From: "Vladimir Galogaza" 
To: "ATM shore" 
Reply-To: "Vladimir Galogaza" 


Scott,

>But I don't know if this necessarily means that a faint star will fill the
disc uniformly.

It will fill the disk in the same qualitative way as any other star brighter or
fainter. That is with the same intensity distribution pattern. Intensity
distribution in the central part of the diffraction pattern is never
uniform but bell shaped. Maximum in the center.

Fainter star may look smaller to the detector because of its (detector's)
threshold sensitivity
meaning that bellow certain intensity detector is blind or drawn in noise.
The  actual size  of the image before detection is the same.

Some other questions from your post are well answered in recent PJS post.

Vladimir.

--- BBBS/NT v4.00 MP