off the wall question sort of related to imaging

[kniclander]

how far away would you need to be from , for example, the pillars of creation or the horsehead nebula (or a galaxy etc) for them to look like they do in the amazing pictures, if you were just looking at them with your eyes?

[thing]

I'm prepared to be shot down in flames but I don't think you would see them like that with the naked eye from any distance.

[ngc2403]

well that is quite a question,

and i really don't know, i will see if i can find out though

assuming you were out in space? or that the sun and solar system were closer?

[kniclander]

assuming you were out in space? or that the sun and solar system were closer?

assuming I was out in space

[Whippy]

Funnily enough my wife asked me this a few days ago while I was doing some processing and I said we wouldn't see the colour but the detail, depending on the object would be much greater than we see underneath our dirty atmosphere. TBH that's my fairly uneducated guess so I'm more than prepared to be corrected!

Tony..

[ngc2403]

ok after some though on this i have decided that you would definetly see colour in the PN as they have a high surface brightness.

Galaxies mmm, i don't know is you would see them as anything other than just a detailed grey.

Emission nebula? i would think so but am really not sure about it. example north american nebula, it's red and well very big so the surface brightness is on the limit. another thing to think of is that in space if you were near a star then you would need to protect your self from its light like the earth does for us each night.

i will go and find out more

ally

[Viking]

Andromeda, 2.4 million light years can see a smudge through 7x50 bins, also, I reckon a smudge if it were viewed from a dark site. Nothing like the images we see on SGL.

Jupiter about 5 AUs, naked eye, looks like a bright star nothing like the images we see on SGL.

The moon, approx 380,000 km, naked eye, can make out some of the dark patches but nothing like some of the images we see on SGL.

So if 2.4 million light years, or 5 AUs, or 380,000 km doesn't provide the naked eye images you are looking for, then I wouldn't like to be in space close enough to see the horsehead naked eye - I think it would be rather uncomfortable.

John

[ngc2403]

hello john,

the horse head has a surface brightness of 19, this is i think too faint to be seen.

surface brightness does not depend on distance, so i would have to say that it would not look like it does in the pictures because you can never see it!

the moon well if we were in orbit around it or in a helicoptor then it would look as good if not better than the images on SGL.

Jupiter as well would look better then the SGL image and even hubble images, imagine seeing the GRS and watching it move!

[Tim]

One thing I hope will one day be possible, through some kind of technology related to the way they take a 3D picture of a foetus with special ultrasound, is that we may be able to build a 3D image of the huge nebulae, galaxies etc. I say this because we see everything in 2D as if it were all flat, and we have no real idea of the actual width depth and breadth and internal dimensions of any of these things.

As an example, take M57 the Ring nebula. I would think that it would look the same viewed from any location in the galaxy, either to the side of it or nearer to the outer rim (Star Wars anybody?). But if we could do a virtual flyby/around of it, then it would be roughly spherical I should think. Now imagine that for something like M42, M13, or M16.

I expect in the end the technology will become available, hope so anyway.

Back on topic, I dont think there is an easy way to answer that question, besides, thats why God gave us cameras...........

TJ

[kniclander]

Back on topic, I dont think there is an easy way to answer that question, besides, thats why God gave us cameras...........

TJ

if there was an easy way to answer it, I wouldn't have had to ask it

thanks for the replies all. Interesting stuff.

Dan