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Old 17-11-2013, 10:06 AM
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Shiraz (Ray)
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Join Date: Apr 2010
Location: ardrossan south australia
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Stars are not wavefunctions - they are just so far away that they are point sources with no effective angular extent.

Diffraction rings come about when the scope is in focus, but cannot turn a plane wavefront into a true point in the focal plane and you end up with an Airy pattern. that is the closest a scope can get to representing the point nature of far off stars and it is just an approximation to what is really there. We all seem to accept that it is natural for stars to be round blobs of varying sizes, even though that situation is actually a flawed representation determined by the shortcomings of our imaging systems and conditions.

Last edited by Shiraz; 17-11-2013 at 10:24 AM.
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