrise
Credit & Copyright: Jim Hoida

Explanation: Today, the Sun rises due east at the Equinox, a geocentric astronomical event that occurs twice a year. To celebrate, consider this view of the rising Sun and a lovely set of ice halos recorded on a cold winter morning near Green Bay, Wisconsin, USA, planet Earth. Produced by sunlight shining through common atmospheric ice crystals with hexagonal cross-sections, such halos can actually be seen more often than rainbows. The remarkable sunrise picture captures a beautiful assortment of the types most frequently seen, including a sun pillar (center) just above the rising Sun surrounded by a 22 degree halo arc. Completing a triple sunrise illusion, sundogs appear at the far left and far right edges of the 22 degree arc. An upper tangent arc is also just visible at the very top of the view.

Erik Axdahl
(c)2005
Erik has a blog called The Chronicles of Spaceman Axdahl and he had this to say about this photo he shot.

"I was poking through my hard drive and found this delicious morsel that I took last Winter outside of New Ulm, MN with my four year-old Canon Powershot A20 digicam.

What you see is a parhelion, better known as sun dogs.

Sun dogs are produced when the clouds between the Sun and the observer contain ice crystals rather than droplets. They always occur at twenty-two degrees on either side of the sun.

Being a nerd, when I first saw this I panicked and honked madly at the car I was following to pull over so I could take this shot. My day was then officially made."

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Shadows in the Mist

Again I take you into the Etc... of Optical Illusions Etc... Not everything in this blog is an optical illusion, some of it is frightenly real.

On August 11, 1999 a mysterious black mass swarmed across the surface of the planet. This might be biological in nature if it wasn't for the fact that it moved at almost 2000 kilometers per hour. Could this be extraterrestrial in nature? Is this phenomenon proof that we are being visited from other worlds?


Credit: Mir 27 Crew; Copyright: CNES
source

Explanation: Here is what the Earth looks like during a solar eclipse. The shadow of the Moon can be seen darkening part of Earth. This shadow moved across the Earth at nearly 2000 kilometers per hour. Only observers near the center of the dark circle see a total solar eclipse - others see a partial eclipse where only part of the Sun appears blocked by the Moon. This spectacular picture of the 1999 August 11 solar eclipse was one of the last ever taken from the Mir space station. The two bright spots that appear on the upper left are possibly Jupiter and Saturn, although this has yet to be proven. Mir was deorbited in a controlled re-entry in 2001

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Bumps or Holes? Astronomy Analysts Confused

The below two images are quite interesting. The image on the left gives us the impression of having 5 holes and 1 bump. The image on the right looks like it has 5 bumps and 1 hole. What makes this a fascinating optical illusion is the fact that these are the exact same image.


That's right these two images are identical, one is turned upside down. The simple act of turning this image upside down completely changed our assessment of the image.

The reason for this is that the brain assumes that light comes from above. For centuries the best light source was the sun (came from above). Now we have various sources of light but one thing most of them have in common is that designers typically put all major light sources above us. This is a very strong predisposition on our part. Thus we view shadows and light with the assumption that the light is coming from above.

Another example can be seen below. The top image seems to be a large dome, could this be a lava dome preparing to erupt?

No of course not. This is not a lava dome, below we flip it back to where we started. Most of you will recognize this landmark.

Barringer Crater on Earth
Credit: D. Roddy (LPI)

In this image it is clearly the Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona. The only thing done to this image was the top picture was turned upside down. I got this image from the Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Here we think of this as an interesting effect and no more than that. But analysts viewing pictures from other planets often analyze the image from the wrong perspective. Many times these pictures end up in science magazines and journals (one example here) completely upside down and misrepresented. Go to this page to read more about the problems that some analysts have in getting past this optical illusion. Scan down the page and you'll see many examples of errors in astronomy reporting and analysis.

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Optical Illusion No Longer

It wasn't too long ago that this picture would have been an optical illusion. This type of space walk (untethered) was unheard of when President Reagan was elected in 1980.

This photo is the "Astronomy Picture of the Day" for March 22, 2005.

To Fly Free in Space
Credit: STS-41B, NASA

Explanation: At about 100 meters from the cargo bay of the space shuttle Challenger, Bruce McCandless II was further out than anyone had ever been before. Guided by a Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU), astronaut McCandless, pictured above, was floating free in space. McCandless and fellow NASA astronaut Robert Stewart were the first to experience such an "untethered space walk" during Space Shuttle mission 41-B in 1984. The MMU works by shooting jets of nitrogen and has since been used to help deploy and retrieve satellites. With a mass over 140 kilograms, an MMU is heavy on Earth, but, like everything, is weightless when drifting in orbit. The MMU was replaced with the SAFER backpack propulsion unit.

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Illusion of Peace

This picture presents the world as one harmonious whole. This might give those that see it without any previous context the illusion that the world is at peace and there is no conflict only dreams as the world sleeps during the night.

Click on the picture to get a detailed image. Also check out some of the trivia below.


Click Picture to enlarge.
Earth at Night
Credit: C. Mayhew & R. Simmon (NASA/GSFC), NOAA/ NGDC, DMSP Digital Archive
Can you find your town?

The Freeman Institute had these observation about this photo.

Some things to notice about the earth at night:

1. Check out the development of Israel compared to the rest of the Arab countries.
2. Moving East, most striking is the difference between North and South Korea. Truly unique! Note the density of Japan.
3. Look how far upstream the Nile River stays brightly lit (and it's contrast to the area around it.) After the Nile, the lights don't come on again until Johannesburg.
4. You can see the train lines in Siberian Russia because the cities are all built on the rail lines -- the Trans-Siberian Rail Route.
5. There still is NO development at the mouth of the Amazon (unlike the Nile and other major rivers.)
6. You could call South America, Africa, and Australia "dark continents" because almost all of their development is on their coasts. Look at the Australian Outback.
7. Yugoslavia is one of the only dark spots in all of Europe. In east Europe, there is a high population concentration along the Mediterranean Coast. It's easy to spot London, Paris, Stockholm and Rome and Naples.
8. The "spine" of Italy is completely black.
9. In the Midwest US (everything north of Texas) the city lights form a nice "grid" of dots all lined up. This grid pattern was established as a result of the General Land Survey, initiated following the Louisiana Purchase to map the newly acquired lands west of the Mississippi. The GLS is based on a large scale grid of Principal Meridians (north - south) and Base Lines (east - west). These grids were then subdivided into 36 square mile Townships (6 miles square, containing 36 sections of one square mile or 640 acres each). Each Township had a designated school section. Roads tended to be located on the boundaries between sections, thus forming a grid one mile by one mile. Major roads, and subsequently railroads, tended to be located on Township lines, forming a larger grid. This tended to impose a distance of about 6 miles between towns, which has endured to this day. Many Townships saw the development of towns (and subsequently, cities), often at intersections of major roads along township boundaries.
10.Note that Canada's population is almost exclusively along the U.S. border.

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