Why do the bright stars appear to have four points?
Why do the bright stars appear to have four points?
Why do the bright stars appear to have four points in the photographs? Is it an effect of the telescope or camera?
- neufer
- Vacationer at Tralfamadore
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- Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2008 1:57 pm
- Location: Alexandria, Virginia
Re: Why do the bright stars appear to have four points?
It is not uncommon to use four struts to secure the secondary mirror:sheilab8 wrote:Why do the bright stars appear to have four points in the photographs? Is it an effect of the telescope or camera?
Art Neuendorffer
Re: Why do the bright stars appear to have four points?
Sheila, welcome to Asterisk! Yes, they are from the telescope. They are called diffraction spikes, and more information about them can be found in this Wikipedia article.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Re: Why do the bright stars appear to have four points?
They can also be utilized to point out some near by binary stars as these could have split diffraction spikes
similar to Pluto/Charon
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt ... CCYQ9QEwAw
similar to Pluto/Charon
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt ... CCYQ9QEwAw
- neufer
- Vacationer at Tralfamadore
- Posts: 18805
- Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2008 1:57 pm
- Location: Alexandria, Virginia
Re: Why do the bright stars appear to have four points?
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010415.html
"The code" is so "vane" he probably thinks those "spiders" are about him.
Art Neuendorffer