NavList:

Here's a screen capture from the surreal comedy "Asteroid City", the latest what-the-heck film from Wes Anderson. You will notice that there is a highly detailed star chart in the background. Anderson loves detail, and this is no exception. Can you find any flaws in the star chart? I didn't notice anything specific, but I did notice that the constellation boundaries are not IAU-standard. So what does that tell us? There is, in fact, (I think) enough detail visible to date this star chart to the nearest year. What year is it? And for extra credit: can anyone tell me what star atlas was so carefully copied? I could not myself find a match, but I suspect it's a common atlas, maybe a first edition of Norton's??

The second image is a screen cap from a "making of" video. It's useful since it identifies the meridians of right ascension which are out-of-frame in the other capture

Note that the actor playing the astronomer (you can tell she's an astronomer because she's wearing a lab coat) is not new to NavList. She last appeared in NavList message (from me) some seven years ago to illustrate a particular sort of prosthaphaeresis operator in old navigation texts...

Frank Reed

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