A Metal Nose

Commonly mistaken for a metal tongue which was actually Jebediah Springfield's. Just Joking.

More precisely a silver nose.

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"God bless thee, my son; I will give thee the greatest jewel I have ...
"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible."Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

According to Carl Sagans "Cosmos" page 59, it was a gold nose.

I guess since Henrick was closest, you go next.

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I'm not a scientist, but I play one on the internet.
http://www.rrac.org

I knew the answer before posting. I've read Sagan but also many Astronomy books say the same.

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"I will do my best to understand and explain the universe from big to small without invoking miracles, unrepeatable events, or divine intervention. In place of those things I will use observations, mathematics, and science."


-Cross
My travel blog

Some of my Astrophotography


Those that lack education have a hard time understanding its value. - Cross

To stay with Tycho, what's this instrument for? Link to picture

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"God bless thee, my son; I will give thee the greatest jewel I have ...
"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible."Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Measuring the angular separation of two stars?

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- Learn a lot teaching others.

Yes

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"God bless thee, my son; I will give thee the greatest jewel I have ...
"The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible."Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

We had a similar "big array" here at UF which operated for many years ... there was a similar one in the Owens Valley in California. Ours had "only" 640 poles and it operated at 26.3 MHz. For some time at the UF Astronomy Department PhD was said to stand for Post hole Digger.

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Lighten up! This is a stellar board! Author: duh.

"The Sun, with all the planets revolving around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do..." Author: Galileo supposedly.

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2.926

I'm not doubting IMO's answer here, but wouldn't that be dependent on the position of the two stars? I mean, if one eclipses the other (say the brighter eclipses the duller one), wouldn't the visual magnitude then be 3.085?

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Knowledge is a curse, but ignorance is worse

But at that point, the other one would not have a visual magnitude of 5.088, right?

PS: I got 2.924 for the answer, slightly different from IMO's

a) Double star may not mean mutually orbiting stars ... such a system would usually be called a close binary star,
b) most binary systems, even close binaries, do not eclipse,
c) the magnitude during the eclipses depends on the surface temperatures and radii of the stars,
d) when asked for integrated magnitude one virtually always means "what will be the magnitude if the two stars are unresolved".

I just noticed that if you use 2.5 for 10^(.2), you get IMO's answer, but if you use 2.512 (or even 2.51), you get my answer.

IIRC the formulae are
I/Io=10^(-0.4*dM) and dM=-2.5*Log10(I/Io)

Yes, but that is only two digits precision, as (10^(2/5)) = 2.5118864315095801110850320677993..., so to get the precision asked for, you'd have to use 2.512

PS: I just noticed I typed 10^(.2) in my previous post when I meant 100^(.2)

??? ... 5.0000000 magnitudes is a factor of 100 in I
(or 2.500000 magnitudes is a factor of 10)

calculate 2.5*Log10(100) ... = 5.0000000
or the other way, 10^(-.4*5)= 10^2 .... = 100.0000

It IS true that 1 magnitude is an intensity ratio of 2.512 but it is unclear to me what that has to do with this problem.

Correct.

I used my desktop calculator (100^0.2 = 2.5118864315095801110850320677993) and a piece of paper to work it out, rounding off at the end. I got the same answer as IMO.

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I'm with IMO, 2.926
[Edit: Sorry I didn't reload to see Eroica last post, just ignore me ]