Distances in Astronomy?

[sjw40364]

Thanx SJW.
I have seen a few posts regarding this not seeing stars in space thingy and my take has always been exactly that. In open space or the bright side of the moon there seems to be this question. Interesting, this incident in the transcript specifically mentions the moon shadow. It certainly stands to reason, I think I will re-research this and not feel so outta the box this time.

The world ended over a week ago and I haven't seen a single stinkin' zombie!

JD

Had the shotgun ready too

In my little world it just depends on planetary development as to how much light the star emits.
http://www.nustar.caltech.edu/uploads/i ... opeiaA.jpg
http://conservationreport.files.wordpre ... rnovae.jpg
http://annesastronomynews.com/photo-gal ... a-million/
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang ... urus-a.jpg
http://www.movscreen.com/7446-space-gal ... ource.html
\http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang ... romeda.jpg
https://www.zooniverse.org/project/hubble
and an early and middle stage star system.
http://stardate.org/astro-guide/gallery ... companions

[upriver]

Spectral Evidence

Katirai's book says on page 150: Despite the fact that scientists analysing the atmosphere of the sun have discovered 65 elements and only years later, small traces of hydrogen and helium, theoreticians have suggested that hydrogen and helium atoms make up 99.9% of the volume of the sun.

LK: I was surprised to read this. I had not heard this before. It'll be interesting to find out if it's true or not. The book was written in 2006, and Katirai seems to have studied available known findings somewhat thoroughly, so this claim should not be hard to verify or refute, I think.

SJW said: Reflectance spectra is spectra taken from objects believed not to be stars. It is then rationed, i.e., divided by the corresponding pixel data from spectra believed to be stars. This creates an overall lower value of spectra they term reflectance spectra. So they do not even use the original values in thier final spectra data. Almost every single obbject in the Milky-Way has a spectra different from the Sun. Since I for one do not believe spectra is caused from burning molecules to ash, the only way we know of to create spectra from chemical compounds, I do not see how spectra emitted from electrical processess and those from burning have anything in common?

LK: That's very interesting. It would be helpful and much appreciated if you can provide some references for this info. I'll try to ask Brant what he may know about this.

Everything has a different spectrum. And that spectrum can vary depending on the decomposition process... Burning Hydrogen has a different spectrum than electrically ionized hydrogen.. H requires air to burn while you can produce a line spectrum with electrical discharge...

Same with taking star or dead object spectra. You have to allow for the circumstance. If its a planet orbiting a star you have to allow for more of the stars light in the reflectance spectra hence the division.

I expect that every object(different than element) in the universe is going to have a different spectrum because they are evolving at different rates depending on their environmental electrical influence.... Even little spark can create new elements. Biological transmutation happens as well.

The spectrum of a dead star is going to look like a planet in my model because they are composed of nearly the same material. Iron.

I believe A live star is a iron ball covered in a layer of primarily H. Thats what you going to see when you take a spectrum. And it may vary depending on where you point your telescope on the star. But what you will see is hydrogen and other gases... You wont be able to tell what is underneath except by the eruptions from the surface that are composed of ionized surface material. Iron.

From my previou post Katirai said : "It was [Pickering] who realized that all objects in the Milky Way had spectra very different from the sun.

LK: That's very interesting too. It should be fairly easy to find out if this is true. Then, if it is true, it would be quite odd if spectra from other galactic centers are very similar to the Sun's spectrum, but the spectrum of the Milky Way's presumed center at Sag. A is different. I hope someone can find an authoritative answer on this matter. Maybe Brant can.

They are all different... And it depends on the intervening plasma...... Looking into the center of our galaxy has more plasma than looking out into another galaxy.

It would be helpful to include the papers they were reading to come to this conclusion, I would read them....

[sjw40364]

From my previou post Katirai said : "It was [Pickering] who realized that all objects in the Milky Way had spectra very different from the sun.
LK: That's very interesting too. It should be fairly easy to find out if this is true. Then, if it is true, it would be quite odd if spectra from other galactic centers are very similar to the Sun's spectrum, but the spectrum of the Milky Way's presumed center at Sag. A is different. I hope someone can find an authoritative answer on this matter. Maybe Brant can.

They are all different... And it depends on the intervening plasma...... Looking into the center of our galaxy has more plasma than looking out into another galaxy.

It would be helpful to include the papers they were reading to come to this conclusion, I would read them....

http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/brucem ... index.html
http://cde.nwc.edu/SCI2108/course_docum ... kering.htm
http://www.lcas-astronomy.org/articles/ ... iographies
http://www.answers.com/topic/edward-charles-pickering
A start on Pickering

A star
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/entire/pr2011021a/
a galaxy
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/album/entire/pr2001016q/
Pluto
http://www.sflorg.com/spacenews/sn031006_01.html
Spectra
http://iopscience.iop.org/1538-3881/143/1/22/
Notice the spectra is reduced:

Here we describe the observations and our reduction of them, and present the albedo spectra, average mid-UV albedos, and albedo slopes we derive from these data.

http://support.esri.com/en/knowledgebas ... m/ratioing
So let us assume the pixels in question have values of 4. The reflectance spectra will end up with a value of 1, 3 orders less than its original value. This ratioing is done by comparing it to another far distant object believed to be a star, so the end spectra even if the original matched the assumed star would end up at a lower value due to the manipulation. But notice they do not do this for objects they believe to be stars, but only planets. Believe me, cosmology is more messed up than you could ever imagine.

[sjw40364]

Just an additional little tidbit for those that may believe that objects in the arms that have spectra similar to the sun may mean it is a sun, besides obvious visual comparison with galactic centers.
http://oceancolor.gsfc.nasa.gov/SeaWiFS ... oon_aj.pdf
A lot of math etc, but note page 2890 and the differences in the moons and suns spectra, basically nill, at least before they get around to reducing it to reflectance data.

And this they want to be the center of ours.
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... large_web/
An excellent site for high resolution images you can view or save.

[GaryN]

Thanks for the SeaWiFS link sjw40364. I was trying to find any space based Lunar photometric info, but was looking to the shuttles or ISS for info, and could find none. I found some further info on SeaWiFS, will have to study it more, but I get the impression they reorient the craft so it can view the moon once a month, but the line of sight to the Moon will still be sideways, so through a deep, around 6000km, column of Earths ionosphere. It is not rotated so that it is looking outwards, through the much more sparse ionosphere above the craft. That's my interpretation so far.

http://www.opticsinfobase.org/ao/fullte ... o-50-2-120
One thing for sure though, light and illumination in space is a very complex subject, and it would save me a lot of time and frustration trying to prove my ideas if NASA would just (try to) take an image of the Moon from the ISS for me, at a time and direction of my choosing of course.
Though this line of inquiry might not seem relevant to distances in astronomy, to me it seems like it is extremely important, as if the Moon can not be seen as big and bright from the ISS as it can from Earth, with identical camera settings as we use from Earth, then many astronomical/cosmological assumptions would be null and void. A real revolution in astronomy would be required.

[Lloyd]

Evidence for Milky Way Center at Sag. A?
Does this look like a galactic center for the Milky Way?: http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/oir/images/mw_center.jpg (from http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/oir/mw/center.html).

This site shows two images of gamma ray bubbles toward Sag. A, the claimed center of the Milky Way: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST ... cture.html. Here are the image links:
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/4988 ... 26x127.jpg
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/4988 ... 26x127.jpg

Do those images prove that the center is there instead of at the Sun? Or were those images modified to accommodate conventional distance estimates? Or what?

[sjw40364]

Evidence for Milky Way Center at Sag. A?
Does this look like a galactic center for the Milky Way?: http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/oir/images/mw_center.jpg (from http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/oir/mw/center.html).

This site shows two images of gamma ray bubbles toward Sag. A, the claimed center of the Milky Way: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST ... cture.html. Here are the image links:
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/4988 ... 26x127.jpg
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/4988 ... 26x127.jpg

Do those images prove that the center is there instead of at the Sun? Or were those images modified to accommodate conventional distance estimates? Or what?

In my humble opinion what they are observing is nothing more than this:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... web_print/
A quite commo0n occurance
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... large_web/
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... large_web/
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... web_print/
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... web_print/
A good point is this time lapse series from 1995 to 1998 Claimed to be orbiting binaries, yet in 3 years the jet expands, the stars never move.
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... 2/video/a/
Must have an orbital period of 10's of 1000's of years. Or just an active Z-Pinch location and we see both Birkeland current filaments in cross view.
I do not claim there is not another so-called galaxy outside of our own that we share a common barycenter, or a quasar ejected in the recent past, just not that it is our galactic center.

[sjw40364]

Black Holes are only needed because distances have been greatly exaggerated, thereby the size and mass and actual constitution of what they say we see is directly contradicted in almost every visual image.
Where are the billions of stars in the image on the right? There are two light sources, the rest plasma clouds in glow mode, reflectance off vast clouds of plasma, or foreground objects.
We can image the effects of a dying star with this clarity:
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... 5/image/a/
but they want me to believe They cant image a single solitary star from the claimed galaxy on the left?
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... 8/image/a/
Where are its billions of stars circling the center few million?

[Lloyd]

Too bad we don't have an answer to the evidence of gamma ray bubbles at Sag. A yet. Maybe someday. Now back to BK.

More from Katirai
http://www.scribd.com/doc/61291192/AstronomyDec28-2008

_{Rotation and Revolution}
_"Studying the --- binaries, --- [a]stronomers have --- found that the [orbital] period[s] --- [vary from years to days to hours] and in some cases less than an hour --- (Cyg, V1644(29) orbits --- [in] 44.6 minutes).
_"Perusal of the literature does not seem to show any discussion --- that many of them could be planets with satellites.
_"[In] the solar system, --- the orbital periods of satellites around their planets are much shorter than [that] of planets around the sun.
_"We also see that the distances between planets to their satellites are much smaller than the distances of the sun to its planets.
_"for such --- an object to [orbit a binary] in a few hours [at the calculated orbital radius], it must be moving with a speed of at least one-eighth the speed of light [whereas a much smaller orbital radius would show a much more reasonable orbital speed].

_{Velocities}
_"Astronomers [using] the Doppler effect [to determine] orbital velocity --- found that in a large majority of cases, orbital velocities of an object in a binary were much less than 50 km/sec.
_"Having both orbital velocity and the period of orbit, one can easily calculate the size and radius of orbit.
_"Having done this, astronomers were surprised by their size.
_"Some were so small that the entire orbit could fit inside the sun.
_"It follows that the size of the object itself must be as small as that of a planet or even smaller, the size of the satellites of planets.
_"In the solar system, the orbital period of Pluto around the sun is about 2.5 centuries and that of --- Sedna is 10,000 years.

_{Hydrogen Clouds}
_"It has been 35 years since astronomers discovered clouds of atomic hydrogen moving at peculiar velocities of hundreds of kilometre/second through our galaxy.
_"Some astronomers have suggested that the clouds are relatively nearby, perhaps a few hundred ly (light years) away, while others think that they are at distances of millions of ly from the galaxy.
_"the actual distances [may be] --- light days rather than hundreds [to] millions of light-years.

_{Betelgeuse}
_"[If Betelgeuse has] a diameter 600 times the sun['s] --- its volume is 216,000,000 times larger than the sun['s].
_"astronomers --- claim that its mass is only 20 times the mass of the sun.
_"[That would make] the average density of Betelgeuse --- 0.000,000,1309 g/cm^3 [or] 9,874 times less than the density of the earth’s atmosphere, at sea level, --- almost a vacuum.
_"[Since] most of the mass must be concentrated at the core --- most of the [volume] inside the star would have a density much lower than what we calculated.
_"[Since] Betelgeuse is red in colour --- astronomers believe that it has a temperature thousands of degrees lower than the sun.
_"A [volume] with low temperature and near-vacuum density would be virtually transparent and would not likely show itself with a visible disc.
_"The fact that the disc of Betelgeuse is so visible that astronomers can measure the diameter of its disc proves that most of the space inside Betelgeuse could not be in a state of near-vacuum [so it's probably much smaller, closer and denser than claimed].

_{Novas}
_"An object that suddenly shows up as a luminous point of light displaying an increasing brilliance, and then later, becomes fainter or disappears over a period of time, is called a “nova”.
_"Another characteristic of a nova is that its light is always faint.
_"Unlike novas, supernovas appear with luminosity many times greater than novas.
_"Since many novas show up regularly, some astronomers speculated that these objects periodically undergo a small explosion.
_"In this chapter, reasons will be given indicating that novas are not exploding stars at all but, rather, planets.
_"[Here is] why they are planets and not stars.
_"First of all, a nova’s light is always faint.
_"Secondly, its colour is always white-blue, similar to that of some planets and very different from the sun.
_"Furthermore, the study of novas has shown that they always orbit a very small star of the type that astronomers call a “white dwarf”. [LK: Could a white dwarf be a brown dwarf, like Saturn?]
_"a scientific encyclopaedia --- states that a nova moves around a star, its orbital period is short, and its mass is low.
_"a nova could be a planet whose light is a reflection from the light of the star it orbits
_"Supposing that a nova’s light is only a reflection of star light, it follows that nova light is not as bright as that of the star.
_"The reason a nova suddenly shows up is because it is orbiting a small star.
_"As it moves around the star, it may suddenly reach a position where it reflects the light of the star in our direction.
_"The fact that these objects have a short period of orbit indicates that they are small and orbit another small object which astronomers call a white dwarf.
_"Secondly, in the above quote, one finds that novas have low mass, comparable with that of planets or satellites, and not stars.
_"Finally, some strong arguments supporting the theory that novas are planets is that some of them show up regularly and that their light changes periodically.

_{Quasars}
_"In the chapter about the Milky Way it will become clear that quasars are stars that are similar to our sun and that they are not as far away as astronomers think they are.

[sjw40364]

Too bad we don't have an answer to the evidence of gamma ray bubbles at Sag. A yet. Maybe someday. Now back to BK.

More from Katirai
http://www.scribd.com/doc/61291192/AstronomyDec28-2008

_{Rotation and Revolution}
_"Studying the --- binaries, --- [a]stronomers have --- found that the [orbital] period[s] --- [vary from years to days to hours] and in some cases less than an hour --- (Cyg, V1644(29) orbits --- [in] 44.6 minutes).
_"Perusal of the literature does not seem to show any discussion --- that many of them could be planets with satellites.
_"[In] the solar system, --- the orbital periods of satellites around their planets are much shorter than [that] of planets around the sun.
_"We also see that the distances between planets to their satellites are much smaller than the distances of the sun to its planets.
_"for such --- an object to [orbit a binary] in a few hours [at the calculated orbital radius], it must be moving with a speed of at least one-eighth the speed of light [whereas a much smaller orbital radius would show a much more reasonable orbital speed].

_{Velocities}
_"Astronomers [using] the Doppler effect [to determine] orbital velocity --- found that in a large majority of cases, orbital velocities of an object in a binary were much less than 50 km/sec.
_"Having both orbital velocity and the period of orbit, one can easily calculate the size and radius of orbit.
_"Having done this, astronomers were surprised by their size.
_"Some were so small that the entire orbit could fit inside the sun.
_"It follows that the size of the object itself must be as small as that of a planet or even smaller, the size of the satellites of planets.
_"In the solar system, the orbital period of Pluto around the sun is about 2.5 centuries and that of --- Sedna is 10,000 years.

_{Hydrogen Clouds}
_"It has been 35 years since astronomers discovered clouds of atomic hydrogen moving at peculiar velocities of hundreds of kilometre/second through our galaxy.
_"Some astronomers have suggested that the clouds are relatively nearby, perhaps a few hundred ly (light years) away, while others think that they are at distances of millions of ly from the galaxy.
_"the actual distances [may be] --- light days rather than hundreds [to] millions of light-years.

_{Betelgeuse}
_"[If Betelgeuse has] a diameter 600 times the sun['s] --- its volume is 216,000,000 times larger than the sun['s].
_"astronomers --- claim that its mass is only 20 times the mass of the sun.
_"[That would make] the average density of Betelgeuse --- 0.000,000,1309 g/cm^3 [or] 9,874 times less than the density of the earth’s atmosphere, at sea level, --- almost a vacuum.
_"[Since] most of the mass must be concentrated at the core --- most of the [volume] inside the star would have a density much lower than what we calculated.
_"[Since] Betelgeuse is red in colour --- astronomers believe that it has a temperature thousands of degrees lower than the sun.
_"A [volume] with low temperature and near-vacuum density would be virtually transparent and would not likely show itself with a visible disc.
_"The fact that the disc of Betelgeuse is so visible that astronomers can measure the diameter of its disc proves that most of the space inside Betelgeuse could not be in a state of near-vacuum [so it's probably much smaller, closer and denser than claimed].

_{Novas}
_"An object that suddenly shows up as a luminous point of light displaying an increasing brilliance, and then later, becomes fainter or disappears over a period of time, is called a “nova”.
_"Another characteristic of a nova is that its light is always faint.
_"Unlike novas, supernovas appear with luminosity many times greater than novas.
_"Since many novas show up regularly, some astronomers speculated that these objects periodically undergo a small explosion.
_"In this chapter, reasons will be given indicating that novas are not exploding stars at all but, rather, planets.
_"[Here is] why they are planets and not stars.
_"First of all, a nova’s light is always faint.
_"Secondly, its colour is always white-blue, similar to that of some planets and very different from the sun.
_"Furthermore, the study of novas has shown that they always orbit a very small star of the type that astronomers call a “white dwarf”. [LK: Could a white dwarf be a brown dwarf, like Saturn?]
_"a scientific encyclopaedia --- states that a nova moves around a star, its orbital period is short, and its mass is low.
_"a nova could be a planet whose light is a reflection from the light of the star it orbits
_"Supposing that a nova’s light is only a reflection of star light, it follows that nova light is not as bright as that of the star.
_"The reason a nova suddenly shows up is because it is orbiting a small star.
_"As it moves around the star, it may suddenly reach a position where it reflects the light of the star in our direction.
_"The fact that these objects have a short period of orbit indicates that they are small and orbit another small object which astronomers call a white dwarf.
_"Secondly, in the above quote, one finds that novas have low mass, comparable with that of planets or satellites, and not stars.
_"Finally, some strong arguments supporting the theory that novas are planets is that some of them show up regularly and that their light changes periodically.

_{Quasars}
_"In the chapter about the Milky Way it will become clear that quasars are stars that are similar to our sun and that they are not as far away as astronomers think they are.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents ... eme_white/
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10 ... 175.001353
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betelgeuse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... web_print/
http://books.google.com/books?id=SCCwEb ... CDQQ6AEwAQ

[GaryN]

@sjw40364

Can see the moon from Mars, but no stars.

No stars, but I was also wondering about what Earth must look like from Mars, as this image was taken at only 6 million miles, whereas Mars averages around 120 million miles from us. Would it have faded out by the time you get to mars if the inverse square law applies? If Mars appears to us as clearly as it does, then Earth from Mars must be even brighter, but going by that image, that seems unlikely.

Earth seen from Mars. This is the only shot I can find, but surely they could get something better? What about a pretty conjunction sometime? Or maybe there is no serious interest in astronomy from Mars?

Stars in Orion as Seen from Mars. An 8 second shot from the Spirit rover panoramic camera, which claims an Imax class image due to its CCDs. "They are the world's highest performing chips in terms of light sensitivity and chip quality," NASA says. My ancient digital camera will do better than that, I believe, with a 4 second exposure. I think the thinner Martian atmosphere does not allow for as much of the conversion process that occurs in Earths atmosphere, thus the fainter images even with long exposures.

Spirit captured some images on Sol 585, but no exposure times are given. They look very long, or high ISO to me, but where are the clear, sharp images we should see from that device?

Raw images from Sol 585
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/ ... _p585.html
It all makes sense if the ionosphere/atmosphere is what determines star visibility from a planets surface, and why none show up from orbiting devices or deep space without extremely sensitive imagers and some fancy techniques and calibrations by NASA.

[sjw40364]

Not claiming this is true, just a possibility, but more likely since mars has less atmosphere, there is less absorption of the sun's rays around the edges of the planet, therefore less shadow and stars appear less bright. The same effect preventing apollo 13 from seeing stars until they reached the moons shadow. Since the moon has no atmosphere no difused and refracted light reaches its opposite side unlike Mars and Earth. Also most extraplanetary pictures are to photo the planets, not stars. Go out on a clear night and snap a photo of the stars, they wont be there unless you use long exposure times which overexposes the planetary features, the reason for the missions, not the stars.

Why you also see no stars in lunar mission photos, they were snapping pictures of the lunar landscape, not time exposing for stars. Even in shadow on the Earth (nightside) the Sun is so bright only time exposure shows stars.
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archiv ... l/2011/06/
I do agree with you on the clarity of the photo, it should be clearer, but perhaps that is due to Mars having more dust in its atmosphere than Earth. It does rain here and cleans the atmosphere. So mars has less light from more absorption, but also more dust grains preventing clearer images.

[Lloyd]

I hope we can get back to evidence for and against Katirai's theory now.

More from Katirai
http://www.scribd.com/doc/61291192/AstronomyDec28-2008
Is anyone particularly impressed with any of the following from Katirai? Or are there any statements you disagree with, and, if so, why?

_{Galaxies}
_"galaxies visible by the most powerful telescopes are not millions or billions of light-years away, but are less than a few thousand light-years distant.
_"Secondly, the centre of a galaxy is not made up of millions of stars, but rather, is made of only one star.
_"Thirdly, around the centre of a galaxy there are less than a few hundred planets, and not billions of stars.
_"Fourthly, the clouds that we see in a galaxy are not aggregates of billions of stars, but rather, they are asteroids, rocks, and minerals, some in the form of dust and gas.

_{Clouds}
_"If the Milky Way were made of stars, then we could see images of those stars in this photograph.
_"Instead, we see clouds and several objects appear to be asteroids or planets within the clouds, but no objects that could be called stars. [LK: See Nick's photo earlier, which shows stars or something within clouds.]
_"Furthermore, if the objects were stars, they would have illuminated their surrounding clouds.
_"The photograph shows that both the objects and the clouds are reflecting, rather than giving, light.

_{Milky Way}
_"These new interpretations will then be applied to our Milky Way galaxy.
_"It could be reasoned that the centre of the Milky Way galaxy may not consist of millions of stars, but rather of a single, massive star: our sun.
_"Furthermore, almost all of the alleged ‘stars’ in the plane of the Milky Way are either planets or asteroids, that have been mistaken for stars; the light of the Milky Way is only the reflection of the light of the sun. [LK: Or they may shine by glow mode discharge.]
_"And finally, the diameter of the Milky Way is not a hundred thousand light-years wide, but rather, it is less than 30 light-days. [LK: That's 476 billion miles in diameter, 238 billion miles radius, almost 150 times farther than Pluto.]

_{Andromeda Galaxy}
_"Astronomers believe that the sun, at a distance of 32 light-years, appears as a star of fifth magnitude.
_"In other words, the sun appears 2.512 times brighter than a star that is barely visible to the naked eye.
_"This means that the sun from a distance greater than 50.71 light-years would not be visible to the naked eye.
_"In --- Chapter 1 we saw that looking through a large telescope such as the Hubble we can see 357 times farther away than the naked eye sees.
_"Therefore, the greatest distance that the Hubble enables us to see a great star, such as the sun, is 18,110 light years.
_"Likewise, it is not possible for any star in the Andromeda galaxy to be visible from a distance of 2.4 million light-years away.
_"Rather, the distance must be tens of thousand of times less.
_"Dutch-American astronomer Adriaan Van Maanen, who was the leading expert in the field of astrometry (the precise measurement of stellar position and motion) also measured the parallax of the Andromeda galaxy and found it to be 0.004['] ± 0.005" which placed it at a distance of 815 light-years.
_"These findings suggest that the Andromeda galaxy is not only nearby, but small.
_"Further confirmation came when Van Maanen, by using a very large 152 – centimetre plate, found distinctive changes indicative of the rotation of the galaxy against the background of a field of stars, confirming that the galaxy must be small and nearby.

_{Galactic Centers}
_"astronomers speculated that the centre of a galaxy is made of millions of stars.
_"All the evidence not only negates this idea, but points to the fact that there must be only one star in the centre of a galaxy.
_"Examining the image of any galaxy, one can see that at its centre there exists only one bright and yellowish object that makes up the centre of the galaxy.
_"One can also see that all the bluish or whitish objects in the spiral arms are circling that yellowish centre.
_"many have attempted to resolve the centres of galaxies into stars and all have failed. [LK: Nick showed a link to possible stars resolved near the center of M31.]
_"Could it be that the reason for their failure was that the centre of a galaxy is not made of many stars, but rather, is made of only one star? There have been vast quantities of photographs of galaxies taken in which individual stars can be easily seen in the spiral arms of the galaxy.
_"No photograph shows a centre full of stars.
_"Astronomers claim that the centre of a galaxy is made of millions of stars but at the same time, they contend that the small and bluish objects circling the centre are stars.
_"If we compare the size of the centre to the size of each of those bluish objects, we see that the size of the centre is only a few times larger.
_"If astronomers were correct and the centre of galaxies were made of hundreds of million of stars, then the centre should have been billions of times larger than any of those stars that are circling the centre.
_"In other words, if the centre of a galaxy were made of millions of stars, the total volumes that those stars occupy, plus the spaces that should separate them, all combined would create a volume hundreds of billions of times larger than that of a single star.
_"On the contrary, the diameter of the centre compared to any of the bluish objects circling the centre is only several times larger.
_"This clearly disproves the idea that the centre of a galaxy is made of hundreds of millions of stars, unless we assume that the each of the bluish objects are made up of millions of stars or each millions of times larger than the sun.
_"However, this is not the case because astronomers, using large telescopes, have been able to resolve and study each of those bluish objects individually.
_"Moreover, by using spectroscopic instruments, they were able to determine which ones are members of binaries and even to determine the velocities, periods of orbit of some around the others and their mass.
_"The fact that the relative diameter of a centre of a galaxy is not much different from the bluish objects that circle the centre proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the centre of a galaxy could not possibly be a conglomeration of millions of stars.

_{M100}
_"There is something special about the image because it shows the central core of the galaxy M100.
_"The image on the left (see figure 9) shows the galaxy as a whole.
_"The small square in the middle shows the area that has been enlarged by the telescope and presented in the next image shown on the right.
_"This enlarged image taken by the Hubble telescope shows that the nucleus of the galaxy is a yellowish star similar to the sun.
_"The smaller objects that have blue colours are circling that centre.
_"This image is evidence that shows there is no such a thing as “hundreds of millions of stars” in the core but that there is, rather, only one star.

[GaryN]

Is anyone particularly impressed with any of the following from Katirai? Or are there any statements you disagree with, and, if so, why?

I mainly agree with all of those points, but Katirai talks of reflection, as do you, and I am trying to show that reflection will not work. For one thing light does not reflect from a gas, and from a sparse dust the tiny little specs of reflection would not be visible more than a few feet away. While Katirais model can not be proven, neither can the mainstream model of the cosmos, but if I can show an alternative to the standard model that does allow for the viewing of distant objects, then it would lend support to Katirais proposals. The fact that I can not make reflection work even within the Solar system indicates that something is fundamentally askew.
This is by far the most complex subject I have attempted to solve, and now it comes down to some even more uncertain ground, regarding the sensitivity of the human eye, which some think has single photon sensitivity, but even if it does, the number of photons (if they exist!) required for conscious awareness has been estimated at between 150/second to half a million/second.

[LK: Or they may shine by glow mode discharge.]

Closer, but the conventional model of rays of light doesn't work here either. A glow in the visible range again would fall off very quickly. With all recent instruments, they are looking for the spectra of the elements, and the strongest 'light' will be the Lyman Alpha hydrogen line, but this is in the UV, and we could not see it by eye. So what makes 'stars' visible in our night sky, or the dust and debris of the Milky Way visible, when the only emissions robust enough for us to 'see' are in the UV?
As part of my search for answers, I have tried to model the reflection of the Moon, but regardless of the surface roughness I apply, or the bumpiness, a full phase moon will always display some specular effect, given the intensity of sunlight I would need to make the Moon visible to us on Earth. We see no specular effects on the Moon. My calculations so far have reduced the average reflected light flux from the lunar surface to 13.5 watts/sq.ft, using the accepted TSI at the Moon (same value as Earth) but that light is then being diffused by the surface, which means next to nothing (and I say nothing at all) would reach Earth.

One piece of software that seems to be quite good at portraying the darkness of space is Celestia. Turn off the ambient light, turn off the stars and galaxies, leaving only the planets turned on, and then go visit one of the spacecraft around the Moon or Mars, and you get some idea of just how black it is out there, even though Celestia is using the illumination values calculated by using a conventional, i.e. transverse model of light waves and associated reflection and diffusion. Without that light, it would be totally black out there, apart from where there is a planetary ionosphere to look through to see the 'stars', or to provide illumination of a planetary/moon surface if you are within the relatively short range of the transverse waves created on and close to that surface. It also seems that the solar dust disk and the corona can make 'stars' visible to some degree, going on results from Apollo era low light photography experiments.

[sjw40364]

Is anyone particularly impressed with any of the following from Katirai? Or are there any statements you disagree with, and, if so, why?

I mainly agree with all of those points, but Katirai talks of reflection, as do you, and I am trying to show that reflection will not work. For one thing light does not reflect from a gas, and from a sparse dust the tiny little specs of reflection would not be visible more than a few feet away. While Katirais model can not be proven, neither can the mainstream model of the cosmos, but if I can show an alternative to the standard model that does allow for the viewing of distant objects, then it would lend support to Katirais proposals. The fact that I can not make reflection work even within the Solar system indicates that something is fundamentally askew.
This is by far the most complex subject I have attempted to solve, and now it comes down to some even more uncertain ground, regarding the sensitivity of the human eye, which some think has single photon sensitivity, but even if it does, the number of photons (if they exist!) required for conscious awareness has been estimated at between 150/second to half a million/second.

[LK: Or they may shine by glow mode discharge.]

Closer, but the conventional model of rays of light doesn't work here either. A glow in the visible range again would fall off very quickly. With all recent instruments, they are looking for the spectra of the elements, and the strongest 'light' will be the Lyman Alpha hydrogen line, but this is in the UV, and we could not see it by eye. So what makes 'stars' visible in our night sky, or the dust and debris of the Milky Way visible, when the only emissions robust enough for us to 'see' are in the UV?
As part of my search for answers, I have tried to model the reflection of the Moon, but regardless of the surface roughness I apply, or the bumpiness, a full phase moon will always display some specular effect, given the intensity of sunlight I would need to make the Moon visible to us on Earth. We see no specular effects on the Moon. My calculations so far have reduced the average reflected light flux from the lunar surface to 13.5 watts/sq.ft, using the accepted TSI at the Moon (same value as Earth) but that light is then being diffused by the surface, which means next to nothing (and I say nothing at all) would reach Earth.

One piece of software that seems to be quite good at portraying the darkness of space is Celestia. Turn off the ambient light, turn off the stars and galaxies, leaving only the planets turned on, and then go visit one of the spacecraft around the Moon or Mars, and you get some idea of just how black it is out there, even though Celestia is using the illumination values calculated by using a conventional, i.e. transverse model of light waves and associated reflection and diffusion. Without that light, it would be totally black out there, apart from where there is a planetary ionosphere to look through to see the 'stars', or to provide illumination of a planetary/moon surface if you are within the relatively short range of the transverse waves created on and close to that surface. It also seems that the solar dust disk and the corona can make 'stars' visible to some degree, going on results from Apollo era low light photography experiments.

Yes, this is my biggest problem as well, but was trying to work through all the other parts first since this is the main test of both cosmologies. I think the biggest problem is transverse waves. I think we only observe transverse waves as the longitudinal waves interact with our eyes and are converted to them at the molecular level. I believe longitudianal waves are self-propagated through space, contain their own electric and magnetic fields, but unlike transverse waves, the electric and magnetic fields both travel in the same direction, which is why some have claimed discovery of both electric and magnetic fields for light, but not at the same time. I quite agree on the reflection issue if we consider the reflected light as a transverse wave, Which would mean any star far enough away to be barely visible would mean its galactic cluster or reflected light off of dust and planetoids should be invisible. But if the waves actually propogate as longitudinal waves and only become transverse waves upon detection, does the same drop-off occur?
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hb ... ralon.html
We say the EMF spectrum is a transverse wave, but I believe it is longitudinal until it interacts with an object, at which point it becomes a transverse wave. So the inverse square would only apply one-way, from the reflected source, not both too it and from it, making it a square of the distance not an inverse square of the distance. Any studies into londitudinal waves? Ideas appreciated.