NavList:

One of my recent celestial navigation students has been experimenting with photos of the night sky using his iPhone 15. These take great low-light images, and it's easy to get constellation photographs under dark skies that reach the usual "naked eye" limit near magnitude 6. It's tempting to use these images for some form of celestial navigation. But do the photos lie?

In the attached image I include a small portion of one of these iPhone photos showing Cassiopeia on the right side. On the left side is nearly the same area as depicted in "Stellarium". It's about the right scale and orientation, but not perfect. Note that Cassiopeia was near the edge of the field of view in the original photo, so there's some distortion that is probably "normal". But do you see the problem? Do you see the strange anomaly in this photo of Cassiopeia?!

I won't spoil it yet, but whoever replies first, don't be afraid to call it out.

What could cause this anomaly? How could it happen? Holes in space. Alien invasions. Reality is a simulation. Those would all work :). Any plausible theories here? And if the hardware/software systems that produce photos of the night sky like these are subject to built-in editing like this, does this imply that there are major difficulties potentially using them for celestial navigation?

Frank Reed

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