Sunday, March 17, 2013

Happy St. Patrick's Day

I'd hoped for a picture of the conjunction of Jupiter and the moon tonight but the sky is overcast. Pulled out this picture of a similar close encounter and "enhanced" it for the holiday. While you can see red, white, and blue stars and even stars that appear orange or yellow, you won't see green stars looking through a telescope. The color we see from stars is only indicative of their surface temps - red are the coolest, bluewhite are the hottest. Green stars emit right in the middle of the visible spectrum and therefore also trigger some red and blue radiation. To our eyes, it all mixes together and those stars appear white. Now a moon that looks like it's made out of green cheese ... well, that's a different story.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice editing on the pic.

Flip