[LMB] Soletta (WAS: Chat - New Essay)

[Joel Polowin]

"James M. BRYANT G4CLF"  wrote:
> In the first chapter of "Komarr" Ekaterin views the damaged
> soletta and reflects that it used to look like "a snowflake
> made of stars". This is not incompatible with 5000 mile mirrors
> at a distance of a million miles or so - and at that distance
> the mirrors would not be visible to be star-like against a day
> bright post-sunset sky if they were smaller than 1000 miles or so.

Hmm.  If the soletta is providing, say, 10% as much solar light/heat
as Komarr would otherwise receive from its sun, shouldn't it appear
to have 10% of the brightness of the sun -- which would be very very
bright indeed?  (For comparison, our sun is ca. 449,000 times brighter
than the full moon and about 649,281,000 times brighter than Venus.)
I wouldn't expect the component mirrors to look like stars.

Perhaps the mirrors are also converting visible light to infrared?

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself with free Messenger emoticons. Get them today!
http://www.freemessengeremoticons.ca/?icid=EMENCA122