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Saturday, December 19, 2009

Resolution



As I was getting ready to get in my truck today I noticed a couple of white dots by my driveway. I thought they looked like Airsoft pellets. I went over and inspected them and sure enough, that's what they were. You can't see them in this shrunken picture, but if you click on it to see the full resolution version, there are blindingly obvious. They are lying on the asphalt a couple of inches from the concrete apron of the gutter. Airsoft pellets aren't very big, and I was at least thirty feet away.

30 feet x 2 x PI / (3/16") ~= 12,000.

So it would take about 12,000 Airsoft pellets to make a circle 60 feet in diameter (a circle with a radius of 30 feet).

1 circle = 360 degrees * 60 minutes per degree = 21,600 minutes of arc.

So an Airsoft pellet at a distance of 30 feet is roughly 2 minutes of arc. Here is a close up if the first picture didn't work.


Update October 2016 replaced missing pictures.

1 comment:

Eunoia said...

FWIW, a good human eye can resolve down to 1 arcminute on a bright day (=2mm pupil).