Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 2009
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009aas...21330305b&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #213, #303.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.273
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The vocabulary of astronomy is riddled with colorful names for stars, from red giants to blue stragglers. Objects with masses between roughly .01 and .1 solar masses are called "brown dwarfs". Do they - could they - ever actually appear brown? Color is not a one-dimensional physical parameter like wavelength. It is a complex, psychophysical phenomenon involving not only three degrees of freedom - hue (often incorrectly equated with "color"), saturation and brightness - but also observational context. The perceptual nature of color has been known since Newton wrote in his "Opticks” in 1704: "For the Rays to speak properly are not coloured. In them there is nothing else than a certain Power and disposition to stir up a Sensation of this or that Colour.” To most observers, the 2000 or so naked eye stars observable from the northern hemisphere all appear white, with the half dozen exceptions which look reddish/orange like Betelgeuse, Arcturus and Antares. But what color would Betelgeuse (effective temperature 3600 K) appear at a distance of, say, 100 times the Earth-Sun separation? Not red. In fact, it has a temperature about 40% higher than that of an ordinary incandescent light bulb. It would appear white (or yellowish)! Can a very cool radiating (emissive) object ever appear brown? What is brown anyway? It is not a primary or even secondary color. In this presentation, we will explore the nature and meaning of "brown” by the use of several physical and computer demonstrations developed as part of "Project LITE- Light Inquiry Through Experiments", an educational materials development project. These demonstrations show that an isolated thermally radiating object will never appear brown. Hence the term "Brown Dwarf” is as nonsensical as the phrase "How, Now, Brown Cow?". Project LITE is supported by the NSF through DUE Grant # 0715975.
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