4 ms·
Sure Pleione and Atlas used to be a little farther apart, but Maia and Taygeta are were also closer together according to their chart. Why could they tell the l
by dwighttk 6y ago
Sure Pleione and Atlas used to be a little farther apart, but Maia and Taygeta are were also closer together according to their chart. Why could they tell the latter apart when we can’t tell the former?
- idlewords 6y agoI am sorry to say you might have to go read the linked paper, where this is discussed. The upshot is, visually distinguishing two stars is a function of both their proximity and relative brightness. https://www.dropbox.com/s/np0n4v72bdl37gr/sevensisters.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/np0n4v72bdl37gr/sevensisters.pdf?d...
- nabla9 6y agoI am sorry to say that after reading the paper, I found no discussion of this matter.
- idlewords 6y ago"A second factor, called “glare function" by physiologists, is what prevents you from seeing details next to car headlights pointing at you. The glare function depends on the dynamic range and psf of the human eye. Imperfections in the human eye give it a psf which has a broad base a few arcmin wide (Ginis et al., 2012), which in turn limits the dynamic range. As a result, faint stars cannot be seen within a few arcmin of bright stars... Pleione is five arcmin from the star Atlas, which is about four times brighter than Pleione, and the resulting glare from Atlas prevents most people from seeing Pleione."
- dwighttk 6y agogotcha
- nabla9 6y agoThe distances are very similar but Pleione is much dimmer than either Maia or Taygeta. Apparent magnitudes: Pleione 4.77 - 5.50 Taygeta 4.30 Maia 3.87 (Apparent magnitude is a measure of the brightness of a star or other astronomical object observed from Earth, it's inverse logarithmic so smaller number is brighter)