Would you believe a Pope is buried there?

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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.

No, I wouldn't.

On mature reflection, the image might have been in the Eyewitness Companion Guide to Classical Music (here). I'll just have to check the next time I'm in a good bookshop.

I'm pretty sure the caption claimed that the image was in this composer/astronomer's final resting place, St Stephen Walbrook (otherwise how could I have come up with the name of that church, which I never heard of before?), but it might actually be in the Priory Church of St Peter, in the village of Dunstable, Bedfordshire, which was this guy's birthplace (probably).

Well, that pretty much gives it away...

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John Duns Scotus ? no wait... composer John Dunstable.

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My first thought was that it might be a monk looking through a convent window.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

I guess they didn't like the idea either.

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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.

15th century person with a telescope? Of course anything is possible with art.

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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.

Correct!

John Dunstable

He lived from 1390-1453, so he is unlikely to have ever looked through a telescope (though the possibility cannot be discounted - see Robert Grosseteste earlier in this thread).

I presume the image of him looking through a telescope is just an anachronism, but it would be nice to know for sure.

You're up, antoniseb.

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There is a star whose bolometric luminosity is about seven times that of the Sun, and is less than a thousand light years away, but has only been imaged in the last decade or so, when our most powerful telescopes came online. It is not substantially concealed by dust or molecular cloud. What is this star?

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Okay, so this star has a visual magnitude greater then 15, must be in a binary system. Since you say only now been imaged, I guess that is was a spectroscopic binary before. But with adaptive optics these day people are splitting stars all the time. Is there anything special about this star system? And being within 1000 light years doesn't cut it.

The difference between bolometric and visual magnitude is the key, no doubt. It is probably a giant red star that would be far more impressive to the Spitzer than the Hubble.

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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.

Good point. But how big do those corrections become, 2-3 magnitudes is the biggest I ever seen (Betelgeuse = 2.6)

[Edit: I mean negative of course ]
[Edit: -4 I guess for 03 stars, but here the luminosity is much more then 7 (7*50 for the correction) times the luminosity of the sun]

I was thinking more along the lines of an X-ray binary...

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Or a young millisecond pulsar. The Crab Pulsar is more that bright enough but too far away. Vela is just a little bit too faint (factor of five). There are a couple of neutron star/white dwarfs X-ray binaries available at the right bolometric luminosity but they haven't been optically detected to magnitude 25.

Is Chandra the information source?

Here is a star 9 magnitudes greater.

[Added: However, I am using the sun's visual mag. in comparison; I haven't found the sun's bolometric mag.]

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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.

They're basically the same, the correction is -0.08

Looks promising...

Your second magnitude star here has been imaged since the early days of photographic astronomy, but it IS an interesting object. The one I'm referring to did not appear on a photographic plate, or image sensor of any sort until recently.

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OK, I don't know the protocol for this thread. How long should I wait before offering hints. It's been about 24 hours.

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Forming opinions as we speak

One day has been the tradition through the ages (several months ago anyway ), unless you've been bludgeoned!

Is it an x-ray source? [I don't get the impression it is an intermittent or burst source.]

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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.

It is considerably brighter in some wavelengths other than optical, but it has been imaged in the optical spectrum. To answer your question it does sometimes have an xray flare-up, but the optical images I'm familiar with were taken during normal quiet periods.

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This is tricky. I would normally suggest a blue giant, too (I think someone already suggested this). Rigel is at 900 lyrs and is about 11 mag. brighter, but it has been known for eons. Surely, however, blue giants don't pop up overnight, though they could make a hole in a cloud open up, I suppose.