Starship Asterisk*

ta152h0 wrote:
Has anyone taken an image with a pinhole camera of the heavens ?

R Venable wrote:I suppose that it's upside down because professional astronomers still think that north is up in space.

R Venable wrote:It looks more like the face of a ghost if you turn it upside down. Then, the brightest spots are eyes and there are dusky nose and mouth-like features. I suppose that it's upside down because professional astronomers still think that north is up in space.

Chris Peterson wrote:..., which has a conventional coordinate system associated with it.

heehaw wrote:

Chris Peterson wrote:..., which has a conventional coordinate system associated with it.

We astronomers, and our "conventional" coordinate systems! With Right Ascension increasing to the left. And temperature, in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, increasing to the left. Hmmm....

ta152h0 wrote:
now i have to make a pinhole camera and prove Mr Neufer right !

Can you still get glass plate negative film ???

Evenstar wrote:My big problem isn't Halloween... I've been viewing a couple Great Courses on the universe that, although both are over 10 years old now, describe a 'spatially flat' universe one minute but acknowledge too that one (Hubble Telescope) can see off in every direction some 13+ billion light years and still find galaxies (~14 billion light years still being the 'big bang'). I am clearly missing on how tens of billions of galaxies in every direction in a 3-dimensional universe can be described as 'spatially flat'?!

I have never tried putting all this into words before and doing so should actually help but it hasn't yet. One thing also involved that I cannot grasp is how in this spatially flat 3-dimensional universe spacetime curves. I would love to KISS.

Okay...go for it. Somewhere I figure that if I read enough different descriptions of my topic all will click into place... Please--no math. And if the curvature of spacetime can be left out of spatially flat that would be terrific. Also...pointing me favorite links to resolve this rather than writing it all out here is logical. Perhaps I'll try googling this one more time too but dare to post anyway. Thanks.

The Earth in curved spacetime. Source:
http://physics.stackexchange.com/questi ... of-gravity

Boomer12k wrote:
it looked like a "Ghost CAT" to me...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aye-aye wrote:

[b][color=#0000FF][size=150]An aye-aye foraging, c.1863, Joseph Wolf[/size][/color][/b]

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<<The aye-aye is the world's largest nocturnal primate, and is characterized by its unusual method of finding food; it taps on trees to find grubs, then gnaws holes in the wood using its forward slanting incisors to create a small hole in which it inserts its narrow middle finger to pull the grubs out. The aye-aye was thought to be extinct in 1933, but was rediscovered in 1957. Nine individuals were transported to Nosy Mangabe, an island near Maroantsetra off eastern Madagascar, in 1966. Researchers in Madagascar report remarkable fearlessness in the aye-aye; some accounts tell of individual animals strolling nonchalantly in village streets or even walking right up to naturalists in the rainforest and sniffing their shoes. However, the aye-aye is often viewed as a harbinger of evil and killed on sight. Others believe, if one points its narrowest finger at someone, they are marked for death. Some say the appearance of an aye-aye in a village predicts the death of a villager, and the only way to prevent this is to kill it. The Sakalava people go so far as to claim aye-ayes sneak into houses through the thatched roofs and murder the sleeping occupants by using their middle finger to puncture the victim's aorta.>>

Ann wrote:If you don't like math, then I should be the perfect person to explain it to you, because I am math-allergic, too. (And at least I hope that I will be able to explain it to you.)

So there are bumps and gravity wells in spacetime, and likely even holes. But that doesn't necessarily mean that spacetime considered as an entirety is curved. I believe you can think of "curved but flat space" as a road with potholes in it. The potholes represent the numerous gravity wells in spacetime. Yet the road itself may well be "flat". The road doesn't necessarily go "uphill" or downhill". For all its potholes, it may well be sort of "flat".

That's how I think of it.

Ann

cleofus wrote:P.S. SOL is NOT the Latin name for the Sun - Solis is.

geckzilla wrote:

cleofus wrote:P.S. SOL is NOT the Latin name for the Sun - Solis is.

Solis would be Sun's.