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Old 05-02-2007, 07:51 AM
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DobDobDob (Ron)
Blacktown isn't so black

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Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Prospect, NSW, 2148
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Quote:
Originally Posted by erick View Post
On 11th Feb, when Saturn reaches opposition, it should all become crystal clear - I hope!
Hi erick, that's only a week away and the all important clouds need to take a holiday, if it is clear, I'll be out there and get my observations and then compare, I might even try to sketch what I see and then attach it - just for a bit of fun, if you do the same we can see if there is any comparison.

In your other posting you said that Saturn was like a football shape, in comparison to Jupiter I totally agree, after having seen them both within a short time (a few days), I can state that to my eye they look completely different in shape and orientation.

Interestingly their sizes were fairly similar, and I really wouldn't like to guess their apparent magnification through binoculars because that seems hard to me. When I look naked eye at different objects, I can appreciate the different magnitudes of the larger stars like Sirius & Canopas, also the familiar Orion constellation stands out and I get a good sense of the magnitude of the different stars in the pattern, then their is the giant moon and of course the Sun.

However when viewed through the binoculars, naturally everything is magnified, so my mental view mag wise is distorted. What is very faint to my naked eye is much larger in the bins. So the question is, if asked to give a relative mag of a star I viewed via binoculars, would I use a mag scale that is somewhat different than as opposed to a mag scale that is naked eye, because they are very different.

What I am trying to say is that when I naked eye viewed either Jupiter or Saturn, they were about a medium size star. let's say I give Sirius a mag of -1 then Saturn would at best been a 1, probably a 2.

This all makes me ask the question of mag (Star Magnitude), does it different from person to person? If say we all use the same star chart that has an accompanying mag scale on it, do we all see the individual star sizes and have the ability to scale then up or down accordingly?

Is this an acquired thing that comes with more experience or is it like learning math tables and simply associating a pre-learned mag size for the most common, larger stars?

I guess I am trying to be 'too-scientific' and explain every single aspect, but I want to know if the size you think an object is, is the same size that I think it is

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