I've got a weird question that has absolutely no bearing on reality whatsoever, so sorry for wasting your time.

If the Pistol Star were in our Solar System, how bright would it look from the planet Pluto? My understanding is that Sol looks like any other star from Pluto, would Pistol look like a star, or more like Sol, or more like a great big ball of Armageddon proportions?

In this very-hypothetical question, I'm assuming that Pistol has properties similar to Sol (same as a boulder to a pebble: It's still rock, just bigger). However, any answers, and pointing out my stupidities are appreciated.

The weather forecast would be something like "2000° and sunny", and that would be at night...

From the website in the OP:
That's a bright star! Unfortunately I don't have time to look up Luminosity calulations but if it throws off 10 million times more light but would only be around 40 AU away = very thick sunglasses needed on Earth. 8)

(is luminosity to distance an inverse-squared relationship? If so I think the Pistol Star would still be about 6000 times brighter from Pluto's orbit than the Sun is at 1 AU)

big enough to fill the diameter of Earth's orbit

So I would vote for the "great big ball of Armageddon proportions."

To be precise, I get that it would be about 2-1/4 degrees in apparent diameter, more than four times the size of the full Moon.

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Given the current perspective of apparent size, that would also read to be more than 4 times the size of the sun as we see it too, yes?

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Just so happens that I have some of my artwork that illuminates the situation rather well...

Title: 2000 degrees and Sunny by Evan Williams

Yes, and that's diameter, too - areawise it would be about 20 times the size.

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I'm guessing there wouldn't be a Pluto for very long, just a big comet rapidly evaporating.

I see. I was trying to get some idea of the size of the darn thing. I think it could be best summed up as: really, really, really, really, big.

BTW- love the pic, Evan.

Heh... I heard that Eta Carinae (or Betelgeuse, I don't remember) would reach as far as Jupiter orbit...

Is this a correct statement. Being too lazy to look it up myself, I'd think the Sun would still appear rather bright from Pluto. My ignorant mind has it looking similiar in brightness to Venus in our sky (minus 3 or 4 mag or so. . .).

I'm probably wrong. . . :-?

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The apparent magnitude of the Sun from the Earth is -26.0. Since Pluto is 40 times further away, the sunlight is 1/(1600) as bright so that its visual magnitude is about -20. The Full Moon is about -18, so the Sun appears as a very bright star, much brighter than Venus seen from Earth (-2.0 mag) and provides about the same illumination as the Full Moon does.

http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q2548.html

I thought the full moon was -12.

After checking a number of other sources -12.7 appears to be correct for the moon. However that site does have the sun approx correct at -26. So the sun would appear that much brighter yet over the moon although much smaller in apparent diameter. Oh well, don't trust everything you read...

I thought I might try using the Celestia space simulator to have a look at the Pistol Star from a hypothetical Pluto in orbit around it
(not that such a planet would have time to form);
from here
http://www.tim-thompson.com/bright-stars.html
I got the visual absolute magnitude (high estimate) as -10.4
and the bolometric absolute magnitude as -13.3;
making a model of the star using the bolometric figure first (which includes UV) I got a temperature for Hypothetical Pistol/Pluto of 5500K;

then making a model of the star using the visual absolute magnitude I got the apparent brightness as magnitude-34.53, much brighter than the Sun as seen from Earth...

I don't know how reliable these figures are, as the Celestia simulator does all the calculations itself; but it looks good; the closest stellar type in this program is class O so that is what I described it as.

this image might be visible for a while until 50 megs find out I am remote linking...

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New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

They figured it out.

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Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

If you refresh the page it comes back sometimes...

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Fascinating concept. Just one problem.
If you change only one variable, it is assumed that everything else remains
UN-changed.

Therefore, Pluto's orbital speed being what it is, Pluto would VERY rapidly spiral into the Pistol Star, whose appearance and brightness would increase commensurately.

It would be an interesting calculation to see how long this spiraling would take before the inevitable collision.

I'll use averages of the figures from Pistol Star (Wikipedia)

mass = 110 solar
radius = 320 solar = 1.5 AU
luminosity > 10^6 solar
temperature = 17,000 K

Self-consistent luminosity = 7.7*10^6 solar

Replacing the Sun with the Pistol Star without changing Pluto's orbit would cause Pluto to fall into the Pistol Star - its orbit's periapsis would drop to 1.5 AU.

But if Pluto could be speeded up by a factor of 10, it would continue traveling in a similar orbit.

Pluto's surface temperature would become 3000 K, and its ices would vaporize and escape into outer space. What would be left would melt, turning Pluto into a ball of lava.

Taking the perihelion from lpetrich, no more than half an orbit.

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Look at the BAUT banner, something fishy about it. Boxing gloves are probably not able to withstand the pressures involved in space. Another thing, look at the astronauts visor? See the sun? It's in front of him, but the illuminated ground that we see in the reflection is also in front of him when it should be behind him. Furthermore, the stars shouldn't be visible if the camera exposure was set for viewing lunar landscapes and astronauts. In all, I'm fairly sure the BAUT banner is fake.

Probably the sooner the better. It can't be much fun there as it is, and worse with a sudden new bright host star at 800x brighter than the Sun appears from Earth. [I got a M_v of -33.99 seen from Pluto using the -10.4 absolute visual mag.]

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board!

"They say that 2 minutes in the California sunshine...is too much these days."



[/end random movie quote]

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Worse, considering this list of boiling points.

If Pluto were made of pure tungsten, it might survive.

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Thread necromancy alert... 5+ years.

Fred

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