Article: <5eq179$k5r@sjx-ixn2.ix.netcom.com>
From: saquo@ix.netcom.com(Nancy )
Subject: Re: IN SYMPATHY to the Hale-Bopp Cooperative
Date: 23 Feb 1997 18:10:49 GMT
In article <5eo9od$i90@news.ccit.arizona.edu> Jim Scotti
writes:
>>> A "swamp of unmapped stars"? Where? We've
mapped
>>> the whole sky down to around magnitude 20 - almost a
>>> million times fainter than ..
>>> jscotti@LPL.Arizona.EDU (Jim Scotti)
>
>> How many stars is that? I'm not looking for an exact
>> number (though that would be nice), just a ballpark
figure.
>> Just curious. Thanks in advance.
>> eric kline (emk9267@acs.tamu.edu)
>
> I've never counted them myself - by mapped, I mean
> photographed. The work of making catalogs of them is still
> in the works. It will obviously be a very big database.
> jscotti@LPL.Arizona.EDU (Jim Scotti)
(Begin ZetaTalk[TM])
As we said, Sagittarius is a swamp of unmapped stars. What the
layman or non-professional astronomer uses lists only a fraction
of the stars, and these the brightest or the most often
referenced. Any images published in handbooks to be used by the
layman are NOT of a high resolution quality that gives the layman
access to what is out there but unknown to him or her. Thus, they
could take ANY object along the orbit published for Hale-Bopp to
be the comet they are being told by their astronomy authorities
exists!
Never mind that it was roaring like a lion in 1995, and is as
tiny and quiet as a mouse as it gets close to the Sun, just mind
your shepherds like the good little sheep of sci.astro you're
expected to be, or anticipate unsolicited e-mail from the angry
shepherds who want to control your perceptions and your
conclusions!
(End ZetaTalk[TM])