26 Mar
2012
26 Mar
'12
10:33 p.m.
Page 40 of the electronic version of May's S&T carries pairs of images of Comet Lovejoy, Mercury and Jupiter shot by NASA's STEREO spacecraft. Using the "cross-eye" method championed by Chuck it looks to me like the speckles that I think are artifacts of the imaging process are in the foreground. But the thing I don't understand is why Jupiter appears closer than Mercury. I even copied, cut and pasted the images in reverse order on my monitor. That seems to bring Mercury closer but only to the same distance away as Jupiter. Any thoughts why that is the case? BTW, anyone with a subscription to the paper version of the magazine can download the electronic version for free. patrick