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star color with binoculars
On occasion I see color in stars when viewing with binoculars. For
example, Arcturus is white with some blue and red. Is this true color or chromatic abberation? Bruce |
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star color with binoculars
On Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:04:44 -0700 (PDT), brucegooglegroups
wrote: On occasion I see color in stars when viewing with binoculars. For example, Arcturus is white with some blue and red. Is this true color or chromatic abberation? What you describe is chromatic aberration. Binoculars will help you see the actual star color as well, mainly in the core of the image. Stars nearly always show colors with low saturation. In the absence of chromatic aberration, they will show as a single color. If you see multiple colors, it's CA. Some of that will be from the binoculars, but some may be from atmospheric refraction as well- especially if the star is low in the sky or the seeing is very poor. _________________________________________________ Chris L Peterson Cloudbait Observatory http://www.cloudbait.com |
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star color with binoculars
On Mar 14, 12:37 am, canopus56 wrote:
brucegooglegroups wrote in news:ccd8d894- : On occasion I see color in stars when viewing with binoculars. For example, Arcturus is white with some blue and red. Is this true color or chromatic abberation? Bruce The short answer is, yes, it's real. For example, compare Arcturus and Sirius. Everyone can agree that in binoculars or to the naked-eye, they have a different color. The problem is that there is so much individual variation in the responsiveness of the human eye, that not everyone sees the same colors. This caused endless disagreements among prominent historical astronomers during the 1700s and 1800s before the widespread distribution of useable spectometers. There's a good discussion of this in an older book, Colours of the Stars by David Malin and Paul Murdin (1984). - Canopus56 -- Posted via a free Usenet account fromhttp://www.teranews.com In the same evening I would see "normal colors" ( white or orange- yellow) and only see the red, blue, colors on a few stars- such as Arcturus or Izar. I will read the book. Thanks. Bruce |
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star color with binoculars
brucegooglegroups wrote in
: On Mar 14, 12:37 am, canopus56 wrote: brucegooglegroups wrote in news:ccd8d894- : snip all In the same evening I would see "normal colors" ( white or orange- yellow) and only see the red, blue, colors on a few stars- such as Arcturus or Izar. I will read the book. Thanks. Bruce Like Chris said, there is also an optical fringe component in binoculars. But those can be backed out because the color fringe in optics is well understood. This leaves individual vision response. I did a short illustration of this at a public star party last fall using Arcturus. I had a wide age range of attendees at my scope at once (7 to 70 years old) and asked each to describe the colors that they saw in a color contrast double. Everybody saw colors, but nobody saw the same color, including me! - Canopus56 -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com |
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