The Boring Sun

Beyond the boundaries of established science an avalanche of exotic ideas compete for our attention. Experts tell us that these ideas should not be permitted to take up the time of working scientists, and for the most part they are surely correct. But what about the gems in the rubble pile? By what ground-rules might we bring extraordinary new possibilities to light?

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fosborn_
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Re: The Boring Sun

Unread post by fosborn_ » Tue Jun 07, 2011 4:08 pm

Aardwolf wrote:
fosborn_ wrote:
by nick c » Sun Jun 05, 2011 10:55 am

Earlier on this thread flippinrocks posted a youtube link to an interview with Edgar Mitchell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV1FAqB1N9A

Starting at :55, Mitchell described seeing the stars from the rotating spaceship while on the journey to the Moon...
...a
Nice of you to bring it up again nick c, I don't think anyone whats to address the issue though. ;)
So stars so bright they were visible from inside the CSM with all the lights on, yet are not visible on film with sometimes minutes of exposure. Something doesn't add up.

Maybe we should just take his word for it, just like his word about aliens living amongst us.
Are you talking of the YouTube interview? This is a vary Lucite and intelligent and clearly a scientifically trained observer.
According to the interview;
Why does he believes in aliens ( not like there is an organization called SETI)?

He grew up in Roswell NM, and personally knew the witnesses, who told them their story. Do you remember that in the YouTube interview, did you even watch the who thing?

He also notes he never had an experience, but talked to the pre Apollo astronauts and noted their experiences. He notes no Apollo Astronauts had any experiences that they told about.

He notes that some shuttle astronauts had some, but he was not versed on what they were.

I didn't hear a thing about aliens among us.
If you want to make a quote about someone, show it. Then show your context. Obviously your have no context in this situation IMO (not to be confused with Rodney Dangerfield's, no class, or IMO). ;)
The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries,
is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov

Aardwolf
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Re: The Boring Sun

Unread post by Aardwolf » Tue Jun 07, 2011 5:26 pm

fosborn_ wrote:
It doesn't disprove it though. If they knew which were stars and which were particles it wouldn't have been a problem.] The problem was they couldn't tell the difference.If they couldn't tell the difference, then how do they know if there were any stars in the image?
Aardwolf

Sounds pretty lame to me man. I just quote what was said and observed the obvious. Kind of Occam's razor dude.
If you what to assume things and get all complex about it, sounds like the hard way to do it. So do your home work and get back to us.
No, you assumed there were stars in the optics. The astronauts couldn't tell one way or another so its a false assumption. Anyhow these were observed via the optics so the whole point is irrelevant to the visible light discussion.
fosborn_ wrote:Carl Sagan? I don't remember any Carl Sagan in this thread. Not a factor for me.
Well I guess it suits your argument to ignore the Voyager images then. Which is a shame considering they are sone of the only images ever taken from space in visible light.

So, in a purely theoretical scenario, do you think that clear filter photos taken in space with 15 second exposures would show stars in them?

fosborn_
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Re: The Boring Sun

Unread post by fosborn_ » Tue Jun 07, 2011 7:31 pm

Well I guess it suits your argument to ignore the Voyager images then. Which is a shame considering they are sone of theonly images ever taken from space in visible light.
Aardwolf
Got any camera specs on those pictures, what kind of equipment, its all news to me. Only one of a kind ? Got a link? That would be nice.

Never mind, found them, interesting how all the Instrument modes are labeled "Jupiter and Saturn", none, none, are labeled stars. All the gain modes are set to Low. No high gain modes as you would expect for stars.
Funny how important homework is.
Instrument Detector


Detector Type : VIDICON
Detector Aspect Ratio : 1.000000
Minimum Wavelength : 0.280000
Maximum Wavelength : 0.640000
Nominal Operating Temperature : 282.000000
Wow dips into the UV and comes up short on the visible IR. Playing by your rules, I reject this antique of a CCD.


Aardwolf:So, in a purely theoretical scenario, do you think that clear filter photos taken in space with 15 second exposures would show stars in them?
Voyager Specs,info;
Because of the diminished brightness of the objects being photographed, longer exposure times were used, many beyond the stated maximum of 15.360 seconds. Longer exposure times were all 48-second increments added to the maximum. In addition, the camera was slewed in order to avoid smeared imaging. The light flood state (on/off) was independent of the instrument mode.]
Wow, that was taking pictures of the planets, stars would never show up under the best circumstances.
Well based on known facts now, I would say none of the calibrations were for stars, none of the electronic modes were for stars but large gas giants. So I think it would have required a big mission pre plan to even attempt it. I think its a safe assumption the mission engineers were shaking their heads when O Carl requested the picture of the stars. :)
The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries,
is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov

fosborn_
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Re: The Boring Sun

Unread post by fosborn_ » Tue Jun 07, 2011 8:27 pm

No, you assumed there were stars in the optics. The astronauts couldn't tell one way or another so its a false assumption. Anyhow these were observed via the optics so the whole point is irrelevant to the visible light discussion.
Imagine me assuming stars in a optical space telescope, mounted on a spacecraft, in space. Sorry for that slip up. ;)
Wouldn't the debris, tumble and be unstable and the stars be fixed and steady? I think a big dope like me could tell the difference. Might make a mess if I was wanting to spot constellations though.

Wonder how it disqualifies as a 1X telescope. I don't think there is any light amplification going on? Irrelevant to the visible light discussion?
Sorry, suffering dull tool symptoms, can you connects the dots on those statements. Your making statements and not qualifying them.
Thanks
Frank
I
The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries,
is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov

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GaryN
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Re: The Boring Sun

Unread post by GaryN » Tue Jun 07, 2011 10:37 pm

@Nick
Why would they have it installed on a spaceship (where the use of every inch of space and ounce of weight was at a premium) if they could not see the stars?
Why did they drag the huge and heavy FUVC camera up to the moon then? Because, it is the
only way you are going to see any stars or galaxies. Spectroscopy, mainly looking for
H emissions at EUV energies. The super-fast, enhanced UV sensitive film camera took long
exposures to show anything much. In spectroscope mode everything lit up really bright.
The optics of the navigation setup relied on a grating specifically designed to detect
the same thing, but, the ice also glowed as it was being bombarded by Solar x-rays.
With a purely optical scope, the tiny ice particles close to the craft would not have
been visible.
That is also why they could not see stars from the lunar surface without looking through
the optics. It had a grating in there.
There is very little done in the visible wavelengths now, it is all spectroscopy and
bolometry. Have a look at the Dawn framing camera. Even using the clear filter, it is
only the optics, very clever optics, that make anything visible. They will convert all
available emissions, mostly EUV and x-ray obliquely incident planewaves to photons the
CCD can use. Yes, where visible light is present, reflected from a planet or moon or
whatever, it will see that light too.
------
The correspondent asked Alan Bean: "What did space look like from the lunar surface?"
"You know it's always puzzled me". He said: "It resembled black, patent-leather shoes."
------
Hey, we are supposed to be talking about the Sun! We are in dangerous territory here!
In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. -Buckminster Fuller

fosborn_
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Re: The Boring Sun

Unread post by fosborn_ » Wed Jun 08, 2011 3:28 am

by GaryN:
Why did they drag the huge and heavy FUVC camera up to the moon then?
The goals of the experiment were to 1) determine composition and structure of the upper atmosphere of Earth from its spectra 2) determine the structure of the geocorona and study day and night airglow and polar aurorae 3) obtain direct evidence of intergalactic hydrogen in distant galaxy clusters 4) obtain spectra and imagery of the solar wind and other gas clouds in the solar system 5) detect gasses in the lunar atmosphere, including volcanic gasses, if any 6) obtain spectra and colors of external galaxies in the far UV 7) obtain spectra and colors of stars and nebulae in the Milky Way 8) evaluate the lunar surface as a site for future astronomical observatories.
Simple enough to lookup. Not an issue.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries,
is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov

fosborn_
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Re: The Boring Sun

Unread post by fosborn_ » Wed Jun 08, 2011 4:07 am

Hey, we are supposed to be talking about the Sun! We are in dangerous territory here!
Ok
http://thunderbolts.info/wp/forum/phpBB3/v ... 9&start=60
I have e-mailed numerous sites
asking why a picture of the Sun is not available that looks like the Sun we
see from Earth, even offered to supply a Solar filter, but no answers. I'm
probaby on an ignore list by now. I did get an answer from one helpful fellow
about this Sun image:
He said he had dug as deep as he could, no one has any idea where it originated.
The ISS engineers stated that the platform should make an excellent base for
astronomy due to its stability. They would just need some mounts on the outside
to attatch their scopes to. None has been done. Like Aardwolf says, "Something
doesn't add up".
No problem, you admit its useless for you position. Its an altered photo for artistic reasons.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries,
is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov

Aardwolf
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Re: The Boring Sun

Unread post by Aardwolf » Wed Jun 08, 2011 5:33 am

fosborn_ wrote:Well based on known facts now, I would say none of the calibrations were for stars, none of the electronic modes were for stars but large gas giants.
So Earth from 40 AU is brighter than say Venus from aroung 1 AU? You can easily take a shot of Venus among the stars from Earth in an exposure of a couple of seconds. Yet Earth from 40 AU is too bright for the background stars? Even though stars viewed in space are supposed to be "10 x brighter"? How exactly do you calibrate for a dim Earth at 40 AU 0.12 the size of a pixel using a clear filter, yet exclude stars 10 x brighter when exposing for probably in excess of 15 seconds?

fosborn_
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Re: The Boring Sun

Unread post by fosborn_ » Wed Jun 08, 2011 9:13 am

So Earth from 40 AU is brighter than say Venus from aroung 1 AU? You can easily take a shot of Venus among the stars from Earth in an exposure of a couple of seconds. Yet Earth from 40 AU is too bright for the background stars? Even though stars viewed in space are supposed to be "10 x brighter"? How exactly do you calibrate for a dim Earth at 40 AU 0.12 the size of a pixel using a clear filter, yet exclude stars 10 x brighter when exposing for probably in excess of 15 seconds?
You make this harder than it has to be. A planetary disk is resolved a star cannot be so. You said the pixel of earth was .12. How much less a fraction of star light? So again no star will show up 10X as bright or not. The operational modes were all low gain. Another strike.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries,
is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov

fosborn_
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Re: The Boring Sun

Unread post by fosborn_ » Wed Jun 08, 2011 10:24 am

GaryN here is a picture of the sun. The voyager camera. The only one youall approve of. It was taken in the 90s. So it should be out in deep space, the kind your looking for.
Our sun is seen as the
bright object in the center of the circle of frames. The wide-
angle image of the sun was taken with the camera's darkest
filter (a methane absorption band) and the shortest possible
exposure (5 thousandths of a second) to avoid saturating the
camera's vidicon tube with scattered sunlight.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/planet ... family.jpg
Sounds like the sun is pretty bright after all.
The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries,
is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov

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GaryN
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Re: The Boring Sun

Unread post by GaryN » Thu Jun 09, 2011 11:50 am

No problem, you admit its useless for you position. Its an altered photo for artistic reasons.
It is not useless for my position at all. I'm trying to find an image of the
Sun taken from space, and I just was trying to find out where that image came
from. I don't think it is an altered photo, it is 100% artist imagination, but
who tells the artist what to draw? So, still no images of the Sun from ISS,
shuttle, or Moon.
Sounds like the sun is pretty bright after all.
Bright in infrared, yes, but your eyes would never see it, would they? The
Sun puts out much of its energy in infrared. That wavelength they used is
also the Methane 'glow' value for spectroscopy, so the planets could be
showing their atmospheric methane densities. I'm still learning about all
this stuff though Frank, so don't be too hard on me if I get it wrong, and
I welcome any corrections from those with a better understanding.
In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. -Buckminster Fuller

fosborn_
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Re: The Boring Sun

Unread post by fosborn_ » Sat Jun 11, 2011 7:07 am

Bright in infrared, yes, but your eyes would never see it, would they? The
Sun puts out much of its energy in infrared.
Yes my eyes would see it, because of the Sun's visible light range.
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... 76.html#c2
Shown above is an enlarged section of the 1976 CIE Chromaticity Diagram to show the path of a blackbody radiator that is caused to increase in temperature. As a heated object becomes incandescent, it first glows red, then yellow, white, and finally blue. This occurs because the wavelength associated with the peak radiation of the blackbody radiator becomes progressivley shorter with increased temperature
THE SPECTRAL SEQUENCE
Class Spectrum Color Temperature

G still weaker hydrogen, ionized and neutral metals yellowish 5300-6000 K
T methane bands infrared under 1200 K
The Voyager pictures have issues when planets are taken with the sun at to shallow of an angle to the shot, its bright glare causes wide angle optics artifacts. Note these are taken with the clear filter.
The sun is not
large as seen from Voyager, only about one-fortieth of the
diameter as seen from Earth,but is still almost 8 million times
brighter than the brightest star in Earth's sky, Sirius. The
result of this great brightness is an image with multiple
reflections from the optics in the camera
.Wide-angle images
surrounding the sun also show many artifacts attributable to
scattered light in the optics. These were taken through the clear
filter with one second exposures.
I'm still learning about all
this stuff though Frank, so don't be too hard on me if I get it wrong, and
I welcome any corrections from those with a better understanding.
Sorry GaryN, if I come across harsh. I know I don't qualify as " a better understanding" category, but basic science seems to cut through a lot of BS, (for me anyway).
When someone publicly discuss absurdities, such as "is the sun bright", I do have issues. I prefer the K.I.S.S. method in science, when evaluating ideas. You should try it. :)
The most exciting phrase to hear in science,
the one that heralds new discoveries,
is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'
Isaac Asimov

Aardwolf
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Re: The Boring Sun

Unread post by Aardwolf » Mon Jun 13, 2011 8:27 am

fosborn_ wrote:
So Earth from 40 AU is brighter than say Venus from aroung 1 AU? You can easily take a shot of Venus among the stars from Earth in an exposure of a couple of seconds. Yet Earth from 40 AU is too bright for the background stars? Even though stars viewed in space are supposed to be "10 x brighter"? How exactly do you calibrate for a dim Earth at 40 AU 0.12 the size of a pixel using a clear filter, yet exclude stars 10 x brighter when exposing for probably in excess of 15 seconds?
You make this harder than it has to be. A planetary disk is resolved a star cannot be so. You said the pixel of earth was .12. How much less a fraction of star light? So again no star will show up 10X as bright or not. The operational modes were all low gain. Another strike.
Blatantly incorrect.

Earth has a full disc magnitude of about -4 at 1 AU. At 40AU the magnitude of a crescent Earth (as in the Voyager photo) would be circa +5.5. This makes it barely visible to the naked eye and dimmer than about 2,000 stars visible to the naked eye from Earth. At 10x brighter this should bring another 20,000 stars brighter than +5.5. But were not talking about the naked eye, were talking about overeposed images counted in minutes. If you wanted to pick up an Earth magnitude object in the visible range, you cant fail to pick up the brighter stars. Those images should be full of brighter stars.

See below for what you would get after 30 seconds (through the "restricting" atmosphere). Compare that to Voyager's multi-minute visible shots.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffreysul ... otostream/

fosborn_ wrote:The Voyager pictures have issues when planets are taken with the sun at to shallow of an angle to the shot, its bright glare causes wide angle optics artifacts. Note these are taken with the clear filter.
The sun is not
large as seen from Voyager, only about one-fortieth of the
diameter as seen from Earth,but is still almost 8 million times
brighter than the brightest star in Earth's sky, Sirius. The
result of this great brightness is an image with multiple
reflections from the optics in the camera
.Wide-angle images
surrounding the sun also show many artifacts attributable to
scattered light in the optics. These were taken through the clear
filter with one second exposures
.
You're confusing the captions. This part relates to the wide angle shots not the planets. The planets were taken through narrow angle camera using the visible violet, blue and green filters over probably many minutes of exposure.

And continuing to reference the operational modes is a straw man. The needed to go outside those modes designed for the flybys to be able to resolve at 40AU. It was never supposed to take photos from that distance. The brightness of Earth compared to background stars is what a truely critical mind would be focussing on.

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GaryN
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Re: The Boring Sun

Unread post by GaryN » Mon Jun 13, 2011 12:52 pm

If you wanted to pick up an Earth magnitude object in the visible range, you cant fail to pick up the brighter stars. Those images should be full of brighter stars.
The brightness of Earth compared to background stars is what a truely critical mind would be focussing on.
I'd agree with that, Aardwolf.
------
I was just looking into what color the Sun is, as seen from space. I would
think it should be white, as images of astronauts in space, or on the moon,
show their space suits as white, and the colors of the US flag on the moon
looked true. There is much discussion on this on the 'Net, with opinions
running from pink, yellow, green, and mostly, white. Surely with an ultra-
high speed exposure camera we should be able to get a reasonable image?
This is supposedly a true color of the Sun, looks pinkish to me, maybe my
monitor settings, or eyes though.
Image
Color of the Sun
http://www.universetoday.com/18689/color-of-the-sun/
In order to change an existing paradigm you do not struggle to try and change the problematic model. You create a new model and make the old one obsolete. -Buckminster Fuller

jjohnson
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Re: The Boring Sun

Unread post by jjohnson » Mon Jun 13, 2011 2:03 pm

At 1 AU, our Sun looks white to our eyes. There are two reasons I have found for this.

First, our eyes are "white balanced", as they say in the photo-video-chromaticity trades, to noon sunlight.

Second, in noon sunlight, your color receptors are overloaded with photons and all you can see with, effectively, is your cones, which are essentially grey scale, or b&w, if you want. I have a suspicion that most (not all) stars, if they are seen at the same apparent magnitude as the Sun, will look white, due mostly to the second reason - we just don't see color well in the dark or at extreme brightness levels when they are swamped out.

A very cool, dim star may well appear colorful to the eye if it simply cannot be seen to be as bright as the Sun, no matter how close you get to it. Due to the similarity of stellar spectra to blackbody radiation spectra, cool stars end up with more of their visible energy (in fact, the preponderance of all their wavelengths) at the red end of the spectrum. Hence, giant Betelgeuse, which is much less bright than the Sun at its distance from us on Earth, exhibits redness in its coloration. Part of the reason that it looks so bright and big is because it is huge, even at its distance, so it has a very large "radiating disk" from which its visible light emanates. Were we to travel closer and closer to Betelgeuse, my speculation is that it would change from reddish and bright to pinkish-white and extremely, uncomfortably bright, to just about white as its radiant energy intensity swamped out our color receptors (cones), and we were looking with only our rods.

At the other end of the spectrum, the extremely radiant "blue giants" end of the H-R diagram, the bulk of their light comes from arc mode delivering photons in the gamma and X-ray part of the spectrum, down through far UV, and into the blueish-violet end of "our" spectrum, the "visible" bands. Their colors, at great distance and low apparent magnitude by comparison with our nearby Sun, are bluish white, (not dark blue-violet). While these stars deliver much more total energy in the infrared, red and on up through blue end of the visible spectrum, their entire visible spectrum is, in absolute magnitude, much greater than the Sun. If you were a distance away from a blue giant star so that its apparent magnitude were the same as the Sun, and you put the Sun that same distance away, the Sun would be a dim and yellowish point of light to the naked eye, and the blue giant probably would be... white, and too bright to look directly at. To the eye.

Photographic films and CCD's have distinctly different color reactions than do our eyes. We use filters and different spectral sensitivities and all sorts of tricks, down to false color manipulations in computer-processed images to get images to "look right" to our eyes. Even photo reproductions in magazines are processed to "look right", which often means, using a limited palette and number of inks on paper or phosphors on-screen, we see only an approximation of what the real image would be like if viewed directly.

For a nice little tutorial on some of this, link here.

This is a really seriously interesting subject. There are web sites devoted to approximating, in RGB or hexadecimal and other color codes, what to use to represent the "look" of different temperatures of stars. My problem with that is that they do not take into account the apparent magnitude; they try to use the "magnitude" at the standard 10 parsec distance for all stars. Well, you have to set up some reference distance to do comparisons, and that's the one in use now. If it were me, I would "move the Sun out to, say, 1 or 2 parsecs and see what its apparent magnitude was, and then say, move any other star to whatever distance from the observer would give it the same magnitude as the Sun at the 1 or 2 pc distance. Then you might be able to compare colors more directly. I just made up the distance; it could be 10 pc or 20 pc. Stars get pretty small at great distances, and discerning color of a "point" source is more problematic. Maybe putting all stars at the distance from the observer where their photospheric or visible disc subtended one arc-second or one arc-minute might be a better test of color, who knows?

Jim

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