JOURNEY TO ASTRONOMY

-

JOURNEY TO ASTRONOMY


Astronomy is the study of stars, planets, and space. As you study astronomy, you will learn about yourself.
Astronomy tells you:



• Where are We?
• When is Now?
• What are We?




WHERE ARE WE? 

Knowledge of Earth's location in the Universe has been shaped by 400 years of telescopic observations and has expanded radically in the last century. What we know right now is that we live on Earth which is a planet.

*Earth: Home Planet

*The orbit of Moon: 768,210 km. The average diameter of the 
    orbit of the Moon relative to the Earth.

*Earth’s orbit: 299.2 million km. The average diameter of the orbit 
  of the Earth relative to the Sun. Encompasses the Sun, Mercury, 
  and Venus.

*Inner Solar System: Encompasses the Sun, the inner planets 
  (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars) and the asteroid belt.

*Outer Solar System: Includes the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, 
  Uranus, Neptune).

*Kuiper belt: Belt of icy objects surrounding the outer Solar 
  System. Encompasses the dwarf planets

*Oort cloud: Spherical shell of over a trillion comets.

*Local Interstellar cloud: Interstellar cloud of gas through which 
  the Sun and a number of other stars are currently traveling.

*Milky Way galaxy: Our home galaxy, composed of 200 billion to 
  400 billion stars and filled with the interstellar medium.

*Local group:  Group of at least 47 galaxies of which the Milky 
  Way is a part. Dominated by Andromeda (the largest), the Milky 
  Way and Triangulum; the remainders are dwarf galaxies.

*Virgo supercluster: It comprises roughly 100 galaxy groups and 
  clusters, centered on the Virgo Cluster. The Local Group is     
   located on the outer edge of the Virgo Supercluster.

*Observable Universe: More than 100 billion galaxies, arranged in 
  millions of superclusters, and voids creating a foam-like 
  superstructure.

*Universe: Minimum Beyond the observable universe lie the 
  unobservable regions from which no light has reached the Earth 
  yet. No information is available, as light is the fastest traveling 
  medium of information. The Universe is likely to contain more 
  galaxies in the same foamlike superstructure.

WHEN IS NOW?

Now that you have an idea where you are in space, you need to know where you are in time. The stars shone for billions of years before the first human looked up and wondered what they were.

Imagine beginning is BIG BANG and replaying the entire history of the universe till TODAY. Observations tell astronomers that the big bang filled the entire universe with hot, glowing gas, but as the gas cooled and dimmed, the universe went dark.
There was no light for the next 400 million years until gravity was able to pull some of the gas together to form the first stars. Galaxies formed in large numbers. Our home galaxy would be one of those taking shape.
By the time universe is full of galaxies, but the sun and Earth have not formed yet.4.6 billion years ago, about 9 billion years after the big bang, marks the formation of the sun and planets of our solar system

About 3.4 billion years ago, to mark the earliest firm evidence for life on Earth microscopic creatures in the oceans and the emergence of life on land only 0.4 billion (400 million) years ago.

Dinosaurs go extinct 65 million years ago.
What about people? 4 million years from TODAY.
Civilization, the building of cities, began about 10,000 years ago.

Compare the history of human civilization with the history of the universe. Every war you have ever heard of, every person whose name is recorded, every structure ever built from Stonehenge to the building you are in right now shows that Humanity is very new to the universe. Our civilization on Earth has existed for only a flicker of an eye-blink in the history of the universe. Only in the last hundred years or so have astronomers begun to understand where we are in space and in time.

WHAT ARE WE?


Astronomy is important to you because it will tell you what you are. Notice that the question is not “Who are we?” As you study astronomy, you will learn how you fit into the history of the universe. You will learn that the atoms in your body had their birth in the big bang when the universe began. Those atoms have been cooked and remade inside generations of stars, and now, after billions of years, they are inside you. Where will they be in another billion years? This is a story everyone should know, and astronomy is the only course on campus that can tell you that story.

Buy cool Astronomy Stuff and start you journey.




Stay tuned for more interesting facts about astronomy!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What is the aurora?

-
Image
What is the aurora? Named for the Roman goddess of dawn, the aurora is a mysterious and unpredictable display of light in the night sky. The aurora borealis and aurora australis often called the northern lights and southern lights are common occurrences at high northern and southern latitudes, less frequent at mid-latitudes, and seldom seen near the equator. While usually a milky greenish color, auroras can also show red, blue, violet, pink, and white. These colors appear in a variety of continuously changing shapes. Sometimes the aurora is as dim and scattered as to be mistaken for clouds or the Milky Way; sometimes it is bright enough to read by. What does an aurora look like?  Auroras can appear as long, narrow arcs of light, often extending east to west from horizon to horizon. At other times they stretch across the night sky in bands that kink, fold, and swirl, or even ruffle like curtains. They can spread out in multi-colored rays, like vertical shafts of lig
Read more

Binoculars | How to find a Perfect one.

-
Image
Binoculars | How to find a Perfect one. Are you a stargazer or you want to spend your leisure time by observing the sky Binoculars are the best mate for you. The basic purpose of binoculars is to magnify long distant object but people love to watch the sky with them.   Most binoculars are one of the essential gadgets to observe the heavens. It has more benefits over telescopes because they are quite cheap and handy, which is the best thing about binoculars. So the question is how to select a good binocular, its range, its magnification, reliability, and its lens quality. Here are some good suggestions along with the direct link where you can buy any of them which are suitable for you. Binoculars are often specified by a set of numbers such as 7×35 or 8×40, the first number indicates the strength of magnification (how many times closer the subject is to you, 5 times closer, 7 times closer, 10 times closer) and the second number is the size of the objective lens meas
Read more

Can you identify the planets in the night sky?

-
Image
Can you identify the planets in the night sky? If you have never studied astronomy or somehow have little knowledge about up sky heaven, then you are not able to identify planets in the night sky. Have you ever wondered how the planets look like from our Earth? I’m sure you have never noticed the bright shiny object in the sky. It seems to be a star in the night sky. But it is brighter than the usual star can be seen in the below picture. Let me acknowledge you about some facts by which you can easily differentiate between planets and stars in the night sky. First of all the general definition of both the object which may everyone know. The Planets: A celestial body moving in an elliptical orbit around a star. A planet is a large object such as Jupiter or Earth that orbits a star. Planets are smaller than stars, and they do not produce light. A star and everything which orbits it are called a star system. There are eight planets in our Solar System. The Star
Read more