Space Warps Talk

Black Rectangles / Squares: What are they???

  • spaceship111 by spaceship111

    Not sure why or what the square is on this pic

    Posted

  • Capella05 by Capella05 moderator

    Very bright objects, like stars and sometimes quasars, can cause the
    detector in the camera to saturate - the object provides more light
    than can be captured, and those parts of the image become unreliable
    for astronomy. When this happens, the image processing software masks
    out the saturated pixels, leaving regularly shaped, empty black
    regions in the images. In VICS82, these regions are usually square,

    Posted

  • cystachar by cystachar

    I understand now. The husband said it was a missing pixel but I wondered why. Question answered!

    Posted

  • Capella05 by Capella05 moderator in response to cystachar's comment.

    No worries 😄

    Posted

  • alcro by alcro

    ...and here was I thinking it was a Borg collective ship popping by. 😉

    Posted