168
8 In the Meantime in Groningen
work or wanted to perfect the analysis. Van Rhijn realized that part of the
background light seemed to be related to the ecliptic and that this suggested
that the zodiacal light, that was seen near the Sun just before sunrise or shortly
after sunset, in fact extended over the whole sky. He corrected for it and thus
came to a good agreement with the work of Yntema. In absolute terms: Yntema had found that the total starlight over the whole sky was that of 1350
stars of the first magnitude; van Rhijn arrived at 1440. Given the difficulty
of the measurements, these results corresponded remarkably well. Compared
to modern measurements, these values are about a third too high. Not a bad
result at all.
8 In the Meantime in Groningen
work or wanted to perfect the analysis. Van Rhijn realized that part of the
background light seemed to be related to the ecliptic and that this suggested
that the zodiacal light, that was seen near the Sun just before sunrise or shortly
after sunset, in fact extended over the whole sky. He corrected for it and thus
came to a good agreement with the work of Yntema. In absolute terms: Yntema had found that the total starlight over the whole sky was that of 1350
stars of the first magnitude; van Rhijn arrived at 1440. Given the difficulty
of the measurements, these results corresponded remarkably well. Compared
to modern measurements, these values are about a third too high. Not a bad
result at all.