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Flat Earth Community / Re: Relative distance of us to the stars, moon, and sun
« on: June 03, 2016, 12:43:36 AM »rabinoz,
While I can understand how a person can "determine" this fluid substratum to be our atmosphere. However I am approaching this without embracing any wholesale ideology, including that of what is "known" about the composition of our "atmosphere". The reason for this is that embracing any part of what is "known" and distributed at an institutional level is to incorporate any falsehoods that may be inherent in the quality of the information.
Your response regarding relative size is welcomed as I've thought along the same rationale although I could not support it other than the relative size as you did. However, the ISS does not exhibit this fluid substratum behavior and acts as any terrestrial based light source does when out of focus and away from water. What I'm getting at is that it is, in my observations, at the same tier as the moon and sun that do not appear to exhibit the same visual qualities as the distant lights do (stars/planets to use relative terms).
Regarding the twinkling of stars, is something when they are in focus, does not exhibit, there is no deviation in their color or fluidity to their appearance they are simply a light with a consistent amount of luminescence, unaffected by any factor. However when out of focus it appears that the visual appearance of the same stars produce an entirely different quality. In my observation I would currently be biased to think that the stars twinkle because the human eyes are attempting to focus and it may go in and out of focus doing this and causes the "twinkling" we are familiar with.
Stars exhibit this behaviour only because their apparent size is so far below the resolution of our eyes, camera or even telescopes. One the closest stars to us is Alpha Centauri A which has an angular size of 0.007 seconds of arc. The human has a resolution of around 1 minute of arc (don't think mine are that good) - even best astronomical telescope on earth cannot resolve even that star.
Planets that we can see and the ISS appear far larger than that. The "twinkling" light from these larger objects can average out over adjacent pixels, or rods in your eyes.
Using relative terms, the same stars (all of them from what I've observed on my P900) and all the planets I've observed exhibit the same fluid appearance when the focus is set as specified in an earlier post. This observation is in conflict with any statement separating this visual phenomenon being apparent in stars and not planets.
I have also observed from great distances man made light sources through a humid night sky and cannot replicate this effect. Both the man made light source and the stars use the same focus setting and when applied to one another creates a completely opposite visual feedback. When the camera puts the star in focus, the same "in focus" setting applied to the man made light source afar results in a sharp image of the light. Focal length at extreme distances are relative.
I've also dabbled in macro photography and the resolution of light or chromatic aberrations do not exhibit this fluid effect when observed. Stars and planets are the only thing that I have seen do this, except for the youtube video with LED light in water I linked earlier.