The Boring Sun

[GaryN]

Here are the amazing images taken by Don Pettit from the ISS. Obviously he had more than one filter, and most of the images are in Infrared at 763 nm, which our eyes can not see. I dont know what the other filters were. Also notice the shape of the Sun in image iss031e088225, which indicates it is being distorted by the Earths atmosphere. So why didn't he us an ND filter, then we could see the true colour of the Sun? And they obviously did not capture the full transit. I'm not impressed.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa_jsc_p ... 164346718/

[Lloyd]

* What about these images, Gary?
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch& ... us+transit
* Do you see any you like?

[GaryN]

* Do you see any you like?

This one from NASA/Goddard Space Flight Cent. Didn't see one like that from the ISS though.

I'll watch for updates from NASA, as the ISS images should show up on the mission image gallery eventually. I'm looking for the filter details and exposure settings, and a reason why they would use IR when they said they were going to use a white light filter.
I put up a prediction on one forum site, that was taken down within an hour of posting. I think I was right on. They could only view the Sun for a short time, while it was being viewed through the densest part of the Earths atmosphere, the "sweet spot" I called it. It should have been visible for a much longer period. I wanted to see a mid-transit image from the ISS, but I doubt you will see one.

Sure they draw the publics attention with images from SDO and other instruments, but none are in visible light. And the ones from Earth observatories, at visible wavelengths, are using the Earths 'Atmosherean Lens', which, I still believe, is what makes everything visible to us.
The other puzzle to me is why they didn't show a video from one of the recently installed external HD cameras. Yes, they would need to have installed a filter, and the ND would have been the obvious choice. Those cameras are steerable and zoomable from inside the ISS, why not use them? And even without a filter, they should be quite capable of showing the Moon, planets, conjunctions. NASA weaves its way cleverly through it all, and nobody catches on.

[Sparky]

Gary, what do you imply? Something like, "light" isn't detectible unless it interacts with an atmosphere?

[GaryN]

Gary, what do you imply? Something like, "light" isn't detectible unless it interacts with an atmosphere?

Yes Sparky, thats's my contention. Exact mechanism undetermined, but Compton shifting is likely in there, and plasma boundary layer lensing?
Pulled from the 'Net:
"The 762 nm imager filter is centered at 763.3 nm with a 7 nm bandwidth at 50% transmittance. Emissions in this passband include the N2 first positive (1PN2) bands, (2, 0) and (3, 1), the O2 atmospheric (atm) band (0, 0), and the hydroxyl (4, 0) emissions. Because these mixed emissions cannot be resolved in the 762 nm narrowband filter, a zero-dimensional plasma chemistry model is used to estimate the expected relative intensities of these emission bands."
All plentifull in Earths atmosphere, and the line-of-sight from the ISS to the Sun at the time the images were taken would dip quite close to the Earths surface. Until I find what the other two filters were, I don't know what they were detecting. If the UT 154 (the whitish images) is a 154nm transmission filter, then 3 images were most likely Si II (153.3 nm), C IV (154.8 nm), and Ne VIII (77.0 nm) in the second order. Those would be coronal spectral lines. I think. The bluish one looks like a mylar job, but that is the closest I can find just by the image colour.
Images or info may yet turn up that make me look silly, but it wouldn't be the first time.

[Sparky]

Are you suggesting that the sun and stars do not emit in the 400 to 700nm range?

[GaryN]

Are you suggesting that the sun and stars do not emit in the 400 to 700nm range?

The stars do not emit transverse waves at any wavelength! If you go to 900nm, from the altitude of the ISS you will see nothing looking perpendicular to the Earths surface, as there is not enough atmosphere above them for conversion to take place. The BIPH device will see lots of stars at 900nm from the Earth, but neither they nor NASA will answer my E-Mails about what this device would see from the ISS, or why they haven't even tried one out.

Another though occured to me this morning. Can Hubble see the Moon lit only by Earthshine? I can't find such an image. Can they see the Moon in Earthshine from the ISS? I'll see what I can find...

[Sparky]

So, the only emitted "energy" is in the form of ions? And what we see and detect is from atmospheric gases interaction with those ions.?

What do you suggest can be detected from stars in space?

What did Hubble detect?

[Lloyd]

Gary said: This one from NASA/Goddard Space Flight Cent. Didn't see one like that from the ISS though.
Image

* Why are some of your images not showing up? You should post the url above or below each image you post, so we can click that, when the images don't show up.

[GaryN]

So, the only emitted "energy" is in the form of ions? And what we see and detect is from atmospheric gases interaction with those ions.?

No, not as I understand it. The Sun only emits longitudinal planewaves, in UV, EUV and X-ray. They interact most strongly with the bound electrons of atmospheric elements, and emit photons of the type and wavelength our eyes or regular optics can see.

What do you suggest can be detected from stars in space?

"zolo technologies manufactures and delivers world-class products; from optical gratings used in the hubble space telescope to..."

The spectra of light emitted or absorbed by the object, or elements somewhere along the line of site to the object.

What did Hubble detect?

Did or does? It did/does not detect the Moon lit by Earthshine, as Earthshine is not actually reflected light from the Earth, but that's another story. It gets tricky, doesn't it? As far as what Hubble does see, mainly emissions from Hydrogen, but don't forget that most of what Hubble sees are NOT Suns, but the glowing ionospheres of planets and moons, which are far closer than mainstream will ever admit. And you wonder why they keep me chained in the basement of the Mad ideas house! Actually, I just saw some calculations recently, from a PhD, if you think that means anything, which indicate the stars are 2 to 3 times closer than presently estimated, but that is still a huge overestimation, IMO.
I asked an expert what it would take to see the nearest 'star' to us in the same detail that SOHO sees our Sun, and this was the reply:

At a mere 120 mm, the EIT instrument aboard SOHO has a very small aperture. To equal its resolution for a star 4 ly away would require a mirror sized up by a factor of about 250,000- the ratio of the distance to the Alpha Centaurus system and the distance from SOHO to the Sun. So you'd want a telescope with an aperture of around 30 km. To give the same linear resolution Hubble is capable of (although Hubble is never pointed at the Sun) would require a mirror diameter of 600 km

.
When they say hubble 'sees' stars much further away, they are seeing one pixel, so how they deduce anything much from that, without a lot of math and supercomputers and assumptions, I don't know.

@lloyd

Why are some of your images not showing up? You should post the url above or below each image you post, so we can click that, when the images don't show up.

If the image does not show, then clicking on a link that goes to the very same location wouldn't bring up the image either. All the images are there now, for me anyway, I imagine it was a temporary server unavailability.

[Lloyd]

Moon via Earth Shine
* Gary, this site, http://newspaper.li/total-eclipse/ shows the following image of the Moon during a total eclipse of the Sun, which would be via reflected light from the Earth, if the image wasn't altered. The Sun's streamers are clearly seen during total eclipses. Charles Chandler says the streamers are electrons leaving the Sun.
http://newspaper.li/static/87b15ef0b9e6 ... ea9585.gif

[Lloyd]

* I just noticed that a conference video of Don Scott has the image of the Moon during a solar eclipse and it also shows reflected light from the Earth lighting up the near side. The video is at http://www.thunderbolts.info/wp/mm/elec ... -excerpts/. Look toward the end of it.

[GaryN]

You will only see the Earthshine on the Moon in images taken from Earth, Lloyd. If you can find me an image taken from space, I'll eat my hat. The FUVC device used on the Lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts shows what is happening.

The Earth showing the excited UV Hydrogen glow from the higher energy UV or EUV emissions from the Sun. This region is acting as a point source array, and the plenewave fronts from the Earth will energise the hydrogen in the Lunar ionosphere, causing a similar process to occur on the Moon, which then gives back more emissions, which come back to Earth, and through the actions of our atmosphere create light of a wavelength we can actually see, which is what we call Earthshine. The bright crescent we see on the Moon, or even the light of the full moon, is not visible from space.
For years, people were bugging the Hubble people to look at the Moon, but they said the Moon would be too bright for Hubbles sensitive instruments, but those same instruments were callibrated nearly every day by looking at the the Earths cloud tops, which would be far brighter than the Moon, given the albedo figures. It wasn't until they got the Ultraviolet and Visible Spectrometer installed that they imaged the Moon, so those are UV and spectra of elements that emit in the visible wavelengths, but you need gratings to 'see' them.
And I think I have had an admission from someone who really does know about the International Space Station that nothing can be seen when looking out into deep space. I asked why there were no images from the ISS of the Venus transit at mid-transit, only those visible from the Cupola at the beginning of transit when the Sun would be being viewed close to the crescent Earth. He told me that the portholes not being used for observation of activities on and around the ISS were kept covered, due to the portholes being very thin and fragile and could be easily damaged by micrometeor/debris imapact.
The Centerline Berthing Camera System (CBCS) flap in the open position.

Bigger:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index. ... 7511;image
They have to do an EVA to open the flaps. So for most of the time, they can not see out of the portholes that would have a view of deep space.
To quote directly:

" The only portholes on unused CBM ports that are currently NOT covered with a CBCS flap are the Node 2 nadir and zenith ports - so these are the only CBM hatch portholes that the crew can "see" out of (and there isn't really much to see out of the Node 2 zenith porthole - except the blackness of space). "

Maybe the smiley was facetious, not sure there.
I was also looking at the old MIR spacestation specifications. The crew had their own tiny cubicles, each with a porthole, yet after years in operation, there was not one photo of, or comment about a brilliant view of the heavens, or seeing the Sun, or Moon, planets, or anything!

[Sparky]

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120305.html

This may have been posted before, but these time lapse photo's seem to show stars way above the atmosphere. I don't understand your view that the sun only emits in waves...

[Lloyd]

* Sparky, that's a nice video. I like to watch the lightning in storm clouds.
* Here's a similar video, http://dvdp.tumblr.com/post/16120405386 ... -view-from, which seems to be the same as this one, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxH3Pnknhps.