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Why do the bright stars appear to have four points?
Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 10:16 pm
by sheilab8
Why do the bright stars appear to have four points in the photographs? Is it an effect of the telescope or camera?
Re: Why do the bright stars appear to have four points?
Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 10:32 pm
by neufer
sheilab8 wrote:Why do the bright stars appear to have four points in the photographs? Is it an effect of the telescope or camera?
It is not uncommon to use four struts to secure the secondary mirror:
Re: Why do the bright stars appear to have four points?
Posted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 10:43 pm
by owlice
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.
Re: Why do the bright stars appear to have four points?
Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 2:39 am
by BMAONE23
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
Re: Why do the bright stars appear to have four points?
Posted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 3:07 am
by neufer
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010415.html
"The code" is so "vane" he probably thinks those "spiders" are about him.
