NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
From: Frank Reed
Date: 2024 Jan 11, 10:55 -0800
Back on July 18, I posted a NavList message with some images of stars charts from the movie "Asteroid City", which I described as a "surreal comedy [...], the latest what-the-heck film from Wes Anderson. Three days later, July 21, was the social media date that converted two good movies that might have done moderately well in theaters into cash-cow blockbusters. Neither "Barbie" nor "Oppenheimer" would have gotten anything like the attention and ticket sales they pulled without the "Barbenheimer" gimmick. Both "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer", also, included real astronomical stars.
In the "Barbie" movie there was a barely-there view of a star chart held up by "Astronomer Barbie"... I guess? Meanwhile in Oppenheimer, as part of the implied story that J. Robert would have been immersed in cosmic goodness if he hadn't been swallowed up by the Manhattan Project, we have a moment of him contemplating the heavens one starry night at Los Alamos before construction has begun on the secret atomic town. So here's the fun... what are you looking at in this image? I suspect that this is a CGI sky, but at least it is a realistic representation. :)
Frank Reed
