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Telephoto Camera Lens Assists Dark Matter Find

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Telephoto Camera Lens Assists Dark Matter Find

#11

Post by bladedtoys »

antognini wrote: post #4

Small telescopes are very useful for searches for extremely faint, diffuse galaxies because it turns out that these searches are surface brightness limited rather than being magnitude limited like most surveys. Surface brightness is a little counterintuitive because the minimum surface brightness a survey can find is actually independent of telescope size. Using a 8-m telescope is no better for finding a diffuse gala…

Would it be possible to software process images taken by large numbers of amateurs of the same point in the sky to get even better results even cheaper?

Re: Telephoto Camera Lens Assists Dark Matter Find

#12

Post by antognini »

bladedtoys wrote: post #11
antognini wrote: post #4

Small telescopes are very useful for searches for extremely faint, diffuse galaxies because it turns out that these searches are surface brightness limited rather than being magnitude limited like most surveys. Surface brightness is a little counterintuitive because the minimum surface brightness a survey can find is actually independent of telescope size. Using a 8-m telescope is no better for finding a diffuse gala…

Would it be possible to software process images taken by large numbers of amateurs of the same point in the sky to get even better results even cheaper?

Yes, in principle. In practice, there would be so much variation in the sensitivities of the detectors that it would be a nightmare to do the image reduction. In normal observing you have to do "flat fielding" every night (or at least every few nights) where you take an image of the sky at twilight so that you can calibrate the different sensitivities of the different pixels in the detector. Then all the pixel scales will be different (i.e., a single pixel on one telescope will correspond to a slightly different area than on another telescope), so you'll have to figure out how to scale all the images to overlay them all. It's just easier to do it all yourself.

Re: Telephoto Camera Lens Assists Dark Matter Find

#13

Post by sandworm101 »

antognini wrote: post #10
tgb wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very cool. I don't have any questions to ask you but I want you to keep talking since this is all very interesting. Edit: this xkcd does a wonderful elaboration on the fire - by - moonlight topic https://what-if.xkcd.com/145/

I had not seen that xkcd article before! Thanks! It's the most lucid explanation of the problem that I've seen. The only other interesting surface-brightness-related fact I can think of at the moment is that surface brightness fluctuations can be used to measure the distance to galaxies. This is one of the cases where it helps to have a really big telescope. The basic idea is that although galaxies are extended sourc…

But without actually imaging stars, how do you know that two galaxies have similar stellar densities? The OP was about low-star/high-darkmatter galaxies. I guess you would have to hope that the entire thing was rotating, and at an angle, that doppler effects could determine the size/mass.

Re: Telephoto Camera Lens Assists Dark Matter Find

#14

Post by dekhn »

wiredfool wrote: post #9
Sharlin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[T]hese surveys use small telephoto lenses rather than small reflectors. Well, small telephoto lenses relative to most telescopes, pretty darn big relative to most camera lenses ;)

Cheap telescope. Very expensive camera lens.

I bought a $1000 refractor telescope, then got a prime focus adapter for my camera. It's basically a big 1200mm zoom lens.

Re: Telephoto Camera Lens Assists Dark Matter Find

#15

Post by dekhn »

I've worked across a wide range of quantitative science fields and one thing I've noticed is that while the bulk of the funding goes to massive facilities, often a bit of clever engineering and $100K can make a huge difference. This is true in computing; one of the things that's interesting about computer science is that it can turn a complicated physics equation that is O(n4) or worse into an O(nlogn) approximation that is "good enough" to justify not using brute force.

Re: Telephoto Camera Lens Assists Dark Matter Find

#16

Post by LeifCarrotson »

antognini wrote: post #6
sandworm101 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So would you get similar surface brightness performance out of a larger telescope by decreasing the size of the detector, by adding a couple lenses to focus the light onto a smaller area? It's been a while since I took astronomy courses and I try to keep up with the basic physics.

Yes and no. In principle it would be possible to do something like that, but you could only do it for a part of the image and you would lose the focus. You'd basically be trying to transform an extended source into a point source. In practice it's easier just to use a smaller telescope for a longer period of time. Incidentally, this is related to a puzzle: can you burn a paper with moonlight if you have a sufficientl…

This has been popularized by the XKCD article, but it's simply incorrect.

What the physics in the article prove is that you cannot generate a higher temperature than the color temperature of the black body whose light you are refracting.

The moon is not a black body emitter, it is a diffuse reflector. I will grant that you cannot start a fire by reflecting the blackbody emissions of the moon during a complete lunar eclipse.

However, I experimentally proved to myself that I can start a fire with sunlight reflected off an ordinary mirror. The mirror was about room temperature, but the magnifying glass produced a much higher temperature. I never got around to taking a giant parabolic reflector out on a full moon night to measure the temperature change, but I remain convinced that it would work. Seeing this repeated here makes me think I should.

Re: Telephoto Camera Lens Assists Dark Matter Find

#17

Post by antognini »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #16
antognini wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no. In principle it would be possible to do something like that, but you could only do it for a part of the image and you would lose the focus. You'd basically be trying to transform an extended source into a point source. In practice it's easier just to use a smaller telescope for a longer period of time. Incidentally, this is related to a puzzle: can you burn a paper with moonlight if you have a sufficientl…

This has been popularized by the XKCD article, but it's simply incorrect. What the physics in the article prove is that you cannot generate a higher temperature than the color temperature of the black body whose light you are refracting. The moon is not a black body emitter, it is a diffuse reflector. I will grant that you cannot start a fire by reflecting the blackbody emissions of the moon during a complete lunar e…

A diffuse reflector like the moon behaves differently than a specular reflector like an ordinary mirror. A specular reflector will preserve the image but a diffuse reflector will destroy it.

To get a little technical, if the Sun is reflected by either a diffuse or specular reflector, the integrated surface brightness over 4 pi steradians surrounding the reflector will be equal to the integrated surface brightness around the same point if the reflector had not been present.

The difference is that in the case of the diffuse reflector, the specific intensity becomes isotropic, but in the case of a specular reflector, the specific intensity is unidirectional. Now, from your perspective somewhere off to the side looking at the reflector, you only intercept a small fraction of the magnitude of the specific intensity in the case of a diffuse reflector. But you intercept the entire magnitude of the specific intensity if the alignment is right, and zero otherwise. So the surface brightness you're able to observe is unchanged in the case of a specular reflector (if the alignment is right), but is reduced by the solid angle subtended by the reflector as seen by the source divided by 4 pi.

So it is not surprising that if you take a magnifying glass to an image of the Sun in a mirror you can start a fire. But this doesn't mean that you'd be able to use a diffuse reflector like the moon to do the same thing. After all, a white baseball is also a diffuse reflector and is reflecting the Sun's light on a sunny day. But I doubt you will be able to put a magnifying glass to it and light a piece of paper on fire. But you should get a big Fresnel lens and go out the next time there's a full moon and prove it to yourself! (The big Fresnel lens will be fun for a lot of other experiments, too.)

Re: Telephoto Camera Lens Assists Dark Matter Find

#18

Post by antognini »

sandworm101 wrote: post #13
antognini wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had not seen that xkcd article before! Thanks! It's the most lucid explanation of the problem that I've seen. The only other interesting surface-brightness-related fact I can think of at the moment is that surface brightness fluctuations can be used to measure the distance to galaxies. This is one of the cases where it helps to have a really big telescope. The basic idea is that although galaxies are extended sourc…

But without actually imaging stars, how do you know that two galaxies have similar stellar densities? The OP was about low-star/high-darkmatter galaxies. I guess you would have to hope that the entire thing was rotating, and at an angle, that doppler effects could determine the size/mass.

That's where you have to make some assumptions given the galaxy type. As with a lot of distance techniques in astronomy, there is a lot of uncertainty. This is one of the reasons that surface brightness fluctuations are not a very popular method.
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