Re: Number of stars in sky

On Feb 23, 9:03 am, Crown-Horned Snorkack <chornedsnork...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote:
> How many stars can be seen by telescope?

> Eye has standard angular resolution of about 1 minute (or larger) and
> can see magnitude 6.

> There are estimated to be something of 5000 to 6000 stars up to
> magnitude 6 - over the whole heavenly sphere.

I recently wondered the same thing, because I'm trying to analyze
the performance of an occultation sensor network.  The basic
idea behind an occultation sensor network is that each sensor
drone simply stares at all known pinprick light source stars and
looks for any of them briefly winking out.  This corresponds to
a detection of a target.

In order to pinpoint a target, it's necessary to get at least two
"pings" of it from two different drones.  In the ideal case of
simultaneous detections, it's easy to pinpoint the detection
because it's the intersection of two lines.  More generally,
such detections will occur at different times.  It's necessary
to look at all "pings" of all targets, and use logic to deduce
which "pings" match up with the same target.

The performance of this sort of sensor network is obviously
extremely dependent on how many pinprick light sources
are out there for the sensor drones to stare at.

An occultation sensor network would be extremely difficult
to stealth against, possibly impossible.

Isaac Kuo