Subject: I almost brought that up!
Author:
Posted on: 2019-03-15 15:42:00 UTC

Not that version, but the more sciencey one which jumps from watching the Riders of Rohan to astronomy:

Traditionally, the limits of human visual acuity are tested with a pair of stars, Mizar and Alcor, a double-star system in the constellation of the Big Dipper. The Arabs, who gave the stars the names we conventionally use, called these stars the 'horse and rider'. It is possible - just - for a keen-sighted person to resolve Alcor and Mizar as two separate stars of unequal brightness, rather than as a single star. Alcor and Mizar are separated by 12 minutes of arc, so this stands as the limit of human naked-eye resolution. Objects closer together than this will only ever be seen as a blur. When you turn your telescope on the problem, it turns out that Mizar (as distinct from Alcor) is itself a double-star. The two stars are separated by 14 seconds of arc, well within the abilities of Legolas, if not Aragorn.

This comparison gives us an impression of how the world was seen through the eyes of the Elves. Aragorn at his most acute would only ever have seen Alcor and Mizar as a double-star, but Legolas would easily have seen it as a naked-eye *triple* star (Alcor, and the two doubles that make up Mizar), an object unknown to human sight. The starry sky was of great significance to the Elves, and no wonder - they would have seen far more in it than human beings ever could.


Elves. Is. Weird.

hS

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