Tag: brighter

Everlasting Light

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Light is beautiful.  It illuminates a world of beauty for us to appreciate while giving us a tool to decipher the riddles of the universe.  In astronomy, it’s always about more photons! Because more photons = more data = better results.  But in an increasingly technological world, more photons can be a bad thing.  Especially when the artificial photons overpower the natural. I was lucky to spend most of my youth living away from the bright lights of the city, but with the sprawling metropolis of Toronto to the South, I could always see the orange glow that blocked out...

A Supernova is Always more Powerful than you Think!

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I was with my friend and fellow astronomer Jesse Rogerson discussing the fantastic book from xkcd author Randall Munroe, called What if? We were talking about the brilliant analogy used by Munroe when talking about how big a supernova is. The questions asked was “Which of the following is brighter, in terms of the amount of energy delivered to your retina?” 1. A supernova, seen from 150 Million Kilometers, about as far as the Sun is from Earth. 2. The detonation of a Hydrogen Bomb, pressed against your eyeball. What a great question.  The answer, surprisingly, is the Supernova, which is...