Bad astronomy in Roxanne

[Comixx]

Well, that Steve Martin classic Roxanne (http://us.imdb.com/Title?0093886) was on last night...It's kind of a remake of Cyrano de Bergerac set in modern times. Anyways, there's a scene where Roxanne (Daryl Hannah, whom I dislike) is showing C.D. Bales (Steve, the Cyrano character..C.D.=Cyrano de?) and another girl the stars through her 8" Dobs (I think)...Roxanne is a comet-hunter, you see...anyways, she's showing C.D. and the girl a Double Binary system and even explains that it's two pairs of stars orbiting each-other...after she says that, we see a view as if through the scope, of a large redish star with a sweeping piece of red nebula along the entire left side of the image in a resolution as good as the Hubble shots...wow.

Is there such a thing as a double binary system? I dont think so...but that's what I thought was bad astronomy along with the picture we're shown. I wont even go into the fact that the scope was on the uptsairs balcony of Roxanne's house, where all the lights were on, inside a city, etc...not an ideal location for a comet-hunter to work from...but I digress...

[The Bad Astronomer]

Is there such a thing as a double binary system?

Epsilon Lyrae (http://www.sciencenet.org.uk/astron/const/Lyra/epsilonlyrae.html)

[Comixx]

Wow, that must be a pretty complicated dance they do :)

Maybe I was wrong about the red ribbon of nebula they showed in the through-the-scope view? My brother and I have looked at all the nebulae we can, but they dont show any really pronounced colors through his 8" SC, except in Orion you can see the blues...but I'm sure that the stars shown were not the ones in that link.

Funny coincidence: That constellation you linked to, BA, is the location of a meteor shower near my birthday every year (April 23).

Well, there I go, I learned something new from this board, once again :)

[QuagmaPhage]

There is also Mizar (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap970219.html).
And Castor (http://www.eso.org/outreach/eduoff/catchastar/cas-projects/uk_castor_1/intro.html) in the constellation Gemini consist of 3 binary pairs.



Edited for extra link.

[tracer]

What bugged me about Roxanne wasn't its astronomy, but its subatomic physics. The title character said:
Top and Bottom quarks are common, but charmed and strange quarks can only be created in the most violent collisions.
Um, Roxanne, honey? Top and Bottom quarks are even rarer and harder to create than Charmed and Strange quarks are. You were probably thinking of Up and Down quarks, which are commonplace. (Common household protons and neutrons are made of up and down quarks.)

[Russ]

The telescope is a 10" Mead Newtonian on a German equitorail mount. A pretty good scope. The bad astronomy is that one of the objects they are looking at through the scope is a qussar that looks vaguely like an hour glass. That object is about 16th magnitude and not within the (eye) grasp of a 10" telescope of any design. :roll: :wink:

[Russ]

Further....while we're talking about the bad astronomy in Roxanne... at the end of the movie, during the credits, they have the comet streaming across the sky in about 60 seconds. BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ, wrong answer :( :-? :roll: :lol: