[yusufcam (Colin)]

(sorry about the first person preample to the question)

recently i was looking at some solar imaging done with a lunt and was struck by the fascinatingly subtle differences between the lunt image and what i see through the eyepiece of my pst having had it for about a year now and developed an appreciation of the finer optical details available (to my eye) as seeing oscillates.

so i made a enthusied comment to the person who had posted the image and just after that remembered having had an identical feeling about a book i had read several nights before. the book is quite old (medieval) and written in another language.

so the way i was reading it was by comparing a number of various translations as a way of trying to get my head around it

the process and the feeling was identical to the way i saw/responded to the solar images, so i immediately wondered if i was "seeing" through the same mental synapses/processes as i had been using to study the book.


(end preample)

i have often wondered, looking at astrophotography to what extent the objects viewed are actually out there.

would at any point as you drew closer to a astronomical object such as a spiral galaxy would it look like the spectacluar images we see.

the question isn't about authenticity, its more a philosphical curiousity to know where they actually are.

what is out there, what is in the computer processing and what is us at that moment looking inwardly at our capacity to comprehend (among other factors).

is the distinction definable?

science or poetry they are still great

(end)

i just laughed to myself when realizing this question is an extension of what the story in the book was pointing to,

needless to say i found it pretty absorbing.

LOL