[HN Gopher] Apparent size of Andromeda galaxy compared to the Moon
___________________________________________________________________
Apparent size of Andromeda galaxy compared to the Moon
Author : sieste
Score : 321 points
Date : 2022-10-20 22:33 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (astronomy.stackexchange.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (astronomy.stackexchange.com)
| possiblydrunk wrote:
| Oh man, if only we could see the deep sky like the cameras do
| (with long exposures/filters/etc). Space looks so underwhelming
| in comparison with plain human eyesight -- though it's still cool
| to see the stars from a dark site. Andromeda is a tiny fuzzy
| smudge in our eyes.
| specialist wrote:
| I think humans would relate to each other very differently if
| the stars (Milky Way) were normally visible.
| ISL wrote:
| _" I saw a star explode and send out the building blocks of the
| Universe. Other stars, other planets and eventually other life.
| A supernova! Creation itself! I was there. I wanted to see it
| and be part of the moment. And you know how I perceived one of
| the most glorious events in the universe? With these ridiculous
| gelatinous orbs in my skull! With eyes designed to perceive
| only a tiny fraction of the EM spectrum. With ears designed
| only to hear vibrations in the air. ...
|
| I don't want to be human! I want to see gamma rays! I want to
| hear X-rays! And I want to - I want to smell dark matter! Do
| you see the absurdity of what I am? I can't even express these
| things properly because I have to - I have to conceptualize
| complex ideas in this stupid limiting spoken language! But I
| know I want to reach out with something other than these
| prehensile paws! And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over
| me!"_
| wruza wrote:
| I relate so much to every bit of it. Being a human is not a
| blessing, but a curse truly absurd one for a conscious being.
| possiblydrunk wrote:
| That's beautiful. Forgive my ignorance -- what's that from?
| loganwedwards wrote:
| Ahh, great quote from Battlestar Galactica.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Please no one offer any more context! Anything else might
| end up being a spoiler for folks who haven't had the
| chance to enjoy it yet :)
| ISL wrote:
| Precisely why I left it un-referenced :).
| p1esk wrote:
| Is it a book, or TV show, or?
| simonh wrote:
| It's from the reboot of the TV show in the early 2000s.
| An incredible show.
| p1esk wrote:
| Thanks! Is it similar to Expanse?
| ISL wrote:
| If you like _anything_ in the spacefaring sci-fi genre
| and haven 't yet watched the 2000's iteration of
| Battlestar Galactica, you're in for one hell of a treat.
|
| Be forewarned. It is very difficult to avoid binge-
| watching the show.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| Looks like you can stream the whole series on Peacock.
|
| Warning! Peacock bizarrely separates the 3 hour long
| pilot episode (referred to as a 'mini series') from the
| rest of the series.
|
| Start here: https://www.peacocktv.com/watch-
| online/tv/battlestar-galacti...
|
| Then go here: https://www.peacocktv.com/watch-
| online/tv/battlestar-galacti...
| p1esk wrote:
| I did like Expanse, but I tried to watch a few of the
| older Star Trek and/or Star Wars movies (don't remember
| the difference), and I didn't like them at all.
| simonh wrote:
| It's at the hard sci fi end of the spectrum, compared to
| Star Trek and Star Wars, but not as hard edged as TE, but
| get close. They have FTL and artificial gravity, but the
| space combat portrays pretty decent zero-g manoeuvring
| and combat tactics. Some of the space battles are among
| the best ever committed to screen, and the most realistic
| before TE anyway although some Babylon 5 fans might
| argue. The CGI was a good generation or two better than
| B5 though and still looks great.
|
| There is some science fudging for sure, and I have to
| warn you later on it gets more and more metaphysical and
| ambiguous. The last season turned some fans off, but it
| really didn't bother me. I'd have rather is stayed more
| grounded, but even right to the end the characters and
| the storytelling carried me through. Some of it's tough
| watching, a few of the characters really go through the
| grinder.
|
| I'd highly advise checking some clips on Youtube, and
| maybe check out the Spacedock channel's analysis of some
| of the battles.
| andrewprock wrote:
| Arc fleet ship b
| chrononaut wrote:
| The first series or the remake?
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > And feel the wind of a supernova flowing over me!"
|
| The wind of a supernova flowing over you would be the end of
| you and everything around you.
| simonh wrote:
| It depends on your physical form and how close you got.
| With forms like ours yes that's the point he's making. In
| context it makes sense he's pissed off.
| shagie wrote:
| Even the neutrinos from a supernova would be enough.
| https://what-if.xkcd.com/73/
|
| > How close would you have to be to a supernova to get a
| lethal dose of neutrino radiation?
|
| > The phrase "lethal dose of neutrino radiation" is a weird
| one. I had to turn it over in my head a few times after I
| heard it.
| raydiatian wrote:
| > Only one neutrino will hit you every few years
|
| Ah, the excuse I've been looking for.
|
| "Can't come into work today, was hit by a neutrino this
| morning. Need to rest up."
| somat wrote:
| An even better one is proton decay.
|
| Proton decay is theoretically possible but has never been
| observed. and perhaps somewhere in the vast universe one
| might have done so... maybe.
|
| So I like to blame it on many of life's unexpected
| events.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_decay
| d0mine wrote:
| "there are about a trillion neutrinos from the Sun
| passing through it every second."
| ISL wrote:
| The wind you feel today probably has a meaningful supernova
| component.
| PhasmaFelis wrote:
| That's exactly the point, isn't it?
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Likewise magnification for bright objects like Saturn. Saturn
| is usually one of the brightest "stars" in the sky, but it's
| just a point of light without magnification. Once you add some
| magnification, it looks like all those photos you've seen of
| Saturn with the rings. It blows your mind the first time you
| see it.
| jader201 wrote:
| It may be obvious and this may be a bit pedantic, but the "actual
| size" and "size compared to the moon" part is confusing, as
| comparing the size of two objects is usually comparing two
| objects at the same scale.
|
| If someone was completely clueless, they would think Andromeda is
| a teeny tiny galaxy. But it's actually 110,000 light years wide
| -- quite a bit bigger than the moon. :)
|
| The title show just be something along the lines of "Andromeda in
| the sky if it were brighter, next to the moon". Or just
| "Andromeda if it were brighter".
|
| I say this because I've seen other "X compared to Y" articles on
| HN (one compared planets and the sun to the moon, where the moon
| was a pixel), and these are all at-scale comparisons. So I was
| expecting something similar here from the title.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > as comparing the size of two objects is usually comparing two
| objects at the same scale.
|
| It is actually quite common to hear that something in the night
| sky is xFullMoons distant/apart. Of course, that is a relative
| measurement of area of sky covered from a human's viewpoint
| while standing on terra firma. It's just a size/distance that
| is understandable by most people. Telling someone that one
| object is 3deg from another object means nothing. Knowing that
| the width of the moon is roughly 0.5deg means that it is the
| distance of 6 full moons is more relatable. So in this case,
| the width of the full moon is the scale
|
| Slight tangent, there are other measurements that make things
| easier to navigate[0]. The width of your index finger ~1deg,
| the width of 3 fingers ~5deg, the full fist ~10deg, the width
| of thumb/pinky fully extended ~25deg. Knowing these helps find
| other objects.
|
| [0]https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/measuring-the-sky-
| by-h...
| unnah wrote:
| It's even bigger than that: the diameter of the main galactic
| disk of Andromeda is 152 000 light years. There are additional
| stars orbiting the galaxy in a halo with a total diameter 220
| 000 light years.
|
| In comparison, Earth's moon is very much smaller, with a
| diameter of less than 1 light year.
| jader201 wrote:
| Yeah, I realized that after it was too late to edit. I posted
| that after a quick Google search -- I originally had no idea
| how big it was, but new it was more the 2x the moon :) -- and
| of course the big "110,000 light years" it returned at the
| top was the radius, not the diameter.
| santoshalper wrote:
| For some reason I really enjoy the way you describe the moon
| as having "a diameter of less than 1 light year.", which is
| also true of my cat and the shoe I am wearing. And everything
| else I have ever seen or will experience in my life.
| ronnirradd wrote:
| usrusr wrote:
| You'd have no trouble understanding that andromeda is a large
| number of magnitudes bigger than the moon even if your entire
| astronomical education was from that Star Wars intro scroller.
| It's a total non-issue.
|
| What I find surprising ( _really_ unexpected!) is how close
| this "appears bigger than the moon" observation makes our
| neighbor galaxy: considerably less than 100 "galaxy diameters"!
| My intuitive understanding of the vastness of space would have
| expected far more emptiness. (objectively, that's certainly
| more than made up by the insane amounts of emptiness we already
| have within each galaxy, but still, so close!)
| thfuran wrote:
| Andromeda Galaxy is visible at its actual brightness, but it
| appears much smaller than in that image because only the
| central area is bright enough to be seen. Thus the "actual
| size" part. I don't think anyone was going to demand a 100,000
| light-year wide image based on that phrasing.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've consed "apparent" onto the title above.
| haimez wrote:
| Thank you for your cons-cientious moderation!
| bumbledraven wrote:
| The apparent size of the Andromeda galaxy (M31) is 3.167 square
| degrees [1], and the angular diameter of Moon ranges from 29.3 to
| 34.1 arcminutes [2]. Using area = pr2, the apparent size of Moon
| ranges from 0.1873 to 0.2537 square degrees. Hence M31 should
| appear to be roughly 12.5 to 16.9 times the size of Moon.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda_Galaxy
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon
| bumbledraven wrote:
| I should have mentioned that area = p r2 is only an
| approximation for the moon's apparent size in square degrees.
| What we really want to calculate is the surface area of the
| spherical cap (on a unit sphere) with the same angular diameter
| as the moon. A formula for that is 2p(1 - cos r) [1], where r
| again is the radius of the moon in degrees. In this case, the
| two formulas give the same result to four significant digits
| (e.g. [2]).
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cap
|
| [2]
| http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2pi%281-cos%5B%2834.1%2...
| [deleted]
| rendall wrote:
| > _Hence M31 should appear..._
|
| I don't think square degrees should be used here. People don't
| visually approximate that way when fitting round objects into a
| space.
|
| Andromeda 3.167deg across its longest length. Moon 0.518deg.
| That's about 6 moons across the longest length.
|
| Andromeda is 1deg across the shorter axis. Approximately 2
| moons.
|
| So, _appearing_ about 10-12 moons in area maximum, shaving some
| off at the corners.
| 8bitsrule wrote:
| It's too bad it isn't brighter. I managed to see _most_ of it one
| time when I was in an place with 'good seeing' and a _very_ dark
| sky (150 miles from the nearest city).
|
| I'd been looking at that part of the sky for a long time, and was
| astonished that something that big had always been there!
|
| These maps may help you to find the nearest dark spots.
|
| US: https://www.go-astronomy.com/dark-sky-sites.php
|
| World: https://blue-marble.de/nightlights/2019
| ByThyGrace wrote:
| I would like to know if there's estimates for how long it
| should be before Andromeda gets near enough to be as visible as
| the moon in plain daylight. (All else being equal.)
| superposeur wrote:
| I've heard it said that the angular size of many astronomical
| targets is not so small -- that the real limit to seeing them is
| the overall amount of light collected.
|
| But then some basic sense of scale eludes me: 1) isn't most
| astronomical stuff insanely far away, to the point that it would
| have to be cosmically large to take up a medium angular size? 2)
| the angular "real estate" in the sky is severely limited (4pi
| solid angle) so wouldn't this get quickly used up such that we
| could only see a small collection of such objects? (Andromeda is
| already taking up a huge patch of the night sky!)
|
| Of course these are quantitative questions that can be settled by
| calculation, but does anyone have relevant intuition to offer?
| mandmandam wrote:
| Aahh, it's coming right at us!!
| ggm wrote:
| ignoring actual size, what is the APPARENT size of the object
| from the same observers point of view, if they could "see" all
| the fainter magnitude stars which make it up?
|
| thats what this shows. the arc of vision the moon covers, against
| the arc of vision the galaxy covers, for the same observer, if
| they are drawn "together"
|
| its right there in the title. Apparent size, is about what things
| "appear" to be to you, the observer.
| javajosh wrote:
| Just want to point out that it was only about 100 years ago
| humans discovered that galaxies exist. Good old Edwin Hubble
| doing observations from Palomar in a Southern California sky that
| was still good for seeing.
| exitb wrote:
| To be clear, people have discovered galaxies earlier, but
| didn't understand their true nature. Hence, the discussed
| galaxy was first known as "Andromeda Nebula".
| mnw21cam wrote:
| And anyone to anyone sailing on one of those first ships to
| Australia, the SMC and LMC would have been _really_ obvious
| in the sky. Sure, they 're only dwarf galaxies, but still.
| spindle wrote:
| I believe it was Lemaitre who first discovered that! Just in
| case it matters.
| djmips wrote:
| Apparently, there was lively debate prior to it being settle
| by Lemaitre and Hubble. I like the original name of 'island
| universes'
|
| https://physicsworld.com/a/shapley-curtis-and-the-island-
| uni...
| anandrmedia wrote:
| I got confused with the term "size compared to moon".
| ReptileMan wrote:
| Begs the question - if everything was brighter what would be the
| biggest object - excluding solar system and milky way.
|
| Quasar, Pulsars, Filaments...
| tombh wrote:
| I made that image![1]. And this is not the first time it's been
| on the front page of HN either[2]. So I'd like to share some
| context that I've not mentioned elsewhere before.
|
| My father died from alcoholism in 2004. He made his living
| writing software (hence why I do too, and why I enjoy HN). But he
| also, for a short time, taught Astronomy evening classes. I've
| always felt short-changed by the emotional absence and traumatic
| passing of my male parent. But the continued virality of this
| image has been some sort of magical glimmer from the depths of
| the universe that it was still his shoulders that I stood on in
| order to reach where I am today. Maybe it was the glint in his
| eyes every time he showed me the latest APOD image[3], and the
| deep love with which he would explain their contexts. I made this
| composite image of Andromeda and the moon precisely because of
| that extra commentary, or rather I should say, extra love, of the
| night sky that my father gave me. Seeing it here, sparkling in
| the "night sky" of the HN front page stirs the same kind of
| wonder I sometimes feel catching those million year old specks of
| light above my head. Reminding me that though the universe is
| mostly cold and dark that doesn't diminish its warmth and
| brightness.
|
| 1.
| https://www.reddit.com/r/spaceporn/comments/1u0dxs/andromeda...
|
| 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22992384
|
| 3. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
| mythz wrote:
| touching back story, thanks for sharing.
| [deleted]
| sph wrote:
| Beautiful (and well written) story, thanks for sharing.
| got2surf wrote:
| Thank you! For making the image, and sharing story behind it
| dmix wrote:
| > You should read Nightfall by Isaac Asimov. It's a short story
| about a planet that has four suns so it is always daytime,
| except for one night every thousand years.
|
| >> If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years,
| how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many
| generations the remembrance of the city of God!
|
| Love that Reddit comment.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/spaceporn/comments/1u0dxs/andromeda...
| credit_guy wrote:
| A bit tangential, but here we go.
|
| A place where there's daytime all the time, except every once
| in a while is quite close to us. It's the Moon.
|
| If you live on the near side of the Moon, then you always see
| the Earth hanging there in the sky in the same spot every
| day. It does not rise and it does not set, it just stays in
| place. But it goes through phases. New Earth, Crescent Earth,
| Half Earth, etc.
|
| The Sun does rise and set. A "day" on the moon is half a
| month long. When the Sun is in the sky, the Earth is at most
| in "half Earth" phase. When it's nighttime though, the Earth
| is at least "half Earth".
|
| And seen from the Moon, the Earth is big. Very big. Just take
| the Andromeda in the picture, and make it a disk. That's how
| big. (Actually about 15% bigger).
|
| The Earth is also bright. Much brighter than we see the Moon
| on a bright night. Earth's albedo is about 3 times higher
| than Moon's. All in all, at "full Earth", you would receive
| about 40 times more light that we get here from the Moon when
| it's full.
|
| In other words, when the Sun is not in the sky, you get
| enough light from the Earth to see around. The closer to
| "midnight" the more light you get, because the Earth is
| closer to "full Earth" phase.
|
| Of course, when you have a solar eclipse, you stop seeing
| light from either the Sun or the Earth. Here on Earth, solar
| eclipses are quite short. The moment of full eclipse is
| fleeting, generally it's 3 minutes or less. On the Moon,
| because the Earth is so much bigger in the sky, the eclipse
| is long. Of course, we knew that from here: when it's a solar
| eclipse on the Moon, it's a lunar eclipse on Earth, and that
| takes hours.
|
| It's not completely dark on the Moon when there's a solar
| eclipse.
|
| It's not completely dark here either. Because of the Sun's
| corona. The apparent diameter of the sun is virtually
| identical with the diameter of the Moon as seen from the
| Earth, but the Sun's corona extends a bit further, so we get
| to see it during total eclipse.
|
| But on the Moon, the Earth is so large that the Sun and the
| corona are fully obscured during total solar eclipse. What
| you will see instead is the Earth atmosphere. Very thin,
| impossibly thin, you will not be able to perceive its
| thikness. It will just look like a one-dimensional line. A
| part of it will be very, very bright. And very red. It will
| be a very bright, very large and very red circle in the sky.
|
| You will also see the inner planets, Mercury and Venus.
| Normally you can't see them on the Moon, but during a full
| solar eclipse they'll be quite close to that bright circle,
| and they'll be very bright themselves.
|
| And what a glory the Milky Way will be at that time. And if
| you are lucky, you'll see that very oblong shape that's the
| Andromeda. Somewhat faint, but still, much brighter than any
| of us here on Earth would perceive it.
| Someone wrote:
| > a planet that has four suns
|
| I remembered five; Wikipedia says six, two of which form a
| binary star system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightfall_(
| Asimov_novelette_an...)
|
| I also remember reading that such a system can exist, but
| can't find a reference. It's probably not that surprising,
| though, given that the proposed system has one large star and
| five minor ones, making it similar to a system with one star
| and five giant planets. Putting a planet in in such a way
| that it only has a night every 2000 years may be the only
| tricky part (giving it a much smaller orbit than the minor
| stars would help avoiding nights, but giving it a single moon
| that can cause nights once every 2000 years?)
| btilly wrote:
| And sadly with 4 suns the orbit would be chaotic and no
| periodic pattern would exist to be found. Which ruins the
| premise of the story.
|
| Foundation also fails because human society is chaotic so his
| psychohistory would never work.
| adrianN wrote:
| It's called science _fiction_ for a reason ;)
| polycaster wrote:
| Sure, but the _science_ is also there for a reason
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| This is lampshaded a bit in the novel length version of the
| story, where the theory of universal gravitation was
| invented only recently because the complexity of motion of
| the bodies involved made it incredibly non-obvious.
|
| Also, there are _six_ suns.
| xupybd wrote:
| Sometimes it's best just to enjoy the fiction and not over
| think it too much. I think you have to give them some
| artistic license.
| btilly wrote:
| He wrote both before there was general public awareness
| that a thing called chaos existed.
|
| True, Poincare had already worked out that gravity was
| chaotic. But Asimov was a chemist and so was unlikely to
| be familiar with that work.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| I suspect that Asimov was a better physicist than you.
| loonster wrote:
| Someone can be both a better physicist and have a poorer
| understanding of physics. We have the luxury of time. We
| can learn about the great discoveries that the great
| physicist developed from scratch. Just imagine the type
| of discoveries he would have made if he was born in the
| late 20th century.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Probably less than he did in this reality.
|
| We haven't discovered much, really.
| btilly wrote:
| Relevant to this discussion is that between then and now
| we have discovered a lot about the ubiquity of chaotic
| systems, and their practical consequences for
| forecasting.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Chaotic systems were well-known and had been studied in
| great detail before Asimov was born. He knew about
| chaotic systems, as anyone with a high-school level
| mathematics or physics education would have.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > Asimov was a chemist and so was unlikely to be familiar
| with that work.
|
| The premise is true but the conclusion does not follow.
| Asimov was one of the most prolific authors of popular
| science books including astronomy, cosmology, physics,
| etc. It's entirely plausible that he was familiar with
| chaos.
| btilly wrote:
| When the book was written in 1941, he was a graduate
| student. His attempts to popularize science were many
| years in the future. Lorenz's work with chaos and
| powerful enough computers to enable it were still 20
| years in the future. Terms such as "the butterfly effect"
| did not get introduced for another decade.
|
| It was unlikely that he was unfamiliar with chaos. Doubly
| so given that the first prediction of what we now call
| chaos theory is that we won't see the periodic behavior
| that is a fundamental premise of the story.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Don't worry, XKCD has you covered!
|
| https://xkcd.com/2623/
| biggc wrote:
| Akshually...
| dmurray wrote:
| A few details might need to be tweaked, but neither the
| story nor chaos theory is fundamentally incompatible with a
| solar system where night happens every few thousand years
| _on average_ , is unpredictable over long timescales but
| can be predicted years or decades in advance using 20th
| century technology.
| btilly wrote:
| The idea of the story? Of course.
|
| But the actual story as told? The regularity of
| civilization collapse was rather central to the people in
| the story.
| camillomiller wrote:
| You must be fun at sci-fi conventions afterparties
| eesmith wrote:
| > Foundation also fails because ...
|
| The Mule shows Asimov knew psychohistory would never work
| on its own.
|
| The recorded prediction of the crisis with the independent
| traders didn't happen, because of The Mule. This was the
| Era of Deviations, and it took centuries for the Second
| Foundation to manipulate things back to the Sheldon Plan.
|
| And of course, the influence of R. Daneel Olivaw across
| nearly 20,000 years, guided by the Zeroth Law of Robotics.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > with 4 suns the orbit would be chaotic and no periodic
| pattern would exist to be found
|
| This is only true for certain configurations of N-body
| systems. The solar system is an N-body system with periodic
| patterns, at least at a human timescale.
| btilly wrote:
| This is true as long as at least 3 of the bodies have
| comparable masses, or the timescale is long enough.
|
| The periodic behavior of the Solar System is because
| 99.86% of its mass is in the Sun. So every other
| interaction is a small rounding error. And therefore the
| Solar System is chaotic but with a long Lyapunov time -
| estimated at about 5 million years.
| feral wrote:
| The Wikipedia page on three body problem shows many
| periodic patterns.
|
| There appear to be stable configurations for the 4 body
| problem too, even if the 4 masses are similar.
|
| Its not fair to say there's no periodic pattern possible
| with 4 suns, then, even though most initial configurations
| might lead to chaotic behavior.
| tetris11 wrote:
| > Foundation also fails because human society is chaotic so
| his psychohistory would never work.
|
| Ant's are also chaotic as individuals, but if you get
| enough of them you can model them easily. We can already
| semi-predict global human behaviour; population graphs,
| economic charts, actions of specific demographics. When
| enough humans walk down a street, you can model their flow
| with fluid dynamics.
|
| Psychohistory wasn't a study of the intricacies of the
| human condition, it was an iterative model that follows
| general trends. It just happened to be sophisticated enough
| to predict thousands of years into the future _and_ to
| allow for outliers.
| btilly wrote:
| The whole weather vs climate argument.
|
| However when you look back over the last 200 years, one
| of the striking features is that every 10 years or so
| people are concerned about something very different than
| they were before, and which was often a result of a
| crisis that few were ready for. For example nobody in the
| Clinton era would have predicted 9/11. The 2008 financial
| crisis caught most of us by surprise. COVID was on
| nobody's radar. Nor did we expect Russia to launch a
| full-scale invasion of Ukraine (nor to lose if they did).
| And so on.
|
| I can't tell you what we'll all be worried about in 2030.
| It won't be COVID or Ukraine. My guesses include
| financial collapse, climate change, the collapse of
| Russia, the invasion of Taiwan, and so on. But odds are
| that it will be none of those things.
| tempestn wrote:
| Sounds like you would enjoy the Three Body Problem, if you
| haven't already read it (which I expect you have).
| raydiatian wrote:
| First book was great. Lost my ability to keep track of
| names as a non-Chinese speaker on the second one, for
| some reason.
| siquick wrote:
| Glad I'm not alone. I really want to love this series of
| books but I'm never excited about reading it because i
| find it too hard to follow.
| MezzoDelCammin wrote:
| same here. Not just the names, but IMO even the
| storylines get pretty convoluted by the second book. Game
| of thrones number of story branches, but French New Wave
| thickness of plots.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| saiya-jin wrote:
| For me its even the plot. I mean scientific parts are
| very fine, but human parts are meh at best.
|
| [minor spoilers below] It is practically a racist book
| where everybody non-chinese is evil, conspires to harm
| chinese in a comical villain fashion, should be killed,
| and is killed eventually. I get that 100 years ago
| similar literature was OK in the west too, but we moved
| our societies quite a bit since then.
| lgl wrote:
| > I get that 100 years ago similar literature was OK in
| the west too, but we moved our societies quite a bit
| since then.
|
| 100 years ago? Today, the ratio of militaristic "America
| F** Yeah!" sci-fi vs every other language is probably
| 100/1 and the amount of times the Chinese and Russian are
| the ones portrayed as evil in that literature is
| literally orders of magnitude greater. Are those also
| racist books?
| zasdffaa wrote:
| > Chinese and Russian are the ones portrayed as evil in
| that literature
|
| I've not noticed that. OTOH as a brit, the number of
| times I see us portrayed in American films as cold,
| unemotion, untrustworthy, manipulative, I could go on...
|
| Edit: on reflection that does seem to have died down a
| bit in recent years.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I don't think this is true at all. Especially the parts
| about the cultural revolution made me wonder how this was
| ever published in China at all.
|
| It was kind of refreshing to have someone else be the
| villain for once.
| pks016 wrote:
| What a coincidence! I'm currently reading Nightfall.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| A small counterpoint. The pain of losing someone is the cost of
| having someone decent and good, for the time you had with them.
| Some of us have never felt that because we've never had someone
| decent to lose (though I will be glad; feel the world a better
| place; when one of my parents dies, and mainly indifferent when
| the other goes, reflecting his apparent indifference to me.
| Sometimes being left alone is the better option).
|
| To all those with normal lives, make sure you count your
| blessings now, now when it's too late.
|
| Sorry for weird post, but I had to say it.
|
| Perhaps though, people should not go through life always
| acutely aware of what they've got. Perhaps in some ways it's
| better to feel your loved ones' presence but not think about
| it, sort of take it for granted, feel the warmth of their
| presence but not think about it. I don't know. Anyway, I'm glad
| you had him.
|
| BTW absolutely love the pic! I just wish I had the eyesight to
| see it. In fact In london, I wish I could just see the stars at
| all...
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| Saying "enjoy it while it lasts" serves no purpose other than
| to blunt a person's enjoyment of the the thing. They will
| already suffer when the the thing goes away...why remind them
| of their future suffering, causing double the suffering? If
| one person has a pleasant 15 minute call with their father as
| a result of reading this thread, but 30 people get depressed
| or anxious about not having visited their parents for too
| long due to the normal circumstances of life, there is a net
| loss.
| zasdffaa wrote:
| > Saying "enjoy it while it lasts" serves no purpose other
| than to blunt a person's enjoyment of the the thing
|
| Does it blunt it, or make you realise what you have while
| you have it, and value it the more? Or are you right and I
| acknowledged that possibility in my pentultimate paragraph?
|
| I hear a lot of regrets about people no longer there, I
| hear very little of people saying how lucky they are with
| their partner/parents/others. I just don't know.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I've used this photo to show friends the size comparison at
| star-parties! It's a great educational photo but also just
| beautiful.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Very good image, thanks for sharing it out there. Not even JWST
| could do that ha ha :-)
|
| Do you mind if I ask: is that image CC licensed at all?
| tombh wrote:
| Thank you :-)
|
| The base image is indeed public domain:
| https://www.flickr.com/photos/srahn/9013096528 But I don't
| remember where I got the image of Andromeda from. Not that I
| believe I have any power to claim rights over it, but I've
| always considered it to be affectively CC licensed.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Which animal has eyes best biologically tuned to star gaze? And
| when cam I get that transplant.
| somat wrote:
| This (or some sort of very similar comparison) prompted me to
| figure out how to locate Andromeda. And I could not see anything,
| So I bought a nice pair of binoculars, and perhaps I could see
| something, but it was impossible to tell for sure. until I went
| camping in Arizona, I was looking at the stars, I remembered how
| to find Andromeda, remembered my binoculars. everything had came
| together and there it was! it looked like a blue mist.
|
| But really it was a nearly spiritual experience. Out in the cold
| Arizona desert, more stars than I have ever seen in my life and
| you bring up a pair of binoculars to what looks like an empty
| area of sky and it too is full of stars, And there is this blue
| mist, the furthest thing you can see with the naked eye(at least
| with better eyes than mine) with billions and billions of stars
| contained within. I don't know, but you feel stuff under those
| circumstances.
| tempestn wrote:
| How amazing would it be if it were as bright as in the photo
| though? We'd probably take it for granted, but at the same
| time, maybe not always. I'll sometimes marvel at the moon when
| you can really see its details and three-dimensionality, and
| that's just a moon. I expect being able to look up and see a
| whole galaxy with your naked eyes like that would be a pretty
| incredible experience.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| If you have good eyesight (or good glasses/contacts
| prescription), you can see it without binoculars (at least the
| brighter core of the galaxy). Just don't look directly at it or
| it disappears, because you don't have rod cells in the middle
| of your field of view.
| ISL wrote:
| I often recommend to beginning sky-watchers that they try
| looking at the night sky with a large pair of binoculars (look
| for large objective-lenses and not too much magnification)
| rather than a telescope.
|
| The nebulae and larger Messier objects are beautiful and
| approachable with bright handheld optics.
| pophenat wrote:
| A small bit of advice from me: consider the weight of the
| binoculars when buying them. They can be too heavy to hold
| for more than a minute - especially large ones made for
| astronomy. You will either want a tripod (which is
| inconvenient to carry around and set up), or you'd want the
| binoculars to be smaller in size.
| vl wrote:
| For any practical viewing with binoculars you do need a
| good tripod - otherwise instead of stars you'll see shaky
| lines. Unlike daytime viewing your eye/brain doesn't
| eliminate small shakes, or maybe it's just harder to
| stabilize binoculars when looking up.
| bumbledraven wrote:
| Or you can buy image stabilizing binoculars which
| mechanically keep the image steady in your view despite the
| slight motion of your hands.
| sph wrote:
| I didn't know this was a thing.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image-
| stabilized_binoculars
| lightbulbjim wrote:
| There's something special about the actual photons hitting your
| eyeball, instead of just looking at a picture.
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| I just about fell on my arse the first time I saw Saturn
| through my telescope, actually looking at it and seeing the
| rings. Rings, right around a planet, right there. I couldn't
| see a lot of of detail because it's a fairly small refractor
| but there it was, a planet with rings.
|
| Rings. Right around a whole fucking planet. Right there for
| everyone with a couple of hundred quid's worth of glass and
| aluminium and a reasonable view of the night sky to see.
| Just, right there in the sky, bright and clear.
| dm319 wrote:
| I know exactly what you mean. I saw it with a PS40 amazon
| telescope.
|
| You know that weird feeling when you, for whatever reason,
| take another route from somewhere you know well, find
| you've arrived at an unusual end of another place you know
| well. The moment of connection, realisation that these two
| places are linked in this way.
|
| I felt that, but on a huge level seeing Saturn's rings for
| the first time. For years outerspace, without me realising,
| occupied a place in my encyclopedias, books, internet
| images from NASA. Maybe subconscious me didn't really
| 'believe' it was actually just above my head this whole
| time.
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| Great analogy. Lovely way of thinking about it.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I mean, in Southern Hemisphere you can see ie Large Magellanic
| Cloud with naked eye, and its by definition another (albeit
| smaller) galaxy.
|
| I do _love_ astronomy and can stare at starry skies on top of
| mountains for half a night, but you don 't need to buy some
| crazy equipment to see similar things, just travel a bit (or
| not if you live there).
|
| I believe mankind would be mentally in a bit better place of
| all folks that want enjoyed starry nights more often, and maybe
| grokked a bit what they actually see. Humility and all.
| Medox wrote:
| > billions and billions of stars contained within. I don't
| know, but you feel stuff under those circumstances.
|
| Obligatory link to Gigapixels of Andromeda[1]. There are other
| Gigapixels of Andromeda videos out there but this one also has
| the perfect background music.
|
| Crazy how "billions and billions" might be an understatement,
| looking at how many stars appear after the 2min mark alone. And
| Andromeda is not even a huge galaxy[2].
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udAL48P5NJU
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_galaxies
| em-bee wrote:
| i saw a similar image in a documentary video. i was so impressed
| by it that i took a screenshot, intending to look up more about
| that some time. looks like i don't have to do that anymore
| because HN brought it to me.
| Archelaos wrote:
| I once tried to observe Andromeda on a clear night with simple
| binoculars. The hardest thing was not to shake too much, to get a
| good view. In the binoculars it was clearly larger than the moon.
| It appeared like a smudge with a very soft eliptic halo. I was
| surprised by its size.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| The image of M31 in the sky reminded me of that StarTrek DS9
| wormwhole. How's going there, Cmdr Sisko?
|
| I do agree that without the myriad of stars from our Milky Way
| the M31 looks very much pasted in.
| 5mv2 wrote:
| Fun classics for star lovers:
|
| - The three body problem
|
| - The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy
| lopuhin wrote:
| A nitpick on the image Andromeda image: when viewed with
| telescope and in most images you can find online, the core of the
| galaxy and the region around the core is much brighter than the
| outer branches, while on the composite image it looks like the
| core is dimmed to make the outer branches stand out more.
|
| So the actual bright part of the Andromeda, seen with naked eye
| under dark skies, is much smaller.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-21 23:02 UTC)