Guess the shape

I don't normally share photos from work on my personal blog (that's what our work blog is for, after all), but this one was kind of neat in an abstract way that makes it more or less unsuitable for the work blog. That's why it's here instead.

I know it looks like a lot of nothing, but bear with me. I'll explain.

Last year Wheat came to one of my planetarium shows to take some photos that we'd be able to use for our advertising. Some are of the outside of the dome (and the backside of me, which is why you won't be seeing those ones here anytime soon), and some were taken inside during and after the program.

The problem with the ones taken during the program is that it takes a very long exposure to get anything like a recognisable picture in a darkened dome, and I'm not generally staying still long enough for a long exposure to work well. I'm pointing at things, shifting position so that my legs don't fall asleep (we sit on the floor for planetarium programs), working the controls... that sort of thing. As a result, most of the photos taken during the program aren't really usable.

Including this one, obviously. But it's cool when you figure out what it is.

Go ahead, click on it to enlarge it and see if you can figure out what it is.

It took me a bit, to be honest. I hadn't seen these shots in a while, and when I was going through them yesterday to find something for a brochure I was working on, my first thought when I got to this one was definitely in the wtf range. There are no weird red blotches in the planetarium projections, after all. I couldn't imagine what the magically appearing red blotch could signify, except maybe aliens among us.

Kidding, yes.

Then I looked more closely at the shape, and the "stars" in amongst the lines of the shape.

And I figured it out.

Have you?

The backwards-question-mark-looking thing is the clue.

It's the constellation Leo. Leo is what's showing in the star projection, and the red blotch is what my light-pointer looks like in a long-exposure photograph. I must have been tracing the shape of the lion when Wheat took the picture.

See? I told you it was neat.

And with that, back to work for me. Oh, and if you're in the northern hemisphere and get a chance to do some star gazing, Leo (with special guest Saturn) should be visible in the east after about nine-ish this time of year. Go have a look. It's neat in real life too.