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zyxwv99

By zyxwv99
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zyxwv99

zyxwv99

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In got interested in astronomy as a child, when my brother and I visited the planetarium, then got a 4-inch refractor telescope, along with the World Almanac and Book of Facts (which had info about eclipses, meteor showers, etc.). As an adult, I've enjoyed reading general-interest science magazines such  as Scientific American.

My recent interest in the subject began with exploring issues relating to light, color, and vision. This led to interest in popular misconceptions about why the sky is blue (it's not just Rayleigh scattering, but also the sensitivity curve of the human eye) or what color the sun is (color is a phychophysical phenomenon created in the brain from input provided by the eyes).

More recently, I've been interested in the limits of human vision at extreme wavelengths (near-infrared, long-wave uv, x-rays, and gamma rays) and in the outer limits of the instrument-detectable electromagnetic spectrum. For example, earthquakes produce electromagnetic waves in the milliHertz range (through the piezoelectric effect and piezomagnetism), but it's just near-field effect or virtual photons, not proper electromagnetic radiation. 80 TeV is the most energetic gamma rays so far detected (80,000,000,000,000 electron volts), but 25 MeV is the highest ever seen directly by the human eye (cancer patients receiving linac photon treatment).

While exploring these questions, I've come to realize that astronomy has made much progress in the decades that I've been away, and the whole subject can be just plain fun.

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zyxwv99

zyxwv99

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welcome to the forum.

im also new here and cant wait to start searching the cosmos.

how long since you were last into astronomy?

Mainly since I was young, about the time the asteroid 1556 Icarus nearly crashed into the earth. That would have been about 1968. Then I showed up for a star party when Haley's Comet came around in the 1980s. Now I keep up with what's going on with gamma-ray observatories. Satellites give you way higher resulution, but earth-cased Air Cherenkov systems can caputure the most energetic gamma rays. I love pulsars, especially the Crab Pulsar. It's my favorite neurtron star.

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