Has any one else noticed...

I know that, which I why (during typing the post) I changed from dark side to far side. However, if it IS on the far side it would not suffer from light reflected by the Earth when the observatory were in the dark. My previous post does take that into account (When it is in shadow...)
 
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The REAL mystery however is how we can be so close to the sun, yet not have our retinas burned out, and somehow still see all of the dimly lit stars around you. I choose to believe that the glass of the canopy is "intelligent" and blocks out the light selectively, only letting in a fraction of a single frequency where ever the star is currently located relative to the pilot. Kind of like those darkening glasses lenses but much faster and to an MUCH stronger degree, only allowing in .0001% of the light. The only problem with this is that we can somehow have our canopy blown open and still survive with our exposed bodies facing the sun. So our space suits must also have some kind of built in radiation protection.

Concord, when it was flying, had several layers of gold in the laminate of the main canopy (the bit that slid into place as she altered to flight configuration), to protect the pilots from the sun.
 
Did you see the movie "Sunshine"?
It might have been exaggerated for artistic effect, but gold-plated spacesuits didn't last long in direct sunlight. Which is kind of odd because the reflective plates of the ship's sunshield were also gold-plated and they weren't melting away.
Another thing is the filter of the observation lounge. Now that is how I envisage the canopy working.

The spaceship would have panels with a pure vacuum separating them from the ship. So as long as the panels had an effective cooling system, the ship itself wouldn't heat up even it was on the surface of the sun. The suits were much smaller so it was easy to heat up the mass until it radiated blackbody heat back into the wearer, so even if there was a vacuum layer built into it, it would still heat up eventually. ED ships apparently have pretty good insulation, however they produce their own heat from the nuclear furnace in the power plant, and if they are dealing with heat from without and from within, the cooling system can be overloaded.

If the canopy blocked out enough light to look at the sun like in "sunshine", it would also block out the light from any dim stars. However, we can still see the distant sky box stars, while looking straight at the sun, so that can't be quite the answer. Perhaps the canopy isn't really glass and is actually a two way video monitor? Like the chameleon material that bends light around it to make the objects invisible. Only in this case it would make the canopy "glass material" seem invisible, and it would filter out the harmful radiation.

However, if it IS on the far side it would not suffer from light reflected by the Earth when the observatory were in the dark. My previous post does take that into account (When it is in shadow...)

Telescopes are directional. They take in only the light from a relatively tiny column of sky, and simple baffles can block out all other light except ambient light from the atmosphere. Since there is no atmosphere on the moon, there is no ambient light. Hence it doesn't matter if the moon is on the dark or the light side, or facing the the earth. It will function like a space telescope in either case. It would only be impacted by he earth or the sun if it looked directly at either object. If the telescope is on the sunny side of the moon though it will be hotter which will create electronic heat noise in the image.

Concord, when it was flying, had several layers of gold in the laminate of the main canopy (the bit that slid into place as she altered to flight configuration), to protect the pilots from the sun.

We can still the see the skybox and the milky way while fairly close to the star, so it would have to very selective in the way it rejected energy. The clear sections would have to let in 99.999% of the light, and the darkened sections would have to reject 99.999% of the light from the nearby star. That would be quite a trick of technology, even for the 34th century. Microscopic darkening panels would have to "slide in place" at the all the right places at all the right times to ensure a continuous image without frying the pilot.

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Isn't it just easiest to think we have photo-chromic glasses on? ;)

Or a photo-chromic canopy? That's how I've always pictured it.

It still wouldn't explain why we cany see anything at all besides the sun. Because to look directly at the sun we would need to block out all but .0001% of the light, and that would render all dimmer objects, including planets and even some binary stars, invisible.
 
Anyway, it's a very cool effect, and we probably shouldn't read too much into it other than normal human dark adaptation delay, which is well documented among astronauts trying to see the stars while inside their bright spaceships. As for blocking the suns rays, if we worry about that too much the physics just doesn't add up and we'd be playing a game flying by monitors inside of space tanks. So monitors within monitors... no so much fun.


EDIT: Very COOL trick....

Try reversing this process. Go to a somewhat bright star like an F star or a largish G. Flying out to about 500Ls keeping the star between you and the center of the galaxy. Now turn back, and approach the star pointing just to the side of it. Notice at first how easily distant stars are visible right even right up to the edge of surface of the system's star. Now zoom in closer, and notice how the stars begin disappearing from the sky until only the brightest are left. If you keep the central bulge of the milky way directly behind the star, and you pull up to within ~6Ls, the milky way itself fade until it disappears completely! A whole galaxy gone, and only a small handful of stars left. This is a VERY cool trick that FD pulled off here, and provides a fun layer of immersion, imo. Even if it isn't 100% accurate, it is still a piece of art.
 
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There is another good reason to site an observatory on the far side of the sun. Stellar observations are not so much light orientated, rather it is radio observation. Having the Moon in the way helps to block out the signals from Earth.

Arthur C Clarke came up with an idea to use Ceres as an observatory (in his book 'Imperial Earth'), and it looked (from a distance) a bit like a spiny sea urchin.
 
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Anyway, it's a very cool effect, and we probably shouldn't read too much into it other than normal human dark adaptation delay, which is well documented among astronauts trying to see the stars while inside their bright spaceships. As for blocking the suns rays, if we worry about that too much the physics just doesn't add up and we'd be playing a game flying by monitors inside of space tanks. So monitors within monitors... no so much fun.

This brings us back to that discussion about why we have glass cockpits and don't view everything through monitors and of course now it makes much more sense. As much as I'd rather see the galaxy/universe with my own eyes through a glass windows, I would likely see nothing.
 
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I can't. When I'm sufficiently close to a star, even the galactic core region fades to near-invisibility.


Exactly but only if you are very close. We can still see the milky way even when we are ~15Ls away from a bright star. Which is astounding considering how different the apparent brightness of each would be. One would be quite literally blinding, and the other is s dim that it's barely at the edge of human vision.
 
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