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Sunbeam

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Title text: While weather control is typically thought of as a superpower, the unconscious ability of astronomers and astrophotographers to summon clouds is more properly classified as a curse.

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Explanation

Astrophotography is the act of taking pictures of very distant objects. Common subjects of astrophotography include celestial bodies like planets and moons of the solar system, faraway galaxies, nebulae, spacecraft, or even empty patches of the sky.

In order to take such photos, one needs to know where these objects are in the sky. One major problem faced by Earth-based astrophotographers (most of them) is the fact that the Earth rotates. As the Earth rotates, it creates the illusion that the celestial objects being photographed are rotating through the night sky. Therefore, in order to get clear pictures of their subjects, astrophotographers must develop a strong understanding of how objects like a galaxy or the sun move through the sky, so that their cameras can compensate for this rotation and produce clear pictures.

This understanding of how objects move through the sky due to the Earth's rotation is the minor superpower referred to in the comic. As the sun is an example of an object in the sky, the intuition of astrophotographers allows them to predict where the sun will be in the future, and by extension, where the light flooding in through the window will be in the future. With this knowledge, Cueball, who assumingly has this minor superpower, can advise his friends to sit at the far table to avoid the light from the window hitting them. Though normally extra light may be considered desirable, such direct sunlight in this case would probably be considered problematic as there may be excessive heat and/or light. By contrast, the table currently beyond the beams of sunlight would be a perfectly acceptable place to sit and would remain so.

This ability is called a minor superpower because it's honestly not impactful. Regular people can often easily determine where the sun will fall through a window, making the claim of that being a 'superpower' questionable at best. And it's often useless, e.g., preventing people from being in a bad spot for their meal ostensibly because of sunlight usually has little bearing on how much they enjoy the meal. On the other hand, many people need to work in the shade for a plethora of good reasons, and some people occasionally need to work in sunlight. People who need to modulate the sunlight falling into their space, e.g. through large windows, often learn what times to adjust their blinds in a couple or three days at most.

This comic takes place in the Northern Hemisphere. In both hemispheres, the sun can be found rising in the east in the morning, pointing towards the equator around midday, and setting in the west in the evening. Therefore in the Northern Hemisphere, shadows (and the light flooding in through windows) moves in a clockwise direction, pointing west, then south, then east. Similarly, shadows in the Southern Hemisphere move counter-clockwise, pointing west, then north, then east. As the light from the window in the comic is predicted to move from the center to the left, a clockwise rotation, it can be deduced the comic is set in the Northern Hemisphere.

The title text talks about another minor "superpower", that astrophotographers have, which makes clouds always seem to show up in front of the night sky. Because this "ability" is actually just coincidence,^{[citation needed]} that only appears causal to some, as well as that it interferes with their work, by ruining their photos, the title text more accurately classifies it as a curse, which is why the rest of the comic describes astrophotographers having only one "actual" superpower.

Transcript

[Cueball, Megan, and White Hat are in a large dark room, presumably a restaurant, with two tables and a large window, with 4 panels and a topsection. The window is casting a large sunbeam between the two tables.]

Cueball: Let's take the far table.

Cueball: The closer one will be in the sun soon.

[Caption below the panel:]

Astrophotography gives you exactly one extremely minor superpower.

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