# Glaring astronomy mistakes in a movie or video **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** movies\ **Created:** [September 5, 2026, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849 "2026-09-05T20:39:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2026, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/101 "2026-09-07T23:09:19Z")
To make for a really bad day, there are a lot worse things than a supernova: > **[PS1-10adi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS1-10adi)** > > PS1-10adi is an unusual and highly energetic optical transient discovered by the Pan-STARRS survey on 15 August 2010. The explosion or transient event emitted 2.3×1052 ergs (2.3×1045 Joules), exceeding ASASSN-15lh. It may be a superluminous supernova or a stellar disruption event. The magnitude of the explosion challenges the limits of the current models for theoretical physics. The event happened near the centre of J204244.74+153032.1 (a point in Delphinus, specifically right ascension in usual ... Sometimes the right thing to do is not to be in that quadrant. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2026, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/102 "2026-09-07T23:25:12Z")
Am I the first one noting the obvious? The most glaring astronomy mistake is the start of every Dreamworks movie. [![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/99/DreamWorks_Animation_Home_Entertainment_logo.svg/250px-DreamWorks_Animation_Home_Entertainment_logo.svg.png?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=parser&utm_content=thumbnail) ](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/99/DreamWorks_Animation_Home_Entertainment_logo.svg/250px-DreamWorks_Animation_Home_Entertainment_logo.svg.png?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=parser&utm_content=thumbnail) ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2026, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/103 "2026-09-07T23:38:39Z")
I haven’t seen that movie either. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2026, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/104 "2026-09-07T23:53:18Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The most glaring astronomy mistake is the start of every Dreamworks movie. Well, it is a dream. Weird things happen in dreams. But I have read of someone seeing a star in the moon’s crescent- which is impossible. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2026, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/105 "2026-09-07T23:59:26Z")
_Coherence_: The action was triggered by a comet “passing over the Earth.” Just like that other comet which “passed over Scandinavia.” Whoever wrote that knows nothing about how comets move. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2026, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/106 "2026-09-08T05:31:59Z")
In _ **The Twilight Zone** _’s “Probe 7, Over and Out,” Richard Basehart is stranded on a planet “4.3 light years” from (maybe) Earth. How did he fly these “millions of miles” away? By “leaving the Galaxy,” of course! One thing’s for sure: he has one helluva a sub-space radio set, since he can communicate with his home base in real time! ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2026, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/107 "2026-09-08T06:34:50Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > Science Fiction writers are storytellers, not science explainers. …has anyone told Andy Weir that? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2026, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/108 "2026-09-08T06:46:24Z")
Weir is an excellent storyteller who’s found a nice little niche for himself. Good for him. I’m just quibbling with the description of most SF writers as frustrated science fans who would love to be more accurate but are cruelly held back by mass market demands. I posit that instead, writers use exactly the level of “hardness” they’re comfortable with, and which serves the story they want to tell. Plenty of excellent SF authors have very little interest in actual science. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2026, 8:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/109 "2026-09-08T08:50:08Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > > [@Mijin](#): > > > > You really want me to post cites? You dispute that many quarters (so not claiming all or the majority) called Wandering Earth, and indeed, its sequel, hard sci-fi? > > Yes, I do. I’m not familiar with the movie, and haven’t heard much at all about it. And on a cursory Google search, the only mention I see of “hard SF” is someone saying that they prefer hard science fiction over things like it. Below are a few examples. Also even Gemini’s AI overview called it “hard sci-fi”. What was the point of this? If I was unable to google something I still wouldn’t start implying someone is a liar. > **[THE WANDERING EARTH: Space opera with a hard sci-fi backbone — Hyperreal Film...](https://hyperrealfilm.club/reviews/the-wandering-earth)** > > Rating: ☄️☄️☄️☄️☄️☄️☄️☄️☄️☄️ \[TRAILER \] If you’ve ever talked with me about books, or about science fiction, or storytelling in general, or just long enough at any point when I’m a little buzzed and giddy, I’ve probably told you that my favorite... > **[Book Review: The Wandering Earth by Liu Cixin](https://www.strakul.com/blog/posts/book-review-the-wandering-earth-by-liu-cixin/)** > > Random thoughts from a book-loving Puerto Rican astronomical data scientist in Maryland. > **[Wandering Earth II: Can Hard Chinese Science Fiction be a Source of Soft...](https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/wandering-earth-ii-can-hard-chinese-science-fiction-be-a-source-of-soft-power/)** > > A Chinese sci-fi movie has raised interesting and important questions about matters highly relevant to real-life dilemmas confronting the world. How can we achieve a balance between technology and humanity, between collaboration and competition, and... > **[Some Thoughts on The Wandering Earth | Snow Pavilion](https://snowpavilion.co.uk/some-thoughts-on-the-wandering-earth/)** [https://catalog.library.tamu.edu/Record/in00004389337/TOC](https://catalog.library.tamu.edu/Record/in00004389337/TOC) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2026, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/110 "2026-09-08T10:46:08Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > What was the point of this? If I was unable to google something I still wouldn’t start implying someone is a liar. Neither would I. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2026, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/111 "2026-09-08T12:13:04Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > like Deneb, 1400-2400 light years away, which at maximum safe warp for the original Enterprise (warp 6, or 216 times the speed of light, would take 6-12 years to reach). But in That Which Survives, the Enterprise was able to travel a thousand light years, (excuse me, 990.7 light years!) in a matter of hours I don’t care one bit about the scientific implausibility of FTL, I just want internal consistency. Be it warp drive, subspace, hyperdrive, just don’t magically change it depending on the writers. And navigation! Forget updating the course, working out the navigation. Pick Vulcan, attributed to being 40 Eridani, 16 lt yrs away. You can see it with the naked eye. Navigate? Point the ship at it and go. There’s nothing in between it and us. The slight movement due to the light being 16 years out of date wouldn’t be that much that you can’t just turn a little at the end. Every course in interstellar space is a straight line. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2026, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/112 "2026-09-08T12:23:51Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I think their world is supposed to be a far-future Earth. Not at all. We see the prehistory of their world, and it’s not like ours. Unless I missed the giant LionTurtles in palaeontology class…\[1\] * * * 1. also absolutely no remnants of Earth artefacts ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2026, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/113 "2026-09-08T12:48:09Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Unless I missed the giant LionTurtles in palaeontology class… We haven’t created them yet. My guess is that it’ll happen after the Large Hadron Collider accidentally punches open a hole to the Spirit World. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2026, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/114 "2026-09-08T12:53:38Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I recently rewatched “[From Venus with Love](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0516841/?ref_=ttep_ep_1),” the first color episode of The Avengers - the Steed and Mrs. Peel Avengers. > > Astronomers keep getting killed while looking through their telescopes at Venus. The planet is always a large featureless white disk nowhere near the sun, surrounded by a circlet of smaller white disks, presumably stars although they never twinkle, with absolutely nothing else in the image. > > No science could ever be taken seriously in the show, of course, but not only was the astronomy ludicrous - they were all standing in well-lighted rooms - but the killer apparently found a way to make laser beams arc through the air to precisely enter a telescope’s tube. The thing I love about that episode, as a laser physicist, is the way the scientist, listening to a recording made by one of the victims, immediately identifies the culprit from the tape as being a laser. Really? A laser? I’ve never heard a laser that makes a sound like that. In fact, the process of light amplification and resonance doesn’t make a sound at all. The sound of a laser is really the noise made by the various mechanical pumps, electrical devices, spark gaps, and the like. But movies and TV shows need sound. The model for pre-laser ray guns was high voltage electricity, so ray guns had insulator-like ribbed bulges and made “Zap!” noises. Auric Goldfinger’s “industrial laser” started with a whipcrack and produced a steady sort of hissing sound when on. There was the sound of a heavy-duty mechanical relay when it was turned off. All “power” sounds. In reality a scaled-up Ruby Laser (which is what it looked like) would be silent. A Carbon Dioxide laser (which could really do what the laser was trying to do in the movie – cutting metal) would probably sound like running water and, if pulsed, small crackling sounds. And it’d be invisible. ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2026, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/115 "2026-09-08T13:51:01Z")
> [@JWT\_Kottekoe](#): > > That reminds me of another thing I discovered, a picture of the ceiling in Grand Central Terminal in NYC. It shows a portion of the sky including the constellations of the zodiac, but it’s a mirror image. This is a general problem that makers of celestial globe face. You can either make an “accurate” celestial globe, i.e. draw the constellations the way they’d look to an observer looking at Earth from an infinite distance, seeing “through” the Earth’s imaginary celestial sphere; but then the constellations would be the mirror image of what they look like from Earth. Or you draw them the way they look from Earth; this has the advantage of people recognising familiar constellations, but it’s logically wrong. As I understand it, both options are in practical use, and neither is generally regarded as more correct than the other one. ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2026, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/116 "2026-09-08T13:54:57Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Every course in interstellar space is a straight line. Is it really? I would have guessed from the (admittedly limited) knowledge of orbital mechanics that I have that a course in interstellar space is an orbit around the black hole at the centre of the galaxy; the most efficient course would be a Hohmann transfer from the orbit where our solar system orbits the black hole to the orbit of the target solar system. In other words, it’d still be a curve. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2026, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/117 "2026-09-08T14:18:39Z")
Are the Voyager probes currently travelling in a straight line? ---
**Author:** ![Frodo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/frodo/32/302_2.png) [@Frodo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frodo)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2026, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/118 "2026-09-08T14:22:03Z")
Is it even _possible_ to travel in a straight line anywhere in the observable universe? with all those gravity holes and waves? ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2026, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/119 "2026-09-08T14:42:09Z")
> [@Schnitte](#): > > > [@JWT\_Kottekoe](#): > > > > That reminds me of another thing I discovered, a picture of the ceiling in Grand Central Terminal in NYC. It shows a portion of the sky including the constellations of the zodiac, but it’s a mirror image. > > This is a general problem that makers of celestial globe face. You can either make an “accurate” celestial globe, i.e. draw the constellations the way they’d look to an observer looking at Earth from an infinite distance, seeing “through” the Earth’s imaginary celestial sphere; but then the constellations would be the mirror image of what they look like from Earth. Or you draw them the way they look from Earth; this has the advantage of people recognising familiar constellations, but it’s logically wrong. As I understand it, both options are in practical use, and neither is generally regarded as more correct than the other one. I don’t understand this. Why would you _not_ depict the stars on the ceiling as they would appear to an observer on the surface of the Earth looking up at the night sky? Why is this “logically wrong”? And why on Earth (no pun intended 😉) would you ever depict it as a mirror image, and why is this supposedly more accurate? ---
**Author:** ![Schnitte](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/schnitte/32/9033_2.png) [@Schnitte](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Schnitte)\ **Post date:** [September 8, 2026, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849/120 "2026-09-08T14:45:41Z")
I suppose that, from a relativi > [@robby](#): > > I don’t understand this. Why would you _not_ depict the stars on the ceiling as they would appear to an observer on the surface of the Earth looking up at the night sky? Why is this “logically wrong”? If you look up from the surface of the Earth at the night sky, you’re looking at the celestial sphere from the centre of the sphere, i.e. from the inside. But if you look at a celestial globe, you’re looking at that sphere from the outside. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/glaring-astronomy-mistakes-in-a-movie-or-video/1032849.md?page=7)