reply to post by sty
You can't determine the size of a bright, nearly-point light source just by how many pixels it occupies in a digital image; as pixel wells fill up
they spill over into neighboring wells so all it can tell you is how bright the object is.
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I must concur, I'm a theoretical physicist here in UK and have been an amateur astronomer for the past 15 years. I'm pretty sure this is Mercury
and Saturn. Don't forget we're approaching a ring plane crossing, so saturn's rings have been narrowing up and will appear to be almost edge on
now and through next year.
I'm afraid you must seek your spaceships elsewhere!
[edit on 6-11-2008 by timelike]
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Stereo A (ahead) continues recording a very odd object as big as the Sun if not bigger (visually).
stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov...
the Sun is outside the right frame. The object in the left increased after September 14 until now
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reply to post by Gliese581
Two things. First, the heliospheric imager labels are reversed; the ahead view is from the behind satellite and vice versa because the imagers are
mounted on the sides of each spacecraft. The second thing is that I see no "objects" just light from the heliosphere:
www.springerlink.com...
These imagers look at earth-directed CMEs from our sides as they approach 1 AU and beyond, so naturally the light from an expanded CME is going to be
much larger than the sun dimensionally, but infinitely less dense as well.
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reply to post by Phage
Thanks phage. After viewing a time lapse video showing it coming into view I agree 100%. I thought we might be looking at the back end of a large
CME, but clearly it's just the milky way. It's much easier to tell what things are in these imagers when you look at them in full motion.
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