{"id":2313,"date":"2012-07-18T20:05:36","date_gmt":"2012-07-19T00:05:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/?p=2313"},"modified":"2012-07-18T20:05:37","modified_gmt":"2012-07-19T00:05:37","slug":"seeing-stars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/18\/seeing-stars\/","title":{"rendered":"Seeing Stars"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’m filing this story under “Cosmic Awesomeness”.<\/p>\n

While I was perusing Twitter this afternoon, Dr. Matthew Francis, a physicist\/science writer<\/a> who I follow, randomly started spurting out astronomical terms for fun1<\/sup>. One of those terms was Musca, which obviously got my attention in a hurry, and I asked what was so astronomical about a common genus of flies (you can read the full conversation at the bottom of this post)2<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Turns out Musca happens to be a constellation of stars<\/a> observable in the Southern Hemisphere! It was “described” in 1597 or 1598 by Petrus Plancius, a dutch astronomer who clearly has an excellent imagination. Although it was originally called Apis (the Bee), it was changed to Musca (the Fly)<\/a> in 1752 to avoid confusion with the nearby constellation Apus (literally “no feet”, in honour of birds-of-paradise, which at the time were believed to footless). But why name a constellation after an insect? Plancius named a neighbouring constellation Chamaeleon and decided it would need a source of food!<\/p>\n

Besides being a really cool constellation, Musca also contains a binary object of a star being consumed by a black hole<\/a>, as well as a couple of<\/a> beautiful galaxies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Seeing as I’m kind of a fan of flies3<\/sup>, I checked to see where the constellation was located so I could look for it the next time I’m on the southern half of the planet. Much to my delight, Musca is found immediately “below” the Southern Cross<\/a>, the only constellation I knew about in the Southern Hemisphere, and something which I had not only seen before, but had photographed!<\/p>\n

I quickly opened Lightroom to check my photos of the Southern Cross and see if I could make out Musca, and wouldn’t you know it, I found it! Not only that, I got good photos of it, and not just from one location, but from 2 totally different countries on 2 totally different trips! SWEET!<\/p>\n

\"Milky<\/a>

The Southern Cross, Musca and Chamaeleon over the Heath River<\/p><\/div>\n

This photo was taken at the Heath River Wildlife Center<\/a> on the border of Peru & Bolivia in 2007. In case you can’t see a cross, a fly or a chameleon, here they are with appropriate lines:<\/p>\n

\"Milky<\/a>

The Southern Cross, Musca & Chamaeleon over Peru & Bolivia<\/p><\/div>\n

Not only did I manage to capture this celestial fly in Peru, but I also got photos of it in Ecuador while looking for real flies in 2009.<\/p>\n

\"Southern<\/a>

The Southern Cross & Musca over Yasuni Research Station, Ecuador<\/p><\/div>\n

Here’s a massive crop showing the Southern Cross and Musca more closely:<\/p>\n

\"Southern<\/a>

The Southern Cross (top) with Musca (bottom half and faint) over Yasuni Research Station, Ecuador<\/p><\/div>\n

When out in remote dark-sky locations deep within the Amazonian jungle, both constellations are visible to the naked eye, but picking them out from several thousand other stars and the Milky Way is a bit more of a challenge.<\/p>\n

\"Musca<\/a>

Musca within the Milky Way – Yasuni Research Station, Ecuador<\/p><\/div>\n

I can’t wait to get back to South America to collect & photograph more flies, both the corporeal ones within the jungles of Earth and the shiny one above it!<\/p>\n

—————————————<\/p>\n

1- I don’t know either, it must be a physicist thing. They’re all about the entropy I hear…<\/p>\n

2- Another excellent example of the scientific benefits of Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

3- This may come as a surprise to many of you, I know.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/storify.com\/BioInFocus\/social-media-among-the-stars<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m filing this story under “Cosmic Awesomeness”. While I was perusing Twitter this afternoon, Dr. Matthew Francis, a physicist\/science writer who I follow, randomly started spurting out astronomical terms for fun1. One of those terms was Musca, which obviously got my attention in a hurry, and I asked what was so astronomical about a common […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[140,151,47],"tags":[25,414,598,159,413,73,141],"class_list":["post-2313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astrophotography","category-fun-stuff","category-nature","tag-bolivia","tag-constellation","tag-diptera","tag-ecuador","tag-musca","tag-peru","tag-stars","category-140-id","category-151-id","category-47-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2313"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2322,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313\/revisions\/2322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}