On the Starry Introduction to WALL-E

I intended to post my guide to eyepieces first, but there's something that came up that I just have to make better known.

WALL-E is an excellent movie, and I think it still holds up as one of Pixar's best. About a year ago, I rewatched it again for the first time in years, and I was floored when I found out a special treat was waiting for me in  the first 20 seconds of the film. Let's watch that opening.

 

WALL-E (2008) Opening Scene

 

Give it a watch before reading on.
 

We're greeted with the charming sound of a 1950s musical and a star field.

 

 

Nothing special, just random stars. We then see increasingly interesting space fields, changing in tune with the music.

 

 "Full of shine and full of sparkle"

and then, our attention is drawn to a bright orange ball, quickly understood to be a Sun.

 

The camera then pans down to look at the Earth, North America easily visible, ruined by pollution and satellite megaconstellations.

But I skipped a step. Let's take a full look at that establishing shot of the Sun.

 

 Do you see it?

This is really such a minor thing. I'm sure maybe 1% of the audience was paying attention to the star fields closely enough to notice it. But there, in the sky next to the Sun, we see Orion, and the sword complex which contains the nebula, almost faintly visible within. This was incredibly rewarding to find.

The orientation of this star field is in fact roughly correct, with north facing roughly where the axis of Earth's rotation appears to be pointed. From memory alone, I can tell that the Sun is even in roughly the right part of the sky.

The Sun is in fact not on the ecliptic in this shot, it's about 20 degrees too far south. But this is, I think, a reasonable compromise to keep everything framed right.

It is not clear to me if the rest of the sky is also correct, because the bulk of it is southern hemisphere sky. It looks like Canis Major is conspicuous in its absence, but comparing the star charts it looks like Sirius just isn't given a particularly noticeable brilliance; it's still there.

We can narrow down the time of year WALL-E takes place in to approximately June or July.

(July daytime skies as seen with the Stellarium Web App)

 I dunno what it is. There's some little part of my brain which gets unreasonably rewarded when I see this scene.

Like:

"ok there's some cool sci-fi star fields or whatev--OH!

"that's my FRIEND (orion).

"OH! We're home!"

Anyway I was reminded of this last night and I had to share it here. Go watch WALL-E now.

Clear skies.