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> It's a fairly straightforward conclusion that most visible stars are more massive than the Sun. I can imagine that scientists have figured out accurate ways

> It's a fairly straightforward conclusion that most visible stars are more massive than the Sun. I can imagine that scientists have figured out accurate ways to measure the "actual" brightness of stars and including our sun, and maybe in retrospect using some simple insights and tricks, but it's not obviously straightforward at all. Let's hypothesize that our sun is the most massive star in the galaxy, and what we look at in the sky are the rest of the stars in decreasing order of size, with the largest the most visible. How is it straightforward to conclude that that's not true? And are we declaring Newton's accomplishments straightforward?

kfrzcode 4y ago
Mass spectrometry, classical physics, radio spectrum wizardry, and a whole lot of signals theory
- bank-error 4y ago
  Yeah and none of that will be workable if we find out there’s some sort of occluding mechanism or distortion surrounding the solar system. Like saying you will find water because you took a picture of a mirage.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  I don't think that actually answer the question. It definitely has an answer, bt just throwing around scientific fields isn't it. Also, don't you mean stellar spectroscopy? Mass spectrometry is when you fire ions through an electric field to determine their mass-to-charge ratio. Doesn't seem even a little bit applicable to far-away objects.
  - bank-error 4y ago
    The real answer is that as our ability to test our current model or knowledge, so does the model evolve. Saying a bunch of stupid science words is just how idiots online attempt to generate consensus to their line of argumentation because they struggle deeply with ontology. Think about our knowledge of the Earth rotating around the sun vs. the sun rotating around the Earth, or flat Earth vs a spheroid Earth, our models increase in accuracy as their testability increases in tandem.
  - kfrzcode 4y ago
    Thanks for the assist, I don't really know what the answer is so I was hoping someone would iterate on my spike.
bank-error 4y ago
We don’t know. That’s the hypothesis aspect of Scientia. Our current working hypothesis(es) and theories have not been invalidated so far and thus, they depict the most accurate model we have. But it’s just a model: data that we get artists to turn into pretty “space” pictures. If the public had a real understanding of astronomy and space exploration it would neither be seen as interesting or worth funding.
hotpotamus 4y ago
The work that made Hubble famous was built on a slightly earlier discovery by Henrietta Leavitt that variable stars had a relationship between their absolute brightness and their period[0]. These were the early "standard candles" that Hubble used to start sorting out distances to objects within our galaxy and when he first realized that the Andromeda Galaxy is not local to us, but its own separate galaxy. Things have gotten on a lot since then, but the basics of how it was done are extremely approachable, astronomy 101 stuff. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Period-luminosity_relation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Period-luminosity_relation
- privong 4y ago
  Just to add that that only works for specific types of stars that have regular pulsations. It can be used to infer distances to other types of stars if you have good cause to think that the pulsating star is in the same place as the other stars. This works for clusters and stellar associations, but not for the "field" stars in the galaxy.
twawaaay 4y ago
> I can imagine that scientists have figured out accurate ways to measure the "actual" brightness of stars Sure. This is actually pretty simple. Stars visible with naked eye are relatively close to us. We can measure parallax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_parallax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_parallax) and this gives you the distance to the star directly. Once you know the apparent brightness and the distance you can calculate the actual brightness. "The Hubble telescope WFC3 now has a precision of 20 to 40 microarcseconds, enabling reliable distance measurements up to 3,066 parsecs (10,000 ly) for a small number of stars." Vast majority of visible stars fall within couple thousand light years, the only ones that are further are extremely bright, extremely rare and extremely short lived.

kfrzcode 4y ago

Mass spectrometry, classical physics, radio spectrum wizardry, and a whole lot of signals theory

bank-error 4y ago
Yeah and none of that will be workable if we find out there’s some sort of occluding mechanism or distortion surrounding the solar system. Like saying you will find water because you took a picture of a mirage.
marginalia_nu 4y ago
I don't think that actually answer the question. It definitely has an answer, bt just throwing around scientific fields isn't it. Also, don't you mean stellar spectroscopy? Mass spectrometry is when you fire ions through an electric field to determine their mass-to-charge ratio. Doesn't seem even a little bit applicable to far-away objects.
- bank-error 4y ago
  The real answer is that as our ability to test our current model or knowledge, so does the model evolve. Saying a bunch of stupid science words is just how idiots online attempt to generate consensus to their line of argumentation because they struggle deeply with ontology. Think about our knowledge of the Earth rotating around the sun vs. the sun rotating around the Earth, or flat Earth vs a spheroid Earth, our models increase in accuracy as their testability increases in tandem.
- kfrzcode 4y ago
  Thanks for the assist, I don't really know what the answer is so I was hoping someone would iterate on my spike.

bank-error 4y ago

We don’t know. That’s the hypothesis aspect of Scientia. Our current working hypothesis(es) and theories have not been invalidated so far and thus, they depict the most accurate model we have. But it’s just a model: data that we get artists to turn into pretty “space” pictures. If the public had a real understanding of astronomy and space exploration it would neither be seen as interesting or worth funding.

hotpotamus 4y ago

The work that made Hubble famous was built on a slightly earlier discovery by Henrietta Leavitt that variable stars had a relationship between their absolute brightness and their period[0]. These were the early "standard candles" that Hubble used to start sorting out distances to objects within our galaxy and when he first realized that the Andromeda Galaxy is not local to us, but its own separate galaxy. Things have gotten on a lot since then, but the basics of how it was done are extremely approachable, astronomy 101 stuff. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Period-luminosity_relation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Period-luminosity_relation

privong 4y ago
Just to add that that only works for specific types of stars that have regular pulsations. It can be used to infer distances to other types of stars if you have good cause to think that the pulsating star is in the same place as the other stars. This works for clusters and stellar associations, but not for the "field" stars in the galaxy.

twawaaay 4y ago

> I can imagine that scientists have figured out accurate ways to measure the "actual" brightness of stars Sure. This is actually pretty simple. Stars visible with naked eye are relatively close to us. We can measure parallax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_parallax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_parallax) and this gives you the distance to the star directly. Once you know the apparent brightness and the distance you can calculate the actual brightness. "The Hubble telescope WFC3 now has a precision of 20 to 40 microarcseconds, enabling reliable distance measurements up to 3,066 parsecs (10,000 ly) for a small number of stars." Vast majority of visible stars fall within couple thousand light years, the only ones that are further are extremely bright, extremely rare and extremely short lived.