18 Jul '05 20:04>
Originally posted by arcee123Can you be more specific? I think you may be saying
are you refering to a disces sphere?🙄
"are you referring to a discs sphere"
I don't know what you mean by this. What I am talking about
is the smallest size of the spherical volume around the sun where
energy like light, X rays, Gamma rays (Electromagnetic radiation)
and other forms of energy going past the sun, at 54 billion miles
from the sun some of that energy is focused, the main gist of
gravitational lensing. The actual size of the sphere is much much
bigger than this but 54 billion miles is the radius to the inner
"surface" of this volume. So light from the star Sirius just skimming
the surface of the sun will be focused beginning at a spot 54 billion
miles on the OTHER side of the sun facing away from Sirius,
so its Sirius, a straight line to the sun, then that line keeps going
out to 54 billion miles away from the sun and thats where the light
from Sirius will find itself coming together(focusing).
That is just the light skimming the surface. Light a bit farther out
will be bent a bit less by gravitation and so will have two properties:
(1) bigger triangulation base, that is to say its skimming farther up
from the surface of the sun, so in the first example the light has
a radius of bending from the center of the sun, or 440,000 miles
and you build a right triangle with the short leg representing
440,000 miles and 54 billion miles representing the longer legs.
That would represent an F stop, if you will, of about 117,000:1
(2) The bending angle itself is smaller so the light will travel
farther than in the first case. For instance, light skimming past
the surface of the sun gets bent at about 1.7 microarc seconds which
if you do the math, is the 54 billion mile focal point.
If you do the math for light going by the surface at 440,000
miles up from the suns surface, the focal point is now 4 times
farther out at over 200 billion miles. So just visualizing those two
sources of light, skimming and 440,000 miles up (2R) you have a
sphere with an inner bound of 54 billion miles and an outer bound
of 200 billion miles, centered on the sun. Then the light from some
distant source focuses not at a point but in a line like I said from
Sirius. Does that make sense?