CCU wallpaper gets professor's attention
Louis Rubbo, assistant professor of astronomy, took some gentle jabs at the CCU wallpaper featuring Chauncey as a constellation. In fact, the article on his blog is titled "Where was I when this wallpaper was designed?""Overlooking the fact that there’s no Chauncey constellation, there are a number of notable errors with this wallpaper that drive me crazy," writes Rubbo on his blog, scienceinthesky.com.
Rob Wyeth, director of publications at CCU, wasn't too concerned with the inconsistencies. "I don’t believe Coastal fans are now scanning the night sky trying to locate the Chauncey constellation," says Wyeth. "The design is one of many fun desktop wallpapers the graphics department was asked to develop for our alumni and Coastal fans."
Rubbo goes on to talk about the diffraction spikes of stars and how the palmetto tree and grass in the foreground of the wallpaper imply "that this view does not represent what someone would see looking through a telescope."
Then he tackles the "shooting stars" in the wallpaper and how they are highly curved, whereas in reality they are not curved but instead have straight meteor trails.
"Now for my biggest beef with the Chauncey Constellation wallpaper," writes Rubbo. "Take a close look at the Moon. Inside the crescent moon you can see stars! This would imply that the Moon physically changed shape during the course of its lunar phase cycle. … It’s a difficult topic but I wouldn’t expect any of the students to make such a grievous error as shown in the wallpaper."
"So I have to ask the question, where was I when this wallpaper was made? Why wasn’t I consulted? I know the purpose of this is particular wallpaper is to be fanciful but geez, let’s get some things right. Especially the part about the Moon.
By the way, even with its flaws, I’m still using this as my wallpaper on two computers and my iPad."
Coastal wallpapers can be downloaded at www.coastal.edu/wallpapers.
Rubbo's blog:
http://scienceinthesky.com/2010/09/25/where-was-i-when-this-wallpaper-was-designed/
