ASTR-1010 Planetary Astronomy Day-2

3 X 5 Card Time Name (legibly)!! What is a planet?

Course Announcements Labs are posted on-line. It is your responsibility to print it our prior to coming to the laboratory. Clarksville Astronomy Club meeting Tuesday Jan. 7:30pm in the Sears Planetarium Begin moon observations ASAP … you’ll need them in 2 weeks. 1 st Quarter Observing – Monday Jan. 25 – 7:00pm

HOMEWORK (already) Homework Chapter 1: Due Friday Jan. 22. Get to it. This tests whether your code works or not. Chapter 1 lets you practice with the system. Everyone Everyone should have tried the SmartWorks site by now … not just the 30 people who are listed as logged on. Homework Chapter 2: Due Monday Feb. 1 Beginning with chapter 2, you better read the text and THINK before you blindly answer questions.

Phases of the Moon Lab Start observations of the moon ASAP. Record the date, time, angle from the sun and amount of illumination.

Moon Phase Observation Form 1.Record how much of the moon you see by shading in the small circle 2.Record date and time 3.Record exactly what it was that you measured 4.Record the angle you measured

What if the sun is below the horizon? Measure angle of moon from western horizon (or 180° - angle of moon from eastern horizon) Record date, time and amount of illumination Go to website and look up time of sunset Sun & Moon Rise & Set Times Calculate how far the sun is below the western horizon by subtracting the sunset time from the observing time (as a decimal) and then multiplying the result by 15° Add the angle of the moon from the western horizon to the angle of the sun below the western horizon to get angle between sun and moon

What if the moon is on one side of the sky and the sun is on the other side of the sky? Measure angle of the moon from western horizon Measure angle of sun from eastern horizon Subtract the two measurements from 180 ° to get the angle from the moon to the sun. In this case the moon is west of the sun. This will work moderately well until the two are close enough to measure directly.

How do you know which way is east or west? Where’s the horizon? College Street runs east/west direction towards sunrise (east) or sunset (west) compass (car or hand held) Horizon is along your arm held straight out from your side if you are standing straight up

This is Cute

Who Am I?

How I Got Here

Time to Get Busy

Why Study Astronomy?

Concepts Scale - # 1 ClassAction SiteScale

Our Place in the Universe Stockli, Nelson, Hasler Goddard Space Flight Center/NASA Earth is a small planet…

… orbiting a medium-sized star … NASA/SOHO/ESA

… in a galaxy of 100 billion stars … NASA/ESA/ STScI/Science Photo Library/Photo Researchers

… which is one of billions of galaxies … NASA/ESA/S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team in a universe that is 13.7 billion years old.

Compared to the universe, the Earth is less than a grain of sand on a beach

Concepts Lookback Time - # 8 – ClassAction SiteLookback Time

A Vast Universe The universe is vast. We need to handle great distances and long times. We can do this through the travel time of light. Light travels 300,000 km every second. We often use times to denote distances. For example, we may say a friend’s house is two hours away. Astronomy is a time machine!

Light Travel Times Light takes: 1¼ seconds to arrive from the Moon. 8.3 minutes to arrive from the Sun. 5.5 hours to get to Pluto from the Sun. 4.3 years (yr) to get to the nearest star. 100,000 yr to cross the galaxy. 2.9 million yr to get to the nearest big galaxy. 10 billion yr to come from distant galaxies.

In order to make sense of what we see we need a Cosmological Principal

An Important Assumption The cosmological principle: “There is nothing special about our place in the universe.” On one level: –Our view from the Earth is not special or unique. –Distant objects should be like nearby ones which we can study in detail. On another level: –Matter and energy obey the same physical laws everywhere.

Concept Quiz  Principles Which of these is a restatement of the cosmological principle? A.The universe is the same everywhere. B.The same rules work everywhere in the universe. C.There are no phenomena remaining to be discovered.

Retrograde Loop – Mars 2003 The (Quiet) Sun A Dark Sky

Early Astronomy- History If you go out to a dark location at night and look up (for a few years), what do you see? –Sun rises and sets every day; moves across the sky –Stars rise and set every day; move at a slightly different rate than Sun ==> Different stars visible at different times. –Moon goes through monthly phases –Planets meander in a “mysterious manner” –No wind

Conclusions? The Earth is flat and motionless. But we know the Sun controls life (day/night)‏ The Moon influences tides Stars are useful for timing agriculture Lots of ties to daily life and ritual

Greeks By ~500 B.C.E. the Greek society was well established and philosophy was began. Thayles (~ BCE) origin of Greek science –What is the Universe made of? Plato & Aristotle - 3 tenets of modern science. –1. Try to understand nature w/o supernatural expl. –2. Mathematics, geometry. –3. Power of reasoning from observations. –==> Models

Concepts Greek Universe – ClassAction SiteGreek Universe Geocentric – swf – ClassAction SiteGeocentric – swf

The Greek Universe Geocentric Celestial Sphere Ptolemaic model ( A.D.)‏ –Epicycles Aristarchus ( B.C.E.)‏ –Heliocentric – had it right! –But disagreed with Aristotle –Could not measure parallax!