Recent content by mikenw

I can follow what you are saying up to a point, but that doesn't explain the ring effect which appears to be the case with all of the these small light sources when viewed out of focus. Why does a disc become a ring, with a darker center? For example, back in the last total solar eclipse for NA...

I am aware of the pinhole effect, I just never considered that it would work at some great distance. Pinhole glasses are one thing, seeing point sources of some distant pinhole is another. The grid pattern is evenly spaced although since this is the back of a chair, it does have a slight bow to...

I was just using a small cheap camera, with not much exposure control. As for the interference explanation, I am still trying to wrap my head around how that works. I did try as you suggested to turn the chair at an angle and look through that and I still see the same effect although it seems...

Thank you Merlin3189 for that! I will have to do more research on how interference works.

Thank you Drakkith for your reply. If your guess is correct, wouldn't that mean that I should see the stars in the night sky as points of light? They are also point sources, like a pinhole. But the stars look very blurry to me.

I hope someone here can explain this curious light effect! Some background: I have a table with a laptop on it, and a chair sitting at this table that has a mesh back on it that has a pattern of ~2mm holes cut into black material in a regular pattern. I happened to notice one day that I could...

Hey folks, Can you help me understand exactly what is meant by the term "dipole pattern" in this context? Is it simply the fact that one direction measured + and the opposite direction measured - ? As in this illustration: This is throwing me for a loop because dipole field strength (at least...

Thank you Clanoth for clarifying that! I am curious why you say "this result is highly unlikely to hold up under scrutiny?" Is there some other more likely explanation for this dipole pattern?

Can someone describe for me the dipole pattern that was detected related to the fine structure constant? This thread talks about that pattern some. What I am trying to understand is how that dipole is oriented relative to the observer on Earth? Are we talking about a toroidal shape with a...