Correct! The best place to find a lost needle (in a haystack) is at the Haystack Observatory (at MIT).

You missed the reference to the Westford Radio Telescope (west for dinner).

As for Tolstoj and Beethoven, they are the two biggest craters on Mercury. The valleys on Mercury (Vallis) are all named after radio telescopes - so you'll find Haystack Vallis.

Your turn to set the question

But a haystack is proverbially the hardest place to finds a needle (especially if it's a pine needle, which I presume it originally was)!

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Ha, very nice. For a moment I seriously considered rummaging through the house for my old high school copy of War and Peace, and looking for needle/haystack references.

Rather than trying to come up with a question as creative as yours, I'm gonna go the quick and lazy route:

The enclosed link goes to ESA's Rosetta mission multimedia gallery. On Dec 6th, Rosetta snapped this image of Mars: http://www.esa.int/esa-mmg/mmg.pl?b=...gle=y&start=17

Mars is the bright fuzzy object in the center/top. Identify the bright object far to the left and slightly below Mars.

Having played around with the Mars flyby animation and Redshift 5, I'd venture Jupiter.

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Sorry Arneb, not Jupiter.

I'll narrow it down a bit ..... it's a star.

Now you got about a 1 in 400 billion chance to randomly guess it.

Actually this does in fact limit the possible choices considerably.


I'll drop a few hints tomorrow evening, maybe even ozark style, if i can get creative enough.

I'm going to go with K Librae even though it shows up slightly green in the photo.



oh, and the caption reads December 3rd, not 6th. which would make Lambda Librae more likely.

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I'm going to guess the Sun!

I don't how bright the Sun would appear in IR, so I may just be embarrassing myself...

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Sun doesn't work, Eroica - Mars was almost at opposition wrt the Sun as seen from Roswetta when the photo was shot.

There is an animation somewhere of the flyby with annotated dates. The situation for Dec. 3 made me guess that my from-Earth view in Redshift 5 was usable. In that view, Jupiter turned up to the left and downward from MArs.

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Ooops on the date, the 3rd of December it is. Unfortunately it's neither of the stars crosscountry guessed.


Well, time for some clues:

You're on the right track, it must be in one of the baker's dozen constellations which make up the zodiac, since it appears close to Mars.


Hurry up and be the first one to guess it correctly. Nobody ever remembers the runner-ups. Finishing second is practically the same as finishing seventh.

I'm having a hard time getting the line up right, and without knowing the actual distance my scale is off.

I think the star is in Sagitarius, and 2 more guesses would be Kaus Borealis and Mu Sag. I'm leaning towards the first.


on second thought, your "right on track" comment makes me think of Deneb Algeidi in Capricorn, but that is a little out of the milky way's plane.

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"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

That assumes that the spaceship is lined up with the ecliptic too, right? It wouldn't have to go very far out to be "below" Mars, so that the background would be 90 degrees from the ecliptic.

Aha! Ophiuchus? Han?

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Side note: there are fourteen constellations that the Sun passes through, including about seven days of Cetus.

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That is interesting. Is it really 7 days, though?

Most sites just show Ophiuchus as the 13th (or baker's bonus to the dozen): One Wiki and more.

Nice going, Eroica, I'm sure you got it.

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"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

Almost. It pains my head how close. I could use an aspirin.

Hurry up and be the first one to guess it correctly. Nobody ever remembers the runner-ups. Finishing second is practically the same as finishing seventh.

Odd, I thought I read that Han and the correct one, maybe, were the same, but one's a zeta and the other an eta.

[I'm not officially guessing at this point, however.]

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

I thought the ecliptic did not pass through Cetus, and only a limb of the Sun enters Cetus? And even then for less than a day, not seven.

I just checked what my star software reports, too.

Hmmm, if this is a hint, maybe it is Alpha serpentis (Unukalhai), in Serpens Caput, the head of the serpent; and of course, serpens rhyming with seventh (at least if you pronounce it with a German accent )

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Well why the heck not? Unfortunately I am not going to be around this weekend to check on responses, so I am going to have to call a winner, official or otherwise.

The answer is Sabik, aka Eta Ophiuchi. Eroica came close with his guess of Han (Zeta Ophiuchi). Despite being the second brightest star in the constelletion, Sabik received the Eta designation (the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet) by Johann Bayer.

Get it? headache ---> aspirin ---> Bayer

Never mind, I should leave the puzzles up to ozark1

So George? Wanna take the next question?

That was an interesting one.