Re: [APML] Science in Astrophotos

[Torsten Clay <tclay@theriver.com>]

On Wed, 13 Feb 2002, Chuck Vaughn wrote:

> Frank,
>
> > science is done to improve and fit a theory. magnitude of stars can be used to
> > determine stellar lifetimes and hence stellar evoution. the exact color of an
> > object does nothing except create a pretty picture on a computer. nice, might
> > be art, but not science.
>
> So would you and Torsten also say that color images assembled from data
> returned from various planetary spacecraft are just pretty pictures and no
> science can had from them?
>

Not a fair comparison- planetary probe photos are useful because they get
close enough to their targets that details not even resolvable from Earth
can be seen easily. Plus other measurements (magnetic field, etc) can be
made that can't be done remotely.

Torsten




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