[HN Gopher] 'Sun-Like' Stars
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       'Sun-Like' Stars
        
       Author : JPLeRouzic
       Score  : 57 points
       Date   : 2025-04-09 08:01 UTC (15 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.centauri-dreams.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.centauri-dreams.org)
        
       | claudex wrote:
       | Aren't they all bought by Oracle ? /j
        
       | serpix wrote:
       | you interfered with the browser scroll and for that you deserve a
       | loud BOO.
        
         | michaelsshaw wrote:
         | fucking smooth scrolling on my thinkpad holy fuck
        
         | itishappy wrote:
         | Scrolling is fine for me. Maybe the animated header?
        
       | the_af wrote:
       | Any idea who this Paul Gilster is? Or Tau Zero? He says he was
       | trained as a medievalist who later turned into flight instructor
       | and now he's obviously fascinated with astronomy and exoplanets.
       | 
       | I'm always wary of sites like this, but this one seems to have a
       | long history, starting in 2004, and as far as I can tell the
       | articles are solid (or at least, not quackery). This article in
       | particular seems reasonable, too.
        
         | ant6n wrote:
         | > I'm always wary of sites like this
         | 
         | I can't really think of much that is more legit than a special
         | purpose blog distilling current research papers into long form
         | blog posts, except perhaps the research papers themselves?
        
           | lawlessone wrote:
           | As long as they stay that way.
        
           | ziddoap wrote:
           | For every site doing that, there are 10 sites pretending to
           | do that, with various levels of quackery.
           | 
           | It makes sense to be wary at first.
        
             | indoordin0saur wrote:
             | I feel like quackery and clickbait give strong vibes which
             | can be detected immediately. This has the feel of an
             | educated and deeply interested hobbyist or some
             | astronomer's side project.
        
               | the_af wrote:
               | Agreed that it has the right vibes.
               | 
               | But it always pay to be a little wary, which is why I
               | made my comment.
        
           | the_af wrote:
           | > _I can 't really think of much that is more legit than a
           | special purpose blog distilling current research papers into
           | long form blog posts, except perhaps the research papers
           | themselves?_
           | 
           | If that's what they are doing. But it's hard to tell without
           | looking carefully and sifting through more than a couple of
           | articles.
           | 
           | Like I said, it _seems_ legit.
        
         | hnuser123456 wrote:
         | Apparently Tau Zero was created after a government program to
         | investigate interstellar travel propulsion methods concluded,
         | and the program manager wanted to keep it going, and it's a
         | group of people who want to visit other stars:
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Propulsion_Physic...
        
           | IAmBroom wrote:
           | > it's a group of people who want to visit other stars
           | 
           | And I want a pet unicorn. And a male contraceptive pill.
           | 
           | Only one of those things is ever going to happen.
        
       | DadBase wrote:
       | We used to log "Sun-likes" with a garage telescope, a Commodore
       | 64, and a lot of guesswork. If it looked yellow and didn't blink,
       | it made the list. Half of them were porch lights, but we stood by
       | our catalog.
        
         | adrian_b wrote:
         | One of the comments on that page mentions that we see the
         | G-class stars like the Sun as "yellowish", but in fact they are
         | white, like a LED lamp with a color temperature of 5500 K or
         | 6000 K.
         | 
         | The reason for this is not mentioned there, which is that the
         | atmosphere of the Earth acts like a low-pass filter for the
         | direct light that comes from the Sun or from a star, converting
         | the white light into yellowish light. The missing bluish light
         | is diffused over the sky, giving it its blue color. The night
         | sky is also blue, but at a many times lower luminance, so that
         | it seems black.
         | 
         | On the Moon, the Sun will appear as perfectly white, on a
         | perfectly black sky.
        
           | DadBase wrote:
           | We accounted for that by calibrating against a halogen desk
           | lamp and my uncle's welding arc. Anything in between was
           | classified as "solar-adjacent." Worked fine unless the
           | neighbor lit his barbecue.
        
             | bythreads wrote:
             | lol, sounds like a reddit bot commenting with max snark ;)
        
               | DadBase wrote:
               | Bot? I've been manually backing up my emails to cassette
               | since '98. If I was a bot, my tapes wouldn't squeal
               | during thunderstorms.
        
       | elevaet wrote:
       | From the article:
       | 
       | > A confused public is less likely to support studies in areas it
       | does not understand.
       | 
       | What a great point to remember
        
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       (page generated 2025-04-09 23:01 UTC)