Astronomy Picture of the Day - 2-7-2019

Anyone ever notice that when looking out of the window in some starship scifi program, we dont see anything like that ?

a reply to: pikestaff

Not really. Unless your starship was very, very close to it, it wouldn't look like that to your eyes looking out a window.

The light from the nebula itself is very faint, and the human eye can only detect light down to about 1/5 of a second. Where as the camera, of course can be made to detect light much fainter, and show the wavelength (color) of it.

originally posted by: eriktheawful
a reply to: pikestaff

Not really. Unless your starship was very, very close to it, it wouldn't look like that to your eyes looking out a window.

The light from the nebula itself is very faint, and the human eye can only detect light down to about 1/5 of a second. Where as the camera, of course can be made to detect light much fainter, and show the wavelength (color) of it.

It wouldn't look like that even if you were very close to it. The light from the nebula is extremely diffuse.

BTW, what does "detecting light down to about 1/5 of a second" mean?

originally posted by: oloufo
a reply to: eriktheawful

beautiful! what i'm asking my self seeing this: whats the purpose? billions of stars for what? just for fun?
there must be life out there.

Is this a content-free posting on purpose or should I say without purpose. It does nothing to advance theories on the existence of non-terrestrial sentient life that we can relate to that may be able to come here and visit. There is no 'purpose' to the Universe. Also 'by must be life out there' do you mean single-celled organisms?

Sure, why not. It's only got a pretty large filter in front of that happening like the enormously improbable event of two molecules linking up to form a complex molecule.

I ask myself why people post this kind of nonsense. Is it so they can appear to be thoughtful, because it actually shows they are not. Go read some books my fellow ATS-ite, such as the one by Peter D. Ward, Donald Brownlee or

Alone in the Universe by John Gribbin

Hope this isn't too far off-topic.

a reply to: wildespace

As you know, our eyes do not work like a camera's CCD. The Iris in it is like our pupil, opening and closing to adjust the amount of light in, and our lens can focus that light.

However, unlike a CCD or film, in which we can open a shutter and just let the light pour in for as long as we want, the human eye doesn't work quite the same. The cones in the back of our eyes can only become so sensitive (but they get pretty darn sensitive), depending on the reading will depend on the answer to that question. I've seen shutter speeds for the human eye as fast as 1/200 of a second in some research and as slow as 1/5 of a second. Still others talk more of ISO, saying our eyes are like ISO 1 during bright daylight conditions, and ISO 800 during very low light levels.

It's why while looking up at the night sky, on a dark night (no moon), we can see stars...but only the brightest stars. Use the camera and even a 10 second exposure will show hundreds of thousands of stars that our eyes can not detect.

It's like the difference between using a video camera and a DSLR camera, one is doing X amount of frames per second, while the other is exposing light to a single frame for X amounts of seconds.

Here's a paper giving a talk about it (I'd provide more links, but you can do a search too and I have to run for now):

The Photographic eye

New desktop wallpaper!

Thanks!

originally posted by: Macenroe82
a reply to: TrueBrit


As for on topic, that is a very beautiful place.
I wonder if I can visit it in Elite Dangerous.
Hopefully it’s not permit locked.

I waited so many years to play the next Frontier Elite, and then gave up video games and forgot all about it. Finally they brought it out - do you know if it is true to the original.

I used to love the freedom it gave you to explore the universe - disappointing tho that after all these years we can't go to Barnards Star in real life.

S & F. Thanks for sharing this. Wow the universe is beautiful!!

originally posted by: eriktheawful
a reply to: wildespace

As you know, our eyes do not work like a camera's CCD.

And that is your solution to the Olber's Paradox, by the way.

a reply to: wildespace

mmmmm.....

To me the Inverse Square Law has more to do with it, but I digress......

originally posted by: eriktheawful
a reply to: wildespace

mmmmm.....

To me the Inverse Square Law has more to do with it, but I digress......

Well, yeah, it's still related. With a CCD and lots of patience, you can amass so many photons as to make the whole universe glow. Human eyes don't work like that, which is why space looks black to us.