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Old 06-05-2006, 10:34 AM   #47
Fordim Hedgethistle
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Aiwendil
But Christopher surmises that these cannot have been meant seriously, since Nenar and Luinil, which are supposed to be "great lights in the region of Ilmen" would then refer to the very faint Uranus and Neptune - the latter of which is not even visible without the aid of a telescope.
But Aiwendil you are not taking into account that these stars would all have been identified by Elvish eyes. There are numerous examples of Elves being able to see things that humans could only see with the aid of a telescope -- given the greater powers of perception attributed to Elves by Tolkien, it would not make sense for them NOT to be able to see Uranus and Neptune, which become visible through even the most modest telescopes.

With vision as good as I think they possess (i.e. equivalent to a small refractor telescope), they would easily be able to pick out the differences between stars and planets and maybe even distinguish some features of planetary bodies. Galileo, with his telescope (the equivalent power of a decent pair of modern binoculars) could make out Uranus, Neptune, the rings of Saturn and the four largest moons of Jupiter!
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