RE: new Tech Note 82: Gaps in the magnitude histogram

["Knowles, Richard (CORP, Consultant)" <Richard.Knowles@corporate.ge.com>]

Something only slightly tangential, I'm reading "The Big Bang
Never Happened" by Eric Lerner, and one of the arguments given
for the greater red shift of the galactic backdrop is the phenomenon
of the light cone, narrower as you get closer to us and broader
at greater distances.  The point being that there is less area
as you get closer to the observer, and conversely, as you drop
away a couple LY, there is much more spatial area from which
light emitters exist, therefore biasing measurements towards
a particular spectral weighting.  (I'm still reading it so I
have no opinion yet :^) ).  So in this case, fewer larger magnitude
stars versus the more distant, lower magnitude sources.

BTW, nicely done Michael.

Rich Knowles

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Droege [mailto:tdroege2@earthlink.net]
Sent: Monday, April 08, 2002 12:50 PM
To: Stupendous Man; tass@listserv.wwa.com
Subject: Re: new Tech Note 82: Gaps in the magnitude histogram


Michael and all,

Wow!  Very nice.

When I wrote Michael about the "banding" problem, I said that if it was 
real one of us should start writing their Nobel acceptance speech.

Now Michael tells me it is real and has a reasonable 
explanation.  Sigh!  Looks like no speech will be needed.

Still, I find this a curious and interesting result. One wonders whether 
this will tell us something when we complete a survey for a large area of 
the sky.

Tom Droege

At 12:08 PM 4/8/02 -0400, you wrote:

>   Tom asked me a couple of weeks ago about some mysterious
>gaps he noticed in the calibrated magnitudes produced by the
>Mark IV pipeline.  I have finally investigated the issue and
>concluded that it's not the pipeline's fault (phew!).
>
>   Read all about it in Tech Note 82:
>
>       http://a188-l009.rit.edu/tass/technotes/tn0082.html
>
>   Comments welcome.
>
>                                          Michael Richmond