I think this is a mistake

This 3D flythrough video of the Cass A SNR looks fishy to me. I don't
think we have observations of structures and textures on the surface
of neutron stars.

http://bit.ly/bN92LF

Do you agree or disagree?

On Apr 1, 4:19*am, "F/32 Eurydice" wrote:
This 3D flythrough video of the Cass A SNR looks fishy to
me. I don't think we have observations of structures and
textures on the surface of neutron stars.

We do have observations consistent with textures, and *waves* on a
neutron star's surface. Not very "high" though...

David A. Smith

On Apr 1, 10:08*am, dlzc wrote:
On Apr 1, 4:19*am, "F/32 Eurydice" wrote:

This 3D flythrough video of the Cass A SNR looks fishy to
me. I don't think we have observations of structures and
textures on the surface of neutron stars.

We do have observations consistent with textures, and *waves* on a
neutron star's surface. *Not very "high" though...

David A. Smith


I'll take that as agreement, since those pix are comparatively high
res. I'm betting that the artist threw it in because the size of the
neutron star at the center is known, and he had to put something/
anything in. Those structures look an awful lot like continents, and
the neutron star looks exactly as we imagine it. I can't tell you
what the surface of a neutron star does look like, but you can bet it
isn't something at all familiar looking.

Besides, I recall seeing a real observation of a neutron star's
emission jets beacons, which would suggest the presence of an
accretion disk. I don't know specifics of Cass A, but we must have
found it somehow, which suggests that that it's sending an x-ray
signal at us, but radio would also suggest an accretion disk, since it
would be from synchrotron radiation.

IR and UV overlap radio and x-ray, and that covers the spectrum.
Google couldn't find me a graph of the spectrum, but Wiki says that
the visible spectrum is "approximately" flat, whatever the hell that
means. If it's even slightly weighted toward the blue, then the
movie's color will be correct, but if it has peaks, then it will have
a yellow, green, red or purple color. Of course, read will mean that
it leans toward the low energy end of the visible band.

I guess that the better question is "where doesn't it emit," since
it's so energetic, it emits in a lot of places.

It ****es me off when people put artwork onto scientific data, because
the fact that part of it is data can lead you to believe that all of
it is data, and a bad rumor can get started.

I was almost the one who started it, and if I'd made the mistake of
tweeting that we knew the surface textures of a neutron star, somebody
would surely have retweeted it. Half the time I get retweeted is when
I make a mistake, and that's a hell of a thing, when all you tweet is
astrophysics news.

The artist shouldn't have put in any more detail than we already
have. Those structures look an awful goddam lot like continents,
which is something you can be goddam sure a neutron star doesn't
have. People like that artist peeve me off. Grrrr...

F/32 Eurydice wrote:
This 3D flythrough video of the Cass A SNR looks fishy to me. I don't
think we have observations of structures and textures on the surface
of neutron stars.

http://bit.ly/bN92LF

Do you agree or disagree?

Artistic license. Until we can image an actual neutron star in high-res,
this is somebody's best guess.

Yousuf Khan