How much do we see of a star ?

[frank rabbets]

When I look at a star it seems to have quite a distinct margin. Then I thought if that was the actual diameter of the star itself or mostly light, the diameter of the star itself perhaps being much smaller. But how much smaller, even possibly invisible in size. I compared the diameter of what I saw with the distance between stars and it seems the diameter was far too big as the distance between stars is immense.

 

[MarkW]

My brain hurts...............)

 

[Shayne]

They are holes in the sky Frank E.T has us in a box and he like you is too big to see all the tiny perforations that prevent it from being light proof .

 

[frank rabbets]

That's a good idea Shayne.

 

[chadr]

Imagine it was totally dark, I mean TOTALLY dark. You have a 100w light bulb illuminated a mile away - you'd easily be able to see the light from it, in fact the light "source" may look bigger than the average house. Though it probably doesn't work like that in space............I dunno, I'm with Mark - my brain hurts!

Anyway, you only see what the White Mice want you to see........

 

[oblertone]

You need to factor in the fact that there is no 'dark' at night, it's all stars, it just they aren't bright enough for us to see with the naked eye.

 

[stumog]

Isn't the stars we see actually burnt out but theyou are so far away it takes so l9ng for the light to get here.

That's what I think I remember at least.

Was a while ago a studied it.

 

[flint]

Yes that’s true, thousands or millions of years ago when the light left them. I believe that the late Professor Julius Cöckwumbel of Badwurst University in Trippenheim put forward an often disputed theory that lights that appear to be in the sky at night are in fact only visible when we look at them.

 

[clivehorridge]

You're very philosophical lately Frank, what's up mate?

Actually, as were camping tonight in the middle of, well somewhere, but nowhere, no stray light from street lamps or anything, and it's beautifully clear.

The night sky is simply mind boggling, with no interference.

 

[Chas]

Anyway, you only see what the White Mice want you to see........

There speaks a Hitchiker fan,

 

[StarCruiser]

…with no interference.

Sounds like you've got the sky tuned in pretty well there Clive.

 

[frank rabbets]

Not working on the 80 Clive.

Nobody knows do they ..

 

[Shayne]

If it's a genuine question I would say Stu is right it's basically a gas explosion that happened thousands of years ago and it's taken this long for the light to reach earth .
Is our sun not just a much closer star in the process of burning itself out ?

 

[flint]

Being flippant before, but I think it’s perhaps down to the contrast between light and dark and how the eye handles things, accentuating and being more sensitive to any light in the darkness of the night sky. On a really dark, clear and moonless night here out in the sticks, I can see many stars, but as has been said, in somewhere like the desert it is an absolutely wonderful carpet of them (I suppose down to the reduced amount of water vapour in the atmosphere and the lack of any background light), and the brightness of individual stars is seemingly reduced.

 

[frank rabbets]

It's a serious question. I know we are seeing what happened but we ARE seeing a star. Like our sun it will have a distinct outline. When we look at a star is that the outline of the entire body or is the body much smaller ?

 

[flint]

I don’t think that we do actually see the star, what we see is the energy in the visible light spectrum that is being radiated. Everything that we see on earth (apart from things that are luminescent in themselves) and the planets in our solar system, is energy from our sun being reflected, much of that energy being outside the human sights visible spectrum (i.e infra red, ultra violet etc.) whereas the light from a star is the actual energy that it has given out.

 

[frank rabbets]

Seriously then if the star black it would be too small to see ?

 

[flint]

Yes, I'm no scientist, but I would think that would be right, but other species might be able to see the wavelength of any energy being sent out. All our senses are tuned in to allow us to be aware of different frequencies (wavelengths) that are important to us, our ears pick up something like 20hz to 20khz (though ageing brings the upper limit down) our eyes detect much higher frequencies (visible light) and touch enables us to feel if something is hot or cold, temperature is a measure of frequencies, how fast the molecules of something are vibrating. As an example of light not visible to us, here’s a link to NASA ultraviolet shots of our nearest galaxies showing much that we wouldn’t be able to see with the naked eye:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/magellanic-uv.html