[CWBP2] Astrophysics

[Azélor]

The star could be hotter than that, thus she could appear white or even blue maybe but I'm not sure it's possible to differentiate the color even with basic observation tools. It's more about radiations and for that you need much more advanced equipment. Anyway, if someone have the luxury to stare at the Sun long enough to figure what color it... become black

Light has no color in nature so does the stars I think. I'm not sure : File:Sirius A and B artwork.jpg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia But I prefer when they have colors
oh and the star would be about the size of Venus

[Jalyha]

Erm... I feel like I am the rain and ya'll are the parade

But... (it didn't hit me until falconius said that he thought the magnitude of the night sky would be higher.)

Okay, the difference between total magnitude and apparent magnitude is that "total" is how bright it really is, and "apparent" is how bright we can see.

Cool. No big deal, we got this.

So, picture a star as a candle, or a torch or flashlight, or... whatever.

And over the whole space of the sky there's a billion stars, and over the country there's a billion candles/torches/flashlights.

All spread out, with maybe one big (moon) searchlight in the middle of the country, we see, from our airplane, a soft glow over the countryside. Pretty!

And in the sky we see lots of bright twinkling lights.

But.

That is "apparent" magnitude.

According to Wikipedia, -6.5 is "The total integrated magnitude of the night sky as seen from Earth."

We're talking about TOTAL magnitude.

So that's all those stars and the reflected light of all those planets, and that big ole' moon all squashed into one space. All those lights and candles and torches all set on top of one building with that searchlight right dead in the center.

That's all those lights magnified.

That's hella bright. Like... blinding bright. But it says "as seen from earth" which (in the example of candles on a building would be "as seen from our plane") which is still hella bright, but not blinding. It *is* like daytime at night, though.


Which is cool... it could work into a great plot.

It would cause, I presume, a polar/alaskan sort of effect, where half the year there would *be* no night. Maybe a very slight dimming, but no night.

That's fine by me, if that's what you want, but that is what it would be like... Daytime facing one sun, nighttime facing another, till we got to the opposite side of the orbit and had night again. And during the "daytime at night" phase, the moon(s) and star(s) would be visible sometimes, just as they are here on earth... during the day.

And that would affect everything, tbh. The type of plants that could grow, the way they grow, nocturnal creatures would probably be migratory, if they existed at all, or they would be underground creatures. Sleep patterns, tides, and winds would be affected, there'd be no "cooling" nights, etc...

Could be interesting but it wouldn't be subtle at all.

[Falconius]

No, the night would still be dark with a star at that apparent magnitude. The sun as seen from earth is -26.74 and "Sun as seen from Earth (about 400,000 times brighter than mean full moon)." That is what it would take to light up the sky that much. A full moon is -12.29 and that does not make the night significantly brighter. You can see your way around in the dark but that is about all. -6 for our star is much smaller than even that so it would not have as serious effect as you are supposing. About the worst of it is that it could possibly be visible during the day given the right conditions.

Here's the wiki link I'm pulling my suppositions from. From what I understand the ratings are not linear, but logarithmic? Which I think puts them on a curve meaning the meaning of the numbers changes more than they would seem to indicate.

[Azélor]

about the sky I think this will clarify things. That's how I understand it. Right and left should have the same total magnitude

Attachment 61376
10 stars with 0,1 magnitude and 1 star with 1 magnitude but on a linear scale so if you combine all the stars, you obtain that total magnitude. But since they use a logarithmic scale, faint stars contribute very little to the grand total and most stars are faint.

As said before I think, the light received by the star is only a bit brighter than the wold sky at night. It only means that it would be a little easier to see at night for humans at least . But the moon will probably outshine the star most of the time.

[Azélor]

Sirius B was a bad choice after all. It's a massive and young white dwarf, much brighter than our star should be. The Van Maanen's star would suit better. But the difference in apparent magnitude would be rather small since it's a logarithmic scale...

[Azélor]

Any other suggestions ?

[Falconius]

I'd say our star issue is settled. I'd like it to appear startlingly blue from the planet, due to however needs to be done, maybe an intervening nebula. The sole reason for this is because I'd love to refer to it as The Blue Star, or variations thereof (the ghost star, blue is a nice colour for imagining.).

Let's work on the planets. I want various godly aspects to be able to associated with the planets so maybe we can work backwards from that. Need Rage obviously lol, Love, ?the Dreamer? the planner? or the Scholar? the Fool? the Fox? Um... what else..

Also we can have some planets have sister planets around the other star, not that the people would necessarily know about them. They could be ravaged or whatever, but some G nodes may even be able to transverse space.

[Azélor]

Blue mean that the star is freaking hot, over 30 000K but blue white would be ok. Unless you want a neutron star ? She could have a temperature over 500 000K No it's a bad idea.

I while back I did some test with planets. Ours would be the 3rd or 4th. I guess the white one is a planet. There was a gas giant but it wasn't fitting.

Attachment 61490

[Falconius]

The star doesn't need to be actual blue but I want it to appear that way from the planet. Cause blue's cool. It could be because it's shining through some nebula it blew off when it died or maybe has a blue ring in orbit around it or whatever.

I count six planets in my proposed list, for Earth according to Wikipedia, there were five classical planets observable with the naked eye. I'm not sure I can read that solar diagram there, does it include moons? As only see four planet orbit rings.

[Azélor]

Yea, the last one is probably a planet.