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Title: Astronomy I
Description: These notes cover everything from metric units, revolution, stars, the planets and many other interesting things about astronomy.

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UNIT ONE IN-CLASS NOTES
8/21



objects in space
movement of objects in space
Astronomy is the scientific study of the universe and everything inside of it & what is contains
...

Science is a progress report & is constantly changing and science is an ongoing process
...
What we know and how we learn it
...


A mnemonic to remember the steps in a simplified version of the scientific method is :
People : problem
On : observations
Hairy : hypothesis
educated possible solution; educated because of the observations
Elephants : experiments
Always : analysis
Cry : conclusions
In 2006, Pluto got demoted and is not a planet anymore
...


8/23











What is a unit?
o The standard sizes we are comparing too that everybody agrees on
Units of length
o 1 meter=5280 feet
o 1 foot=12 inches
Metric units
smallest to largest
o Nanometer
10^-9
o Micrometer
10^6
o Millimeter
10^-3
o Centimeter
10^-1
o 1 meter
m
o 1 kilometer
km
o Megameter
= 1 million km
o Gigameter
=10^9
o Terameter
=10^12
trillions
Solar system = everything that belongs to sol, the sun
...

Like the eight planets and 5 dwarfs
...
184 moons
...
4
...

galaxy= stars bound together by gravity orbiting a common center of gas
...
We get around 250 billion stars
...
called island universes
...
There is only one that we know of
...
Our universe is
13
...
The big bang is the start of the universe
...
Create clusters called filaments and walls around voids
...
49 x 10^8 km
o Used to measure things in the solar system
...

Scale 10 cm= 1 AU
The speed of light is constant
Distance = speed X time
Units must cancel to do multiplication, so you have to convert
...
5 times in a second
...
5
Other sciences, you can see it in real time and you can touch the other sciences but in space, we
can’t see the sky as it is today
...


8/28





















If a hypothesis always worked multiply times, it becomes a theory
A theory has been tested and it works
model: a description of nature
...
9999% empty
Everything is made of atoms & atoms can be taken apart
Atoms
o Protons
o Neutrons
o Electrons
Plasma is an ionized gas
the atoms are charged
The universe started with the Big Bang
The Big Bang happened January 1st
The ancient Greeks and romans thought the earth was the center of the universe
o They thought the sky was a ball and turned around the earth once a day
...

It’s the earth that’s spinning
The earth orbits the sun in 365
...

The earth moves eastward against the stars
Some effects of the motion around the sun are that we see different stars in difference seasons
The sun moves around 1 degree per day around the stars
o That has consequences when the sun sets

8/30























Globe is a model, the celestial sphere is a concept
Earth in the middle of a model is geocentric cosmology
The Earth rotates and revolves around the sun
It takes 24 hours for the Earth to spin
The earth spins toward the east, makes the people disappear towards the west
...

Revolution
• Going around a point in space or object
• The earth is revolving around the sun
• The earth is rotating
• Takes a year for the earth to go around the sun, it’s not equal to a year but it’s shorter
because the earth wobbles
...

Dayton’s latitude is 40 degrees because that’s where we are on the globe
At noon, you must face south to see it
• The shadow will be pointing north
The sun is never over head in Dayton
Angles
• Separation between two intersecting lines
• 360 degrees in a full circle
• Zenith and horizon is 90 degrees, ¼ of a circle
• Angular separation = one of the units to say how big something is
• The distance between two objects
• Angular size is one way we use angles
• The size of an object
• Tilt: angle between our rotational axis and perpendicular
• Coordinates
• Coordinates are also angles
• 1 degree= 60’ (x’= minutes)
• 60’ = 60” (x”=seconds)
• 3,600” in an hour/degree
What angle does the sun appear to travel along the ecliptic every day?
• The sun moves about one degree everyday
...

360 degrees is 24 hour
• One hour, the Earth spins through 15 degrees
• In 60 mins, the Earth will spin another 15”
• In one degree, the difference is four minutes
• The actually time it takes for the Earth to spin once is four minutes short of the typical 24
hr
...

These stars orbit the center of the galaxy and move because the Earth wobbles
The word planet means “wanderer” because the planets moved behind the stars
• The Greeks thought earth was not a planet because they were standing on it
Each of the day of week is named after a planet and the planets are named after the Greek gods,
like hercules and Neptune
We use the Anglo saxon names for the week names
• Sunday-for the sun, sol
• To the ancient Greeks, the sun and the moon were planets
• Monday - moon lunda
• Tuesday- from mars
• Wednesday -mercury
• Thursday- Jupiter
• Friday-Venus - friga
• Saturday-satum
• 7 days of the week because there were 7 planets to the Greeks and romans
Asterism - pattern of stars
Out of the 3000 stars you can see, only 300 have word names
Constellation: area or region of the sky
Take the sky, cut it into pieces and each piece is a constellation
...

All boundaries= there are no boundaries
We connect the bright stars to make pictures, everything in a boundary in the sky, are in a
constellation
...

On the earth we have longitude and latitude
Longitudes is east and west, 360 degrees each way so 720 is the most we can go
Latitude is north and south
The international date lines
• A line between Asian and Europe and north America
• When you step over it, you go one day forward (going west) or one day behind it (going
east)
• Europe and Asia is ahead of us
• We are the last ones to get anything
• At the same time, it can be two different dates
The poles don’t have longitude coordinates
Right ascension is the angle measured eastward from there the ecliptics and CE cross on the first
day of spring
The path of the sun= the ecliptic
The seasons depend on the sun
The Celestial equator → right above the earth’s equator
When the sun is going north - vernal equinox
start of spring
• Around March 20th
when the sun is going south → autumnal equinox
starts of Autumn
• Around September 21st
Summer solstice - the highest the sun is in the sky, around June 21
Winter solstice - the lowest the sun is in the sky, around December 21



















Mayans had a calendar that was based on Venus
• They had long cycles
• They thought the earth was going to end in 2012 but it was just their first cycle ending
The solstices are when the sun is as far away from the equator as it gets
...
5 tilt
Tropic circles
• Tropic of cancer and tropic of Capricorn are the highest and lowest the sun will reach at
the solstices
• Summer solstices - tropic of cancer
• Winter solstice- tropic of Capricorn
Arctic circle
• Winter solstice - 24 hours of dark
Antarctic
• Winter solstice - 24 hours of light

9/6
















Light pollution is wasted
...

The sun’s motion is in between the cardinal directions
We lose daylight as we get closer to winter
...
5 mean solar days, we don’t have 29
...
) must be evenly divisible by 400
We use the Gregorian calendar
• Pope Gregory the 14th did calendar reform
• The extra days has caused the VE to drift and spring wasn’t starting on the correct day
When is Easter → first Sunday after the first moon, after the VE?
• Easter would show up late if they didn’t change the calendar
Study about pope Gregory

9/11








Phases of the moon and eclipses
Closest neighbor to earth
The moon is orbiting the Earth
The moon is naturally occurring satellite
Moon preliminaries
We never see the full moon
• We always see just one side of the moon
Synchronous rotation
• Set things equal, one spin = one orbit




























We call the side of the moon that we can’t see from here is called the ‘far side’ or the ‘other side’
or the ‘back side’
There are 8 phases of the moon
Waxing means growing and waning means shrinking
Waxing phases are visible during the evening
Waning phases are visible during the morning
Moon is only seen for 12 hours of the day
The new moon is up during the day at noon
Age of moon - age of the phase the moon is in
Harvest moon - first full moon closest to the autumnal equinox, can be before or after
• Normally in September but can be in October
Full moon is bright enough for farmers to harvest during the nighttime
...

Perigee - when the moon is closest to the earth
Apogee- when the moon is the furthest from the earth
...
3 days
The sidereal month is 27
...

• Partial - if the moon gets the earth on the edge
• Penumbral - if the moon misses the earth entirely
Red light from the sun can make the moon red

9/13



Astronomy is the oldest science
People have been looking at stars ever since they could look at stars






































9/18

Archeoastronomy- the study of how ancient cultures used astronomy to develop systems of time
and the calendar
...

During Aristotle’s time, they did not have scientist, they have philosophers
Phases of the moon are not caused by the earth’s shadow
• The earth’s shadow is never straight
...

Uniform circular motion - perfect circles at constant speeds
People thought the heaven had be perfect, so they lived a perfect life so that they would go to
heaven
...

Eratosthenes measured the side of the earth
He found that the sun hit the Earth at different points, so he made an equation
...

Hipparchus looked at the stars
Smaller the number, the brighter the object is how we use our magnitude scale for stars today
...

The Earth orbits the sun, spins on an axis and wobbles
...

Claudius Ptolemy made a model of the universe from Hipparchus and Aristotle's information
They thought the Earth stood still and the celestial sphere was going counterclockwise, and the
sun and moon were in between the sphere and earth and were going clockwork
...

Claudius Ptolemy invented epicycle and deferent cycles
He wrote a book but the great library in Alexandria was burned so it was lost
Almagest means the greatest, he had in that book all the cycles and all the speeds
They used to believe in astrology
Astrology is not science
• Started over 2,000 years ago when they believed the god had an influence on your life
...

• He made a simple version
• Wrote a book
• The book was published the year he died
...

Books make people think and question if he could be right or not
...

Put under house arrest, 70 years old and blind from looking at the sun
...

His daughters were nuns and he was buried by one of his daughters
Sir Isaac Newton
o He was too busy to go to his own wedding
o Discovered the universal law of gravitation
o An apple hit him on the head, and he discovered gravity
o Invented calculus, the other one was a German
o Came up with three laws of motion
Gravity is an attractive force; it’s always pulling never pushing
A force - push or pull
Weight - pull of gravity
Weight if a force
Force’s units are newton
Only four shapes gravity can be:
o Ellipses and circles will come back, but hyperbola and parabola will not come back
...


9/25/18


Light is electromagnetic radiation
















Radioactivity is a reaction that shoots out particles
James clerk Maxwell, studies electricity and magnetism
Wanted to study charges that moved
Developed equations
The attraction between opposite charges is responsible for chemical bonding
Field - how objects interact if they’re not touching
Earth sets up a gravitational field and the moon is inside of the field, so the moon is
interacting in the field, not the earth
Sound is compression wave
o Requires a medium to travel through
...

Trough to trough or crest to crest is counted as one wavelength
We use the Greek letter, lambda for symbolize wavelength
The speed of light is 3
...

Double one, cut the other in half
o Wavelength and frequency are inversely proportional
Between the earth and sun is a vacuum
o Light will travel through empty space
o Sound cannot travel through the vacuum thought; it requires something to
compress
...

You go twice as far, it’s going to be 4 times dimmer
Spectrum - to spread something out
With light, when we say spectrum, we’re going to spread the light out
...

o Humans radiate infrared

9/27/18




















Purple is the pigment and violet are the light that it’s reflecting because the human eye
cannot see violet
...
In emission, dropping to a lower
lever and giving off energy
The doppler effect
o How it’s moving, waves get stretched as they’re moving away and scrunched
when moving towards you
o Caused by the motion of the object relative to the observer
o Can be used to measure the speed of objects in space, used for radial velocity
Toward you, wavelength is compressed, and frequency is higher, blue shifted
Away is redshifted
Radial velocity is like spokes in a wheel
Motion that doesn’t change its distance from you is circular
The type of motion that DOES NOT cause a doppler effect is a tangent line - tangential
velocity
Speed of the object / speed of the wave = change of the wavelength/ wavelength is rest
o Change in wavelength / wavelength in lab
Negative is toward, positive is away
Light can be brought to a focus in two ways
o Bounding and bending
Bouncing is reflection, bending is refraction
We use refraction to bring light to a point
o We need to use a convex lenses
For a lenses
o How wide is it and what the focal length is
Angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection

10/4/18












Images are inverted, so pictures are backwards
Least important thing a telescope does is magnify
m= f
...
Objective / fl
...

▪ Every asteroid is orbiting the sun
▪ Minor planet is what we used to call asteroids
o Must have enough mass to be pulled into a sphere
▪ Must be round
o A planet must have to clear it’s orbital space
Physical
o Size
o Mass
o Density
o Composition
Terrestrial is earth like
o Mercury, Venus, ,earth and mars
Jovian planets are Jupiter like
o Jupiter, Saturn, uranus and neptune
o Can be called giant planets
Mass is stuff and measured in either grams or kilograms
Volume is 3 dimensional space
o L x w he
o Centimeters or meters cubed
Density of water is 1 g/cm^3
o Water is used to set the scale








o 1 gram per unit density
Rock is more dense because it sinks if it’s in water
o Rock is anywhere from 2 -3 g/cm^3
Density tells us what types of materials things are made of
Somewhere inside of earth is denser than rock and water
o Which leads us to believe we have an iron core
Mercury is the most iron rich planet of the solar system
Saturn is the least dense planet because it has little mass in a large size
Neptune’s surface is frozen, no gaseous atmosphere the surface is slush, a big slush
ball

10/11/18






















7 large moons
o Earths
o Io
o Europa
o Ganymede
o
Calisto
▪ 4 Galilean moons of jupiter -what he saw through his telescope
o Titan - with Saturn
o Triton - with Neptune
Large moons are moons because they orbit a planet, not the sun
o Size is not something that makes something a planet
Asteroids are very small, only about km wide
o Left overs from the terrestrial planets
Comets are made of ice and dust
o Dirty snowballs of the universe
o Left over from the Jovian planets
o Orbits are eccentric
o Keilter belt objects
▪ When they get kicked out, they become comets
Earth formed from comets
Comets vaporize as they get closer to the sun
Dust grains between the planets
Small bits of dust -meteoroids
Meteor Showers are related to comets
Neon and helium are noble gasses
o They are special
o Do not bond to make molecules
o Anti-social
Hydrogen is the most common
Water, ammonia, and methane are ices
o Very common
Gold is hard to make
o It’s made by merging neutron stars which does not happen often
o Only way it’s made
Hydrogen and helium were made in the big bang
You cannot have liquids in space because there’s not enough pressure for them to
exist
...

Two forms of heat
o Collisions
o Naturally occurring radioactive decay
radioactive decay is still heating the inside of the earth
Differentiation is what gives our planets layers
Asteroids are the oldest rocks in the solar system
We date meteorites to get the age of the solar system
Venus has the hottest because it’s atmosphere has trapped heat
o The greenhouse effect, how we learned about the greenhouse effect
Mercury has the greatest range of temp
...
2 km/second - 25,000 miles per hour
Gas - look at the temperature
o Give the average speed of the gas
o Hotter it is, the faster it will go
Absolute temp is proportional to kinetic energy
o Kinetic energy depends on the mass
Geological activity can erase craters
o Driven by internal heat
young surfaces have fewer craters
Earth is geologically active, we have a young surface
o The rocks are a few million old
...
5 billion years
The surface of the moon is older than the surface of the earth
...


10/16/18




Contracts and evidence are the same thing
Constraints are three main types
o Motion, chemical and age
All the planets orbit the sun in nearly same orbits, same direction and nearly same plane
o What caused this ?
▪ We had a disc and the plants formed in the disc
▪ Solar nebula theory
• Nebula is a cloud
...

▪ The dust are the solids
...


• Slowly spun
Something that pushed on the cloud (possibly a supernova)
The cloud was cold
...

▪ Slow change
...

The sun formed in the middle of the disc
...

▪ Big and can hold onto hydrogen and helium
Jovian and terr
...
Planets did
...

The terr
...
But before Jupiter, water froze, creating
ice
...

o It got large and it’s far from the sun
...

The further off the disc you go, the less materials there are
...

The solar system is 4
...

We date the oldest parts of the solar system
...

Rocks on earth are recycles and reformed
...
This
explains the orbits
...

Planetesimals make protoplanets are smaller little planets
...

o If they ran into each other, they would collide and get used up
...

Jovian’s formed first because they're larger and attract mass faster
...

The process of planet making took about 100 million years
...

There is dust in the solar system, still
Jupiter throws parts of its planet to the outside of the solar system
Keiper belts was created from the Jovian planets throwing their stuff out
...

Star- A naturally occurring nuclear reactor
...

























































We see stars forming
o They form in large groups
Proplyds are disc around the stars
extra solar or exo planets are things orbiting stars
There are over 3,000 exoplanets
2 methods to detect exoplanets
o Radial velocity
▪ First Method that worked well
...

▪ We looked for the star to wobble
...

▪ The motion is small and we cannot detect it
...

▪ We see the doppler shift, we look for the blue and red shift in the stars
spectrum
...

o And transit method
▪ Must put something in orbit to find out
▪ We detect the dimming
▪ Kepler found 150,000 stars looking for planets and found that a lot of
stars have planets
Jovian planets migrate until they settle down in their orbits
You can put a planet near a star
...

Terrestrials are hot because they’re near the sun
...
Did not have
...

Earth is mostly heavy elements
o The earth is just not massive enough to hold them
...





























Earth’s surface is covered with rocks
We use seismic waves to study how things travel through things
...

S waves will not travel through iron
P-waves get bent
Shadow zones- where you get no waves at all
By measuring the waves of the earthquakes, we can figure out where the
boundaries are and what the materials are
Earth’s crust is very thin, rocky and solid
o Mantel - solid, except for the part under the crust, not quite liquid but not
quite solid
...

The deeper you go, the higher the pressure an the melting point changes
We have a magnetic field and we must have a liquid metal in the interior
...
You also need spin (fast) to
create a magnetic field
o Same rotation of the earth
Solar wind - particles, proton and electrons from the sun since it’s spitting out
charged particles, 400 m/ph
o Very fast moving charged particles
o Interact with the earth's magnetic field
...

Van Allen belts - where protons and electrons orbit the earth over the equator
...

Radioactive radiation - charged particles moving very fast
The solar wind is dangerous to technology because they’re charged particles and
they’re moving fast
...

Igneous are from the molten state
...

Diamonds are 3 dimensional bonds
Marble is metamorphic
...

Primitive rock is not longer on the surface of the earth
...

What is a rock?
o Solid, made from minerals, minerals are pure substances, made from
minerals
The continents used to be one - Pangea
Pangea is not the first supercontinent, ridinia
Nobody believed Alfred Wegener about plate tectonics
...
It was pushing the plates apart and that what
was causing the drift
...

Earth has a layer structure due to density
71% of the earth is covered in water, 29% land
The entire surface of mars is the same amount of earth
...

Liquid iron interior and you need the iron to move, the circulation of the iron is the
rotation of the earth
...

Mercury and earth have some
...

Mercury is the most iron rich planet in the solar system
Jovian planets have magnetic fields
...



























The liquid metal in Jupiter is hydrogen
...

Earth’s magnetic field protects us from the solar wind, a stream of charged
particles that flow outward from the sun
...

Earth’s crust is broken into plates and 3 different rocks
...

Hawaii is a bunch of volcanoes
...

o It was not accepted at the time
...

o 1950’s, 40 years later, we discovered the Mid Atlantic ridge
...

o Proposed Pangea
...

o They must have been connected in the past for them to be there
...
Then east, west
...

o Rift is when PT move away from each other
Subduction zone, creating trenches when PT’s go above each other and the other
goes below
...

o Depend on the material
Conduction
o Through contacts and bonds
o Best with solids
Convection
o Liquids and gases
o Circulation, moving the warm material around
Radiation
o Electromagnetic radiation
o Losing energy by emitting photons
If the Atlantic ocean is growing, the pacific is shrinking
The ring of fire - a lot of geological activity around that place, the pacific plate
...

o The sky will go black because there is like nothing above you
...

o No energy, not dense, very hot as you go up
...

Light is also known as radio waves
Takes radio waves from moon to Earth 1
...

Earth revolves around the sun
...

News we get from the sun is 8 minutes old
...

There are 8 planets
A planet - a body of significant size that orbits a star and does not produce its own light
Star- a large body that consistently produces its’ own light
...

Stars are glowing gas balls that generate energy by nuclear reactions
We are currently in the milky way
...

Dark matter- material we cannot observes without technology
Stars can have up to three other stars revolving around each other
Star clusters- stars that form together
...

Stars make energy
Stars lose energy too
Humans are basically made from stardust
...
7 The Universe on the Large Scale
o The universe is made up of galaxies
o Astronomers used to call galaxies ‘island universes’
o The nearest galaxy is 75,000 light year sawya and was first discovered in 1993
...

o With Quasars, we can see as far back as the big bang
...
8,1
...
8 The Universe of The Very Small
o Air is 10^12 atoms in each cubic centimeter
o In interstellar gas, there is one atom in every cust centimeter
o Molecules -the smallest particle into which matter can be divided
...
9 A conclusion and a beginning
o A universe was made very quickly
...
1 & Ch 4 S 4
...
2
• Ch 2 S 2
...

o European Renaissance believes in a geocentric world
o Zenith - point above you
...

o Early greeks thought the sky was a celestial sphere
...

Meteors are shooting stars
Meteors- cosmic dust burning up as they hit the atmosphere
From north & south poles to the celestial sphere are the north & south celestial poles
Earth’s equator → celestial equator
Stars that never set are in the circumpolar zone
...

The sun moves 1 degree east each day
...

Sun rises four minutes later due to rotation
The sun’s path is not linked with the equator
...
5 degree tilt
...

The 7 planets also move during the day
...

o Fixed stars - those that maintain fixed patterns among themselves through many
generations
...

o The moon is the fastest
o The moon can do a full trip in one month
o Moon moves 24X it’s own wide on the sky each day
o Zodiac means zoo
o If there were no clouds, we would be able to see 3,000 stars
o Each civilization made their own star patterns
o Early in the 20th century, the made a formal system for organizing the sky
...

o Greeks named stars after mythological characters and not what the stars looked like
...
1 Earth & The Sky
o Earth Rotates East
o Points at the poles do not turn
o Great Circle - any circle on the surface of a sphere whose center is at the center of the
sphere
o Earth’s equator is a great circle
o Meridian - series of great circle that pass through the poles
o Meridians is east and west, left and right
...

o Prime meridian longitude is 0 degrees
o Greenwich, England is home of the Royal Observatory
o Latitude - runs north to south, up and down, number of degrees of arc you’re away from
the equator
...

o Declination → latitude
right ascension → longitude

o
o
o
o
o
o

We start counting right ascension at the vernal equinox
...

RA can be degrees or a unit of time
...

• Ch 4 S 4
...

o When we lean into the sun, sunlight hits use more directly
...

o Morning twilight - when the sun is 18 degrees below the horizon
o Evening twilight - when the sun sinks more than 18 degree below the horizon
...
3-4
...
3 Keeping Time
o Solar day- rotation period of Earth with respect to the sun
o Sidereal day- the rotation period of Earth with respect to the stars
...

o Mean solar time - based on the average value of the solar day over a course of year
...
This is where we have
time zones today
...

• Ch 4 S 4
...

o Stonehenge was built as a calendar
o Mayan calendars were more complicated than European calendars
...

o Romans based their calendar off the moon and the sun, which was very hard
...

o Pope Gregory the 8th made a new calendar
...
5 Phases and Motions of the Moon
o The moon is the second brightest
o The moon glows from the light off the sun
o Takes two weeks for the moon to fully glow

The moon’s new if you’re on the right side and it's the middle of the day
...

The moon is new when it’s the same direction of the sun
...

o Solar month - the time interval where the phases go from full to full
...
7 & Ch 2 S 2
...
7 Eclipses of the Sun and Moon
o Eclipse - whenever the sun or moon enters the shadows of the other
...

o Total solar Eclipse - if an Eclipse of the sun occurs when the moon is somewhat nearer
than its average distance, the moon can completely hides the sun
...

o Anybody in that small point where the moon’s shadow is, will not see the sun but see
darkness from the moon’s Eclipse
...

o Eclipse path - the thing zone across EArth within which a total solar Eclipse is visible
...

o There’s a thing call Eclipse chasing
▪ People who tell everybody how many Eclipses they see in a lifetime
...

o A solar eclipse stars by the moon not being big enough for the sun and then the sun gets
completely blocked
...

o Lunar Eclipse - when the moon enters the shadow of the Earth
o Lunar Eclipse is visible to everybody that can see the moon
o Seen more than solar Eclipses
o Eclipse of the moon is total only if the moon’s path carries it through the Earth’s Umbra
(dark side)
o Earth’s Umbra (dark side) is larger so the lunar Eclipse lasts longer than a solar Eclipse
...

o The moon is still visible, but it’s red from the light from the sun bending around the
Earth
...

o Total Eclipses of the moon happen every 2-3 years
...

o The once thought that lunar and solar Eclipses was the gods angry
...
2 Ancient Astronomy
o Egyptians 3,000 years ago adopted the calendar based on a 365 day year
...

Chinese kept track of meteors, dark spots and guest stars
▪ Guest stars were stars that were too faint to see but would occasionally spring up
for a few weeks or months
...

Polynesians kept track of stars over the ocean
British used stone to keep track of the motions of the sun and moon
...

Aristarchus of Samos, a greek thinker said that the earth was moving around the sun
Aristotle's and other did not believe Aristarchus of Samos
...

Stellar parallax - the shift in apparent direction of a star due to eArth’s orbital motion
Greeks through either the earth was not moving at all or the parallax shift was very very
small
...

Greeks were able to measure the earth’s size
First diameter was made by Eratosthenes
...

Hipparchus gave the stars specific points in the sky just like we have longitude and
latitude
...

‘Stars of the first magnitude’, ‘stars of the second magnitude’ and so on…
Hipparchus discovered that Earth’s Rotation was slow but continuous
...

Claudius Ptolemy (Ptolemaeus)
▪ Astronomer from the Roman Era
▪ Wrote a compilation of astronomy work
Ptolemy made a geometric representation of the solar system that predicted the position
of planets
Retrograde motion - the termorart apparent westward motion of planet as EArth swing
between it and the sun
...
3,2
...
1-3
...
3 Astrology and Astronomy
o The study of the heavens was not an abstract subject to the ancients
o Ancient kept track for religious reasons
o They thought the planets were related to the rulers
o People believe that the zodiac is the key to life
...

o Horoscope - a chart showing the positions of the planets in the sky now of one’s birth
...

o Today we know better than to rely on the planets to tell us our personality
o Some believe that our lives are predetermined by astrological influences
o Natal astrology had no real power
o Astrology is not science but pseudoscience
• Ch 2 S 2
...

Accelerate - the wa objects change their speed or direction of motion
...

• Ch 3 S 3
...

o Major axis - the widest diameter in the ellipse
o Semi- major axis - half the distance from the center to the end
o Eccentricity of the ellipse - the ratio of the distance between the foci to the length of the
major axis
o Orbital speed - the speed with which each planet moves along its ellipse
o Kepler came up with orbital period, how long it would take something to reach the sun
...

o Kepler’s second law: The straight line joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal
areas in space in equal intervals of time
...
2 Newton’s Greatest Synthesis
o Newton’s first law: Every object will continue to be in a state of rest or move at a
constant speed in a straight line unless it is compelled to change by an outside force
...

o Newton’s third law:For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction(or: the
mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal and act in opposite
directions)
...
3
9-13-18 Ch 3 S 3
...
6 & Ch 4 S 4
...
4
• Ch 3 S 3
...
6
9-18-18 Ch 4 S 4
...
6 Ocean Tides and the Moon
o Twice daily rising and falling of the tides
o Tides must be related to the moon
o The moon attracted different parts of the Earth
▪ Called differential forces
o Differential forces make the Earth a prolate spheroid
o prolate spheroid - a football shape
o The Earth’s long diameter is towards the moon
o EArth distorts from the mon’s forces but only enough to affect the water and oceans
...

o When water is the deepest, ‘the tide is coming in’
o When water is being carried away, ‘ the tide is going out’
o Two high tides and two low tides
o Sun also does tides, but it’s not as powerful as the moon
o When the sun and moon are lined up, the force is greater than normal
o Spring tide- when the sun and the moon are lined up
...

o Neap Tide - when the sun and the moon make right angles
...

9-25-18 Ch 5 S 5
...
3
• Ch 5 S 5
...

o On the outside of the nucleus, there’s negatively charged electrons
o Opposite charges attract - like charges repel
o If the charges are in motion, we measure magnetism
o Magnetism wasn’t understood until the 19th century
o Field- the actions of forces that one object exerts on other distant objects
o Change in magnetic fields could produce an electric current and vice versa
o Maxwell found that if electric charges are moving back and forth then the electric and
magnetic fields would spread out and travel rapidly through space
o Maxwell found that the speed of an electromagnetic disturbance is equal to the speed of
light
o When light hits the eye, it stimulates nerve ending, transmits information into the brain
o Disturbance travels outward from a point, then uses its energy to disturb things from far
away
o Sound waves need air to travel
o All electromagnetic waves move at the same speed in space
o Speed of light is the fastest speed


Title: Astronomy I
Description: These notes cover everything from metric units, revolution, stars, the planets and many other interesting things about astronomy.