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AI & Astronomy Imagery Exhibit

Reflections on VdB 31 

Astronomy Picture of the Day: February 13, 2025

See APOD Explanation.
Reflections on VdB 31

Image Credit: Roberto Marinoni

APOD Explanation: Riding high in the constellation of Auriga, beautiful, blue VdB 31 is the 31st object in Sidney van den Bergh's 1966 catalog of reflection nebulae. It shares this well-composed celestial still life with dark, obscuring clouds B26, B27, and B28, recorded in Edward E. Barnard's 1919 catalog of dark markings in the sky. All are these nebulae are interstellar dust clouds. Barnard's dark nebulae block the light from background stars. For VdB 31 the dust preferentially reflects bluish starlight from embedded, hot, variable star AB Aurigae. Exploring the environs of AB Aurigae with the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed the several million year young star is itself surrounded by a flattened dusty disk with evidence for the ongoing formation of a planetary system. AB Aurigae is about 470 light-years away. At that distance this cosmic canvas would span about eight light-years.

AI Interpretations

AI Generated Description

The image presents a striking view of a star-filled cosmic landscape, characterized by a dense scattering of stars set against a backdrop of dark interstellar dust and faint nebulae. The central focus of the image is a dark nebula that appears to outline a face-like or skull-like shape, often informally referred to as the "Skull Nebula" or "Ghost of Cassiopeia" in astronomical discussions. The dark features consist of concentrated regions of dust that obscure the light from distant stars, creating a silhouette effect. Surrounding this dark structure are various bright stars that shine against the darker regions. These stars, some of which exhibit a bluish hue, indicate areas with young, hot stars that are often found in stellar nurseries. The overall image captures both the vastness of space and the intricate details of cosmic structures, showcasing the beauty of astronomical phenomena. The combination of light from stars and the enigmatic presence of dark nebulae invites viewers to appreciate the complexity of the universe.

AI Generated Images

A blue glowing nebula with orange-brown wispy edges looks like a tear in space. The background is black with yellow stars scattered across the scene. The edges of the nebula are luminous, with structures that almost look like hands pushing through, as if the surface of the nebula were fabric.
AI Generated with Juggernaut XL V9
A network of wispy blue and yelow strands connect luminous yellow and red areas, which look sort of like birght stars. The strands look like cobwebs made of dust and gas, they have a gauzey appearance. Many small stars are scattered throughout the dark background of space.
AI Generated with OpenJourney v4
A colorful nebula with a wispy and complicated made of blue and red gases. A yellow-white swirl glows in the lower right area of the nebula, looking like a small galaxy embeded in the nebula. The wispy blue and red structures of the nebula is thinner in some areas than others.
AI Generated with SD PhotoReal Photo V2
Luminous blue regions surround bright white stars. The edges of the luminous regions are red, which reveals the structure of the nebula. Many stars fill the background of the image, bright against the darkness of space. There are two smaller red nebula near the larger nebula which takes up most of the image.
AI Generated with SD PhotoReal Photo V2
What appears to be multiple indistinct galaxies are interconnected with blue dust and gas. Three of the "galaxies" have swirling purple and red patterns, while the two adjacent ones in the bottom right corner glow with a yellowish core. Background stars shine throughout the image.
AI Generated with Stable Diffusion v1.4
Four close nebula in grey scale, two are larger than the others. The nebula are so close they appear to be interacting, with swirls of dust and gas leaving one and pulling towards the other. Other structures visible in the nebulae reach out like crooked arms. White stars are throughout, against a black background.
AI Generated with Stable Diffusion v1.4

Discussion

The original photo shows dark clouds obscuring a more distant blueish nebula.  As seems typical, ChatGPT incorrectly identifies the distant blue nebula, inserting the name for a similar, but likely more commonly mentioned nebula.  Without additional context, it seems to simply pick a name from its available training datasets.  ChatGPT continues to use general descriptive phrases about intricate structures when writing about this photo, as it does for so many others.  However it is able to tell that the dark features are regions of dust obscuring the light from the more distant blue nebula.

The images created by the generative AI program Invoke are uninspired, for the most part showing generic nebulae and swirls of gas and dust in a variety of colors.  Most disappointingly, the images from the Juggernaut model are extremely similar to the images that model generated for the Witch Head Nebula earlier in the week.   It uses the same colors in similar ways, a central blue area edged in orange-brown light, with darker structures protruding.  The other models also generated similar images to what we have seen before, which indicates that the training data probably included a limited number of unique nebulae photographs.