Wonder of ScienceA mesmerizing timelapse of the Sun in ultraviolet light, captured by the SDO spacecraft over the course of a month.
Credit: NASA/SDO
#sun #nasa #space #astronomy
paprikapink@wonderofscience Why is the sun surrounded by "the blackness of space"? It's right there, being The Sun. It should be *shining,* right?
ShhhStephen@wonderofscience @paprikapink For all intents and purposes, the blackness of space is empty. That is to say, there is nothing for the light to reflect off of, so we don’t see it. All the light produced in the sun (or any star) moves out in all directions until it hits something that might reflect it towards us. The photons headed in our direction are detected by our optical sensors, unlike the light going in other directions.
@ShhhStephen @wonderofscience I was afraid this would be the answer. Someone recently told a joke that ended with "the moon has no light, it just reflects the sun." And that was cute. But the thing is the sun doesn't shine either. No moon, no Venus & Earth et al, no us? No sunshine. This is sending me down a philosophical rabbit hole. There's a poem, or a koan, or a baffling occult ritual in here somewhere, but I can't quite thinkfeel all the way to it.
@paprikapink @wonderofscience If you shine a 🔦 at the wall in a dark room, the wall reflects some of that light to your 👁. If you look at the 💡directly it will be much brighter! Much of the time you won’t see the beam of light as it travels through the air to the wall; some will reflect off of dust particles and we’ll see those, and sometimes water vapor/humidity. There is so little ‘stuff’ in space that we don’t see the light going in other directions: only darkness