Thread: What is this?
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Old 27-10-2009, 08:36 PM
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sjastro
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ngcles View Post
Hi Matt & All,



Yes of course it does -- no doubt about that.

I'm no expert on this sort of stuff by any means but look at the image again. If this is a hit, it has produced a flash in the CCD in the order of 100 to 1000 times brighter than Rigel in a 30 second exposure. Rigel is one of the brightest stars in the sky -- a "zeroith" magnitude star.

All the cosmic ray hits I've seen in images are very small comparable to faint or very faint stars. It would appear this one has produced a flash in the order of 20-25 (stellar) magnitudes brighter than your average cosmic ray hit -- which I'd reckon implies either an extremely energetic one ... or, invoking Occam's razor, more likely that it's not a cosmic ray hit.


Best,

Les D
You're not comparing apples with apples. You are converting photons from Rigel into a signal. Cosmic rays on the other hand are mostly composed of protons.

You can't make direct comparisons on the basis of magnitudes.

Regards

Steven
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