Challenge A Little Penguin’s Starry Sky Observation(100)#

A little penguin went stargazing last December and took a breathtaking photo of the starry sky with his phone. Since the original picture contains many constellations, he cropped a specific section of it to create this challenge.

Your task is to identify the main constellation featured in this cropped image, find its official three-letter abbreviation, and determine the approximate Right Ascension (RA) and Declination (Dec) of its center position (rounded to the nearest hour and degree) on the celestial sphere.

Flag Format: THJCC{abbreviation=RA[value]h,Dec[value]°}

Abbreviation Rule: The three-letter abbreviation must be in lowercase.

Example: If the center position of the constellation were Virgo (located around RA 12h, Dec +0°), the flag would be THJCC{vir=RA12h,Dec+0°}. (Please pay close attention to case sensitivity, commas, and signs).

Challenge Design Inspiration:#

My idea for this challenge was to design an OSINT challenge, but I thought most of them nowadays were about finding locations on Earth, which was pretty boring.

So I made an astronomy-themed OSINT challenge :D

To make the challenge easier, I did not require the celestial right ascension and declination to be too precise; a simple answer was enough. However, because I was worried that someone might try guessing all twelve zodiac constellations, I limited everyone to three attempts.

Solution:#

This challenge is very simple. Most people will recognize the three stars in the middle as Orion’s Belt as soon as they see them.

But if I were actually solving it step by step, I would do it like this:

1. First, check the EXIF data. You will find that the photo was taken at 2025:12:21 00:53:00 (UTC+8).
2. Use the online star map, choose a random mountain in Taiwan as the location, and look at the star map:
3. You will notice a very similar arrangement of stars in the bottom-right corner. Turn on the constellation display, and you will see this:
4. Once you know it is Orion, look up Orion on Wikipedia to find this information:

Then, enter the information to get the Flag!

Flag:

THJCC{ori=RA5h,Dec+5°}