- #1
ostren
This has been bugging me for some time and I'd love to get a clearer picture. We know that photos from the various moon missions show a black sky without stars, and that has been explained to me before as resulting from the fact that those photos were taken in broad daylight, plus maybe the camera equipment was set for optimal recording of local features.
But it still tickles me a bit about the fact that surely the Earth's atmosphere is held to be responsible for the stars seeming "twinkling", as clearly that same atmosphere does a great deal of diffusing and diffracting of starlight. Even though stars are big and bright, the distances are so unimaginably large that to the unaided eye they must surely be infinitessimal pinpoints -- and I mean ULTRA-infinitessimal! Sure, the Hubble Space Telescope can see and photograph stars because of its great magnifying power. But I'm stuck on the notion that the unaided human eye cannot see stars. If I were sitting atop that Hubble scope, wouldn't I just see unadorned blackness out there?
But it still tickles me a bit about the fact that surely the Earth's atmosphere is held to be responsible for the stars seeming "twinkling", as clearly that same atmosphere does a great deal of diffusing and diffracting of starlight. Even though stars are big and bright, the distances are so unimaginably large that to the unaided eye they must surely be infinitessimal pinpoints -- and I mean ULTRA-infinitessimal! Sure, the Hubble Space Telescope can see and photograph stars because of its great magnifying power. But I'm stuck on the notion that the unaided human eye cannot see stars. If I were sitting atop that Hubble scope, wouldn't I just see unadorned blackness out there?