Chapt17 Telescope experiments as distance tools #1560 ATOM TOTALITY5th ed

In 2010
Enrico wrote:


http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/distance.htm


The ABC's of Distances
It is almost impossible to tell the distances of objects we see in
the
sky. Almost, but not quite, and astronomers have developed a large
variety of techniques. Here I will describe 26 of them. I will
ignore
the work that went into determining the astronomical unit: the
scale
factor for the Solar System, and just consider distances outside
of
the Solar System.


Enrico

Yes, thanks, Wright's website is a valuable information for distance,
and
I have visited it before.


I did not see a category of where you measure the size of an object
related
to the magnification of the telescope, and given several assumptions
and thus
tell us the distance. Example: if you see a elephant in Africa the
size of
a bee, then you know the elephant is approx X number of kilometers
away.


Likewise, if we can see a quasar as a faint red spot on the
telescope,
means
the quasar cannot be billions of light years away but rather
millions
of light
years at most.


Enrico, do you know of a website that discusses the maximum
resolution
of the
Hubble Space Telescope in seeing a distant object such as a average
galaxy or
a supernova? It is funny how physicists trained in optics can tell
you
the limit
of resolution of a light-microscope, but that noone in optics is
seeming to talk
about the upper limit of resolution of a astro body at a distance.


Is it that everyone in astronomer believes there is no upper limit to
seeing distant
objects? Do they think that infinity is the upper limit? Have they
ever heard of
loss of light intensity over distance and that every light source
will
be diffused
if traveled far enough.


What is the upper limit of Hubble Space telescope? Is it 400 million
light years?
Perhaps far less than 400 million light years.


Does Wright have another website where he discusses the diminuation
of
light as
it travels large distances? Space is almost a vaccuum but it also
has
some
diminuation or scattering properties. And Space has alot of things
"in
the way"
so that light from say the quasars have a good chance of
encountering
objects
in the way.


It is easy to find where biology observing in light-microsopes comes
to the end of feasibility of
seeing. We cannot see viruses in light-microscopes because of
resolution and the
optics of light just are not capable of going that small.


But the astronomers seem to have shyed or shied away from thinking,
computing
and informing about where the telescopes cease to see astro bodies
at
a far distance.


Now the best flashlights of a double AA batteries cannot be seen at a
distance of
10km in pure darkness. The dirt and other things in the air diminish
the light, but also
the luminosity or power intensity drops off as the inverse square of
distance.


So that biologists over the past 200 years have been rather good at
informing people
as to what a microscope of light with lens can actually see on the
slides and where
the limit of viewing is of tiny objects.


But the astronomers over the past 100 years have been rather derelict
in such duties
as knowing and figuring out the limits of any and all and the best
telescopes. Instead,
the astronomers seem to run on a notion that there is no upper limit
to viewing astro
bodies and that a star or galaxy or quasar can exist at infinity and
they would
see it in their Hubble Space telescope.


So, Enrico, what is a good website that talks in depth about the
upper
limit of Hubble
Space Telescope? The physics of Optics probably would say the upper
limit of
Hubble Space Telescope is about 400 million light years for a
supernova and beyond
400 million light years, you just cannot see the supernova.

Edward L. Wright's website is a good website, even though it is
missing a chief ingredient
of distance measure, which I will get to shortly. And this feature
is
missing in the whole
of astronomy. Why it is missing I have no idea, other than to say
that
astronomers and
physicists have been very sloppy for the past 100 years of
telescopes.
One would have
thought that the physicists and astronomers could have taken clues
from the biologists
with microscopes and have realized that various threshold distances
are to be obtained
from the mere existence of the instruments used to measure length in
biology as well
as distance in astronomy. Biologists know very well that they cannot
measure the length
of a virus in a light-microscope, but try telling the astronomers
that
their seeing of
quasars and their speculation that they are 4 billion light years
away, try telling them that such is an impossibility due to just
their
instruments involved.


So what Wright's distance measures is missing is perhaps the most
reliable and trustworthy of all the distance measures, --- the actual
telescope itself.


http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/distance.htm


starts off with Trigonometric Parallax


and it ends with


--- quoting Wright ---
Z. The Hubble Law


The Doppler shift gives the redshift of a distant object which is our
best indicator of its distance, but we need to know the Hubble
constant, Ho.
--- end quoting ---


So let me ask a few questions of Wright. Is the Hubble Space
Telescope
our very best
telescope to the visible light region? If yes is the answer then the
next question is whether
this telescope can pick up a person standing on Pluto with a double
AA
battery flashlight
that is pointed at the Hubble telescope? If the answer is yes, then
put the flashlight on
the nearest exoplanet and ask the same question. Ask the same
question
until I find at
what distance is the Hubble telescope unable to see the flashlight?
Mind you, the Hubble
is the best of the telescopes and it has a distance upper limit. An
upper limit for a flashlight
as well as an upper limit for a Supernova. At some distance from
Earth, the Hubble telescope
cannot see a Supernova. I reckon that distance is 400 million light
years.


What that means, since the astronomy and physics communities believes
that Quasars are some fancy energy object and that they are billions
of light years away, yet the Hubble telescope and other telescopes
can
resolve their image as "faint red spots".


So, yes, the quasars appear as objects in the telescopes, meaning
that
the objects are
no more than 400 million light years away.


You see, the biologist knows that he cannot see a virus in a light
microscope because of the
physics involved with light and optics of a light microscope. But
the
astronomer was too daft
to realize that the instruments of telescopes were the finest
measuring of distance tools here
on Earth. And that the Hubble, in the fact that it can "see quasar
objects" means that they
are of millions of light years or less, but never billions of light
years.


I do not know why the astronomers and physicists were so derelict of
their jobs of learning,
telling why a telescope is a distance instrument and why the
physicists never bothered
to find out the upper limit of distance by the individual specific
telescopes used.


So Mr. Wright should have started off with A in his ABC's of distance
by having the TELESCOPE instrument as a distance measure in itself.
And that the last category of
redshift is mostly a fantasy category of huge errors.

--

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Archimedes Plutonium
http://www.iw.net/~a_plutonium
whole entire Universe is just one big atom
where dots of the electron-dot-cloud are galaxies