Every Visible Star in the Night Sky, in One Map
I think I read the following paper about ten years ago and I discussed it on the Thunderbolts.info forum at that time. That was some time after reading a former website which had similar info which I also discussed on the forum. That first author died and his website was removed, but I had copied quite a bit of it on the forum, so those portions of it are likely still accessible. I think the first author had concluded that stars, galaxies etc are much closer than this second author finds, but it looks like this second author’s method of calculation is sound, though it may not properly apply to quasars, which Charles Chandler found are likely not spherical objects, but ring-like, instead. The shape may affect the distance formula. The following is excerpts from the paper linked under the title. I composed the title.
CORRECTED DISTANCES TO SOME STARS & QUASARS
https://www.gsjournal.net/Science-Journals/Essays-Astrophysics/Download/4635
... The (B – V) Color Index. Simply put, the B – V index can be used to determine a star’s absolute magnitude, and this along with its apparent magnitude, allows the distance to be determined by the formula given below. Although the process is somewhat more complicated than we will give here, the basics are the same. The following figure shows the relationship between the B - V index and absolute magnitude for the twenty nearest stars.
... From this figure it is easy to determine absolute magnitude (M) for a star who’s B – V index is known (nearly all stars). Then using the apparent magnitude (m) of the star and the following equation, the distance can be determined. And no parallax is used! (m – M) = 5 log D – 5 The following tables reflect the result of using the B – V color index instead of parallax to compute the distance to some well-known stars. Note that these tables were taken from my book The Deceptive Universe, published in 1982, and may be a little dated, but they illustrate the result. (You probably will not find a similar table in all of astronomical research!)
CLOSE STARS
(Const means Constellation; xDist means Mainstream's Distance in Lightyears; Dist means Corrected Distance in Lightyears.)
Const xDist Dist Name
Ori 310 0.05 Betelgeuse
Sco 326 0.08 Antares
Tau 68 0.55 Aldebaran
Tau 88 0.55 Gacrux
Vel 489 0.57 Suhail
Peg 176 0.63 Scheat
Cet 130 0.66 Menkar
Gru 173 0.73 Kornepnoros
And 88 0.8 Mirach
Boo 36 1.1 Arcturus
Dra 101 1.2 Eltanin
Umi 95 1.2 Kochab
Peg 522 1.3 Enif
Hya 85 1.3 Alphard
TrA 55 1.4 Atria
Car 202 2.2 Avior
Cet 95 2.5 Mira
Sco 65 2.7 eta Scorpio
And 121 3.5 Almach
Ari 85 3.7 Hamal
Gem 36 3.7 Pollux
Cas 121 4.2 Schedar
Aur 42 4.2 Capella
Uma 75 4.6 Dubhe
Cen 4 5.5 Rigel Kent
Leo 104 5.6 Algeiba
Cet 68 5.9 Diphda
Cen 46 6.1 Menkent
Phe 78 6.2 Ankaa
Cyg 82 6.7 Gienar
... ...
Cma 9 8 Sirius
Car 1174 10 Canopus
Cmi 11 11 Procyon
Cma 3064 13 Wesen
Lyr 26 17 Vega
Aqi 17 18 Altair
Ori 913 19 Rigel
Per 619 19 Mirfak
Eri 85 25 Achernar
PsA 22 25 Formalhaut
Cyg 1826 26 Deneb
Cru 359 28 Acrux
Cen 456 30 Hadar
Vir 258 34 Spica
Car 85 36 Miaplacidus
Leo 85 37 Regulus
Gem 46 38 Castor
Cru 424 39 Mimosa
Aur 72 39 Menkalinan
Uma 62 40 Alioth
Sgr 85 40 Kans Australis
Tau 130 42 El Nath
Gem 85 42 Alhena
Cma 489 43 Adhara
Sco 274 44 Shaula
Gru 68 44 Al Nair
Ori 359 45 Bellatrix
Ori 1206 45 Alnilam
Uma 108 48 Alkaid
... Betelgeuse is the only star whose diameter has been measured and studied by speckle interferometry to get a picture of its surface. At its currently estimated distance of 540 light years, it is clearly categorized as a giant, with a mass about twenty times that of the sun. The revised distance by color index Is about 0.05 light years, or only 250 times the distance from the sun as the planet Saturn! Using this distance and the measured diameter of 0.45 seconds of arc, the diameter of Betelgeuse can be estimated to be about 70,000 miles, or about 1/13 that of the sun. Betelgeuse has a color index of 1.83, which would classify it as a normal red dwarf. It also has been found to emit radio energy, much as does the sun, and one of the few stars to do so. Another interesting fact about Betelgeuse is that its diameter has been seen to decrease by 15% since 1993. Astronomers have been puzzled by this, but it is easily explained if Betelgeuse is nearby and moving away from us. In fact, it has a measured redshift of 22 miles per second, or a recessional velocity of 79,000 miles per hour. Using a simple calculator indicates that it has receded around 1.3 x 10^10 miles since 1993. A very simple explanation for the observed reduction in diameter!
https://www.eso.org/public/archives/images/thumb700x/full-sky-map-bright-quasars.jpg — Full sky map of bright quasars | ESO
Color Index and Quasars. I have long disputed that the Hubble Law is valid to measure the distance to quasars. This belief is further supported by evidence of proper motion in some quasars, suggesting nearness to the solar system. So can the color index be used to determine the distance to quasars? Maybe so! To investigate this I selected the quasar 3C 273, the first quasar discovered and still the object of intensive study. This quasar has an apparent magnitude of about 12.7 (m = 12.7) and a B – V color index of 0.21. Using the (B – V) / absolute magnitude relationship discussed previously results in an absolute magnitude of about 1.5 (M = 1.5). By formula, the distance to 3C 273 is then calculated to be 5,668 light years! This is compared to the 2.4 billion light years estimated with the Hubble Law! ... Very clearly, quasars are nearby, and not at the billions of light years given by the Hubble law. And since they are nearby, there is no reason to ascribe extraordinary energy to them. Quasars are simply nearby stars with very high redshifts. The cause of this very high redshift is not due to recessional velocity, but will not be discussed here. A small sample of quasar distances recalculated using the B – V index is shown below
CLOSE QUASARS
(Dist means Distance in Lightyears.)
Dist Quasar
936 PKS 2153-69 = PGC 67703 (Ind)
2257 IRAS 00521-7054 = PGC 89511 (Tuc)
2267 ESO 012-G21
2363 IRAS 00198-7926 = PGC 89877 (Hyd?)
2396 F 357
2440 IRAS 19254-7245 = PGC 84913
2947 ESO 31-G0
3576 IRAS 14167-7236
4824 1H 1836-786
5028 H 0355-826
12748 UKS 0242-724
20111 1H 0828-706
24515 PKS 2300-683
25908 PKS 0312-77
42996 PKS 0202-76
44405 PKS 0858-77
55135 MC4 0031-70
71356 PKS 2302-713
C 2013 by Jerrold Thacker, JThacker@msn.com