From a distance, the Earth looks like a small blue dot...

Originally posted by Chadwickus
reply to post by Thurisaz

 

Um....

The Pleiades cluster is visible to the naked eye, from the ground on earth and they are 440 Light years away.

Earth, as seen by Voyager 1 was only 6.1 billions kms away, which is 0.000645 light years away and it is a barely visible dot.

Do you not see a discrepancy there?

So 6.1 bil kms equates to .000645 light years away? Well, excuse me for being a ignorant twat but how do you come up with that?

Until Scientists can absolutely prove that stars are stars, I will think what I like.

Originally posted by Hitotsumami
This was posted in Aliens and UFO's.

Yes I did choose to post it in this section, why?

because I believe that Aliens do visit earth very easily. People state that aliens such as the Pleiadiens have made contact with them. They say they come from Pleiades...so if it be a star, how could they live in a star?

But I guess all of the people that believe in UFOs and other lifeforms are full of BS and on drugs???







[edit on 27-6-2010 by Thurisaz]

Originally posted by Thurisaz

Until Scientists can absolutely prove that stars are stars, I will think what I like.

[

you can still think what you like, but here's how stars are identified:

cas.sdss.org...

Classifying star spectra was a key step for astronomers in discovering how stars work. Thus, in astronomy as well as other sciences, the seemingly ordinary step of classifying things eventually yields critical insights into our world.

reply to post by Pauligirl

Thanks for that.

What I should have said was I will keep an open mind about these things and I am not going to say, it is impossible or cannot be. There is so much that we don't know.

Originally posted by Hitotsumami
This was posted in Aliens and UFO's.

Yes I did choose to post it in this section, why?

because I believe that Aliens do visit earth very easily. People state that aliens such as the Pleiadiens have made contact with them. They say they come from Pleiades...so if it be a star, how could they live in a star?

But I guess all of the people that believe in UFOs and other lifeforms are full of BS and on drugs???

Hmm, was that final line directed at me? I am very sorry if my response came through negatively! I shall quote myself to clear it up any misunderstanding:

"While the universe's vastness does seem to allude to a higher chance that life exist elsewhere, it it not conclusive."

I do not think I mentioned that everyone who blieves in UFOs and other lifeforms are anything negative! My posts alludes to the fact that I am quite certain that life does exist elsewhere and may be capable of visiting us, but I cannot be for sure.

I require evidence for belief, and although there are tons of claims by respectable people, photographs, and videos (all which make me really think that UFO's ARE extraterrestrial and very well MAY exist), it is not physical conclusive evidence.

I do not mean any ill will towards anyone who believe anything. I hope you understand~

Kind regards






[edit on 27-6-2010 by Thurisaz]

reply to post by Hitotsumami


No it was not directed at you. It was an open question. I should have put a line under the sentence that I did direct at you.

I guess I am a annoyed when I am indirectly insulted. Another person here has implied that I was either onto or on something. There is no need for that. Cheers

Originally posted by Thurisaz
because I believe that Aliens do visit earth very easily. People state that aliens such as the Pleiadiens have made contact with them. They say they come from Pleiades...so if it be a star, how could they live in a star?

First off, if there's any life in the Pleiades Star Cluster, they would be on planets that orbit the stars. It's just like if we were traveling to other worlds and their inhabitants asked us where we were from, we would point to the star that our Earth orbits and say, "From there."

Second off, Billy Meier is a hoaxster and a fraud. His pictures have been exposed as photos of photos of photos of models. Or photos of paintings in dinosaur books. There is no truth to any of his claims.

[edit on 6/29/2010 by Kojiro]

reply to post by Kojiro


Yes, damn pity that he was a hoaxer.

Either way, I spent some more time thinking about this and came up with quite a depressing conclusion.

if we look like a pale blue dot from less than 1 light year away....

and we can clearly see Pleiades and they are more than 410 light years away...

They don't even know we are here. The Earths light would not even reach them.

OMG The Earth seems so insignificant and small now.

The closest star is about 120 light years away... we can see them but they can't see us.

formatting, urgh!

[edit on 29-6-2010 by Thurisaz]

Originally posted by Thurisaz
OMG The Earth seems so insignificant and small now.

That's the nature of the universe, Thurisaz. That's why I find it so humorous that people feel so self-important about our planet. We are just one insignificant speck amongst trillions of other insignificant specks. The sheer vastness of space is the reason why I love it so... it puts things in better perspective.

reply to post by Kojiro


Yes, we are really self centred at times.

I went home and then I was like, oh I made a mistake so came back to rectify it.

The closest star to us is only about 4 light years away!

Alpha Centauri

I wonder what Earth's illumination is like from 4 light years away?


Venus is also referred to as the evening star even though it is a planet!


Orion has stars that are 100 times bigger than our own Sun!

Betelgeuse

reply to post by Thurisaz


you cant see planets around other stars because the light from the star completely drowns out the light from the planet. ( by a factor of 10 million in the Infrared or 1 billion in the visible)

it would be the same for them looking at our star. We need special instruments such as occulters, cornographs or null interferomters to overcome this problem. These are being developed and should be launched in the next decade.

planets dont generate the light themselves they reflect the light from the star. If a planet never had a star you wont see it as theres nothing to illuminate it. Venus is lit up by our sun.

[edit on 30-6-2010 by yeti101]

reply to post by yeti101


Actually, we have directly photographed exoplanets. Sometimes without realizing it, as evidenced here.

A wealth of exoplanet data can be found at Wikipedia.

The Kepler observatory was launched in 2009 for the specific purpose of finding exoplanets.

reply to post by links234


i was really talking about earth sized 0.75 - 2 earth mass planets. Thats why i quoted the numbers we need to null the light by to see them (10 million in the IR or 1 billion in the visible.) It was a reply to a post where thurisaz asked what earths illumination would be like from 4 ly away and his speculation you could see exoplanets with the naked eye from earth.

yes weve imaged a few directly all massive ones using the techniques i quoted. Nasa are leading the way towards imaging earth sized planets www.centauri-dreams.org... in IR range at least. If adaptive optics improve we may not need to go into space to do it.

exoplanetary science is my specialist subject

Seeing the planets directly in the infra red range is great but seeing them in the visible is ultimately what we need to do. Some chemicals like oxygen we cant see in the IR and are only detectable in the visible range. We could see ozone in the IR which is a byproduct of oxygen and that would hint at oxygen but for life as we know it direct detection of oxygen is what we dream about in exoplanetary science.

A space based occulter would be able to null the light by 1 billion giving us that capability. But it looks like nasa would team it up with the James webb telescope which is an IR telescope. Effectively gimping the occulter back to IR range. We would prefer if nasa built a dedictated visible light telescope like hubble to pair with the occulter.

Hopefully as technology advances we will be able to build coronographs or null interferometers that are capable of nulling by 1 billion. We just have to wait and see and atm theyre at 100 million so "only" an order of magnitude to go




[edit on 1-7-2010 by yeti101]

reply to post by links234


How exciting!!!

A planet only about eight times the mass of Jupiter has been confirmed orbiting a Sun-like star at over 300 times farther from the star than the Earth is from our Sun. The newly confirmed planet is the least massive planet known to orbit at such a great distance from its host star. The discovery utilized high-resolution adaptive optics technology at the Gemini Observatory to take direct images and spectra of the planet.
ref

thanks for the info!

I know it probably doesn't support what I think though .... damn!!



[edit on 4-7-2010 by Thurisaz]