Hello everyone,
I am new here, and recently discovered the series through my local library. I am very excited about the series, and have enjoyed it immensely. I am currently on "The Head of the Dragon", and something I have heard several times has me a bit confused. I feel I may have missed a touch of context.
In several places, ships seem to be very close to one another, but the statement is made pretty plainly that they either can't be seen or that they are a tiny speck of light in the distance. This seems to be true at relatively short distances - 10-20 klicks.
Given the size of the ships (as I understand it), I feel like I must be missing something. Warships in wet navies can see one another plainly as long as they are on the right side of the horizon, even if they are smaller ships. The Aurora and the Takaran ships seem to be large beasties... so I can't figure out why they can't be seen. Even the ISS is distinct at a distance of 50 KM as not being a star, and clearly discernable at about 20-30 KM. Did I miss an explanation about why ships aren't visible, or is this perhaps a place where the audiobook script has made an accidental mistake (50 KM instead of 500 KM or similar)?
Rob+
I could be totally wrong here, but I would think these two reasons are generally accepted as to why it's difficult.
1) Light. On Earth its easy to see things at a distance, given that there's a large amount of reflected light. In space, unless you are close to a star, light is diffuse or infrequent. That doesn't mean undetectable, but given the lack of light you would need long exposure in each area you view to detect anything there. Additionally, an object would still be undetectable via visible light if the reflection of light did not reach your cameras.
2) Encounters in space do not always occur on the elliptic. Another object in space might be at an oblique angle several KM away from you. That means that you aren't just panning a camera around in a 360 degree orbit, you are looking in every direction above and below.
So is it impossible to find a ship at those distances? No. It would be very time consuming though. Better to just move the plot along.
For example, the ISS (310-410KM away) is visible to the naked eye just after dusk when the Earth is still reflecting/refracting sunlight. It's actually crazy bright. However, when the Earth is completely blocking the Sun it gets trickier and it is much fainter, relying on reflected light from the moon.
This is a topic with a LOT of returns when you google it. Didn't find one that says how big a 2 KM long ship would appear to be from 10 KM or 1 KM. Nor did I find a calculator I could use. But distance would make them appear tiny, very tiny. And during battle, NO running lights. We paint them gray to somewhat blend with the ocean. In space, probably black or other darker colors.
As for seeing them. The spectrum of wave lengths you can use vary from radio to gamma rays. A warm ship would be findable to a certain distance because infrared cameras can pick that up. Even stealth ships could be found if it creates a hole in the background radiation. And that, again, would have to be EVERY wavelength, not just visible light.
That calculator idea is a good one for someone that knows how to calculate all this. If the actual size of a ship is 2 Kilometers long and I am 3 Kilometers away, how big would it appear to be?
