Re: Are Red Stars really red?
- From: "Mike Stone" <mwstone@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 12:49:17 -0000
"Phillip Thorne" <thorne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:n35jt15jh844ln28oru50jm37k397il09v@xxxxxxxxxx
> On Thu, 26 Jan 2006, rgorman@xxxxxxxxx (David Johnston) wrote:
> >Which is to say, if you stood on Darkover, would its sun actually look
> >"bloody" if you glanced up?
>
> In the late Robert L. Forward's _Flight of the Dragonfly_ (edited and
> reissued as _Rocheworld_), human explorers travel six lightyears to
> Barnard's Star, a red dwarf. He describes colors as looking normal,
> except for blue objects which appear black because of a diminution of
> blue frequencies in Barnard's output.
>
> (I.e., a blue object looks blue precisely *because* it absorbs
> everything but the blue elements of white light. If it's illuminated
> with green light, nothing much is reflected.)
>
> I don't know if this is an accurate assessment of Barnard's spectrum.
>
> ***
>
> Related topic: green stars.
>
> Doc Smith, _The Skylark of Space_, the... um... whatever the
> multiple-star system was with the bloodthirsty and naked green alien
> humanoids.
>
> Robert J. Sawyer's _Starplex_, in which a green star unexpectedly
> emerges from a jumpgate. An explanation follows that, no, it's just
> as white as any other star (being an incandescent source), but it
> contains an unusually high percentage of metals which alter that
> spectrum and, because the video image has been stepped down in
> brightness, the tinge is more perceptible.
>
> I once saw an astronomy text, in a college astronomy professor's
> office, with a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram showing a green sun. I
> expect it was a color calibration error in printing the color plate.
Eric Frank Russell had one in _Symbiotica_, but then he never was much of a
hard science man.
--
Mike Stone - Peterborough, England
"To be good is noble.
To teach others to be good is yet nobler - and far less trouble."
Mark Twain
.
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- Are Red Stars really red?
- From: David Johnston
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