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Posts Tagged ‘astronomy’

The calendar is such a routine, everyday item, but how much do you actually know about the operation of it. Why is it like that?

A DAY: The Earth rotates at a reasonably steady pace about the imaginary line running between the North and South Poles named the Earth’s Axis. The time it takes to revolve once is called a ‘rotation’ and this takes just under twenty-four hours. Nevertheless, because the Earth is constantly traveling around the Sun, the precise time from noon one day to noon the next is 3 minutes 56 seconds longer and this makes a day almost precisely twenty-four hours in length.

The actual time from noon to noon differs depending where the Earth is on its celestial course around the Sun, but if you average the days in a year out, it comes to precisely twenty-four hours.

A YEAR: All nine planets in our solar system move around the Sun in approximately perfectly circular routes called orbits. Each trip around the Sun is called a revolution and all the planets orbit around the Sun in the same direction. The course the Earth takes can be verified by noting its location against the background stars.

In view of the fact that you cannot see the Sun and the stars at the same time, it is necessary to note the position of the Sun in the morning and the see which stars come out there in the night. You will see that the Sun seems to pass through the twelve constellations of the zodiac during a year.

Earth’s trip around the Sun, which seems like the Sun traveling through the zodiac takes about 365.25 days. This is different from year to year, so astronomers add or delete a second in some years to keep their time correct with the Earth’s motion.

THE SEASONS: The seasons mark the change in the pattern of daylight over the span of a year. Because the Earth is tilted off centre, different parts of it receive different amounts of sunlight on different stages of its path around the Sun, a path that we call a year. So, between approximately the 21st September and late March, the Earth’s Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the Sun, which produces Autumn and Winter, giving less than twelve hours of daylight per day.

From April to the 20th September, the Northern Hemisphere enjoys more than twelve hours of daylight a day, producing Spring and Summer. The exact opposite happens in the Southern Hemisphere.

The Equinoxes occur at the points in the year when there is exactly twelve hours of sunlight and darkness in the day. So, the vernal or Spring equinox is on or around the 21st March and the autumnal equinox is on or around the 21st September. Summer officially begins on the day with the greatest amount of daylight, the 21st June or summer solstice.

The winter solstice occurs on the shortest day, the 21st December. ‘Solstice’ is a combination of two words meaning ’sun standing still’ and the days are so named because they are the days when the apparent movement of the Sun reaches its limits and reverses direction again.

Owen Jones, the writer of this piece, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with researching Franklin planner pages. If you have an interest in calendars, organizers or promotional calendars, please go over to our web site now at Promotional Desk Calendars

There is no doubt that astronomy is the oldest science and there is also no doubt that astronomy was being studied by everyone, not only the wise men, thousands and thousands of years ago.

We do not understand exactly why they did it, but we can surmise that early man noticed a correlation between the weather and the stars, which were themselves not fully understood, of course.

Early man, probably even as far back as Neanderthal man, noticed the relationship between the weather and herd movements and crop growth, or at least fruit and nuts on local trees, if they did not have planted crops.

This means that people could see a connection between the stars and food availability. This relationship was probably ritualized into some sort of religion like early Wicca. Therefore, the stars became a very important part of the lives of every single person and it is probable that astrology and astronomy were widely intermixed by the average person.

However, there were also people who did not only use the stars as some enormous celestial clock and who tried to make sense of the whole shebang. I am going to narrate below, eight of the most important dates or years in the history of astronomy before Christ walked on the Earth. Never forget that they had nothing but an abacus to do there calculations and no telescopes, which came about two thousand years later.

585 BC: Thales of Miletus (c. 625- c. 547), a Greek, predicted a solar eclipse in Asia Minor purely on the basis of his observations and calculations. It was not a lucky guess!

c. 400 BC: the astronomer Oenopedes (5th. century). also a Greek, announces that the Earth is tilted on its axis with respect to the Sun.

352 BC: the Chinese report what they called a ‘guest star’, a supernova, which was the earliest reported sighting.

340 BC: The astronomer, Kidinnu (b. Babylon c. 379 BC) discovers the precession of the Equinoxes, ie the apparent change in the position of the stars caused by the Earth’s wobbling on its axis.

c. 300 BC: a ‘committee’ of Chinese astronomers compile star maps of the visible universe.

c. 240 BC: Chinese astronomers observe and make notes about Halley’s Comet. Also Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c. 276 – c.194 BC), a Greek, correctly calculate the Earth’s dimensions.

165 BC: Chinese astronomers notice sunspots for the first time.

c. 130 BC: the astronomer Hipparchus of Nicea (b. 147 BC), a Greek, correctly calculates the distance to the Earth’s Moon and also rediscovers the precession of the Equinoxes.

You will see from the dates above that obviously not everyone let nature and the stars govern their lives, as the common farmer or hunter did. Some men actually took pen to paper, but before pen and paper even existed, and tried to work out ‘why these manifestations occurred?’.

These people must have been remarkable men to have worked these measurements out by calculation, observation by the naked eye and rationalization alone.

Fascinated by astronomy, then why not pop along to our website at: http://astronomy.the-real-way.com

Christmas – is the celebration of Jesus’ birthday. Although the exact date of his birth is unknown, December 25th was probably chosen because it coincided with a pagan mid-winter festival. The ‘Twelve Days Of Christmas” mark the days between Christmas and Epiphany (January 6th), which was the day of the wise men’s visit.

Easter – is the most important day in the Christian calendar, because it celebrates Christ’s Resurrection, which gave / gives Christians the hope of salvation and eternal life. Easter always falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal (Spring) equinox, which is on 21st March.

Shrove Tuesday – (Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday) was originally a day of penance, but is now marked by merrymaking. It is the day before the commencement of Lent.

Ash Wednesday – is derived from the marking of a cross on the forehead of believers with the ashes from the burnt palms used on Palm Sunday.

Lent – 40 days of atonement and fasting

Palm Sunday – the Sunday before Easter, celebrates the arrival of Jesus at Jerusalem, where palms were laid on the road before him.

Maundy (Holy) Thursday – the day of the Last supper.

Good Friday – is the day of Christ’s crucifixion.

Holy Saturday – is the day before the Resurrection.

The Annunciation – March 25th is celebrated by Catholics as the day that Archangel Gabriel told Mary about her impending pregnancy.

Trinity Sunday – is celebrated by some denominations in honour of The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. It was confirmed part of the holy calendar in 1334 by Pope John XII.

Corpus Christi – Catholics remembers the presence of the body of Christ on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday.

All Saints Day – this mainly Catholic remembrance is on November 1 and honours all Christian saints.

Advent – a religious season that starts on the Sunday nearest to November 30 and lasts until Christmas Day. It celebrates the birth of Jesus and anticipates his Second Coming. It was once a period of fasting, but now no longer.

Holy Days Of Obligation – are feast days in the Catholic calendar marked by attendance at mass and the avoidance of unnecessary work. There are six in the USA: Solemnity of Mary – January 1: Christ’s circumcision, ie his first shedding of blood Ascension – 40 days after Easter Assumption – August 15: Mary is accepted into Heaven All Saints’ Day – November 1 Mary’s Immaculate Conception – December 8 Christmas Day – December 25.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with Franklin Covey planner refillss If you have an interest in calendars, organizers or promotional calendars, please go over to our website now at Promotional Desk Calendars

Although astronomy is the oldest science, it is still at the forefront of not only scientific thought, but also that of the public at large. Who hasn’t looked up at the stars while walking home late at night and wondered? Having said that though, the ancient people of definitely the northern hemisphere, but probably both hemispheres, knew the movements of the stars and planets better than most of us do nowadays.

They understood even then, thousands of years ago, that most stars appear to rise in the Eastern skies at night and travel on circular paths. They also noticed that some ’stars’ were ‘wanderers’ (we call them planets) and that sometimes they travelled ‘against the flow’.

They also named groups of stars that we now call constellations or even galaxies and knew that those visible in the winter were not the same as those visible in the summer.and that others were visible all year round. The average common man of 5,000 – 10,000 years ago almost certainly knew more about the movement of the heavenly bodies than the average common man of today does. (I mean men and women here, naturally).

They learned how to work out or at least locate the extremities of the sunrise and went to extraordinary lengths to mark those positions with huge stone structures, such as Stonehenge in the United Kingdom, probably to facilitate the location of certain positions of the sun or other planets or stars, which may have been vital to their religious beliefs or crop cycles.

In 1609, Galileo invented the first artificial device for looking at the stars and planets. It was the first astronomical telescope and through it he was able to see things millions of miles away that no person had ever seen before. Because of the deductions he drew from his observations, he clashed with the Roman Catholic Church and was often in serious danger for his life, so radical were his discoveries.

But humankind was not to be put off, and since then we have gone on to build ever bigger and ever better astronomical telescopes with which we can even detect radio waves, microwaves, X-rays, infrared waves and gamma waves from outer space. Forty years ago, we even travelled to our Moon. and we have sent probes to eight of the nine planets in our Solar System, as well as to quite a few comets and asteroids.

Where will we go next? That decision was always up to the government of the United States and the old USSR, but now there are other contestants in the field. What will China or India want to explore with their possibly slightly different outlook on life? Or will it be only a question of financial benefit?

The world may be in a state of change and power may be moving from its traditional seats in the West, but it has not lessened interest in questions that scientists think can only be answered in space. These are exciting times for the science of astronomy, but then man has always found astronomy exciting.

If you are interested in astronomy, then why not pop along to our website at: http://astronomy.the-real-way.com

Astronomy is an interesting science to most people because it is filled with many fun astronomy facts. Everything from the size and temperature of our own star, the Sun, to the make-up of distant planets has been established. All of this information can be retold to entertain and enlighten your friends.

The Sun is a great font for astronomy fun facts. Our own star, which provides us with all our heat and light is between 91 and 94.5 million miles from Earth. It’s not that nobody has measured the exact distance, but rather because the Earth revolves around the Sun in an ellipse, an uneven, orbit, so the distance varies depending on where the Earth lies in that orbit.

The Sun is only of average size for a star, yet it’s size is another terrific source of astronomy fun facts. As average as it is, it accounts for about 98% of all the matter in our solar system. Even with the huge planet of Jupiter on our side, we’re still a measly 2% of non Sun material.

It would take the diameter of about 100 Earths to measure across this average Sun. The solar winds produced by the Sun extends to about 50 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. In other words, those solar winds reach out about 50 AU’s, with an AU being the distance from the Earth to the sun. That’s quite fantastic, isn’t it?.

How about astronomy fun facts that don’t have anything at all to do with the Sun then? What about our Moon? It’s the only object that man has walked on except the Earth until now. And one man actually travelled to the Moon but has never left it. Dr. Eugene Shoemaker really liked the Moon but was not found acceptable as an astronaut. After his death, he was cremated and his ashes were scattered over the Moon by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft in 1999.

There are many more astronomy fun facts about the Moon. It’s where what might become the oldest footprint known to man. Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind left a footprint or shoe print in the Moon’s dust that will probably still be visible in 10 million years time.

Many people, in fact about 13% of those polled in 1988, still believed the Moon to be made of cheese. And finally the suits worn by the Moon-walking astronauts weighed 180 pounds on Earth but only 30 pounds on the Moon, because of the reduced gravity on the Moon. Talk about an instant diet, eh?

Astronomy fun facts aren’t limited to our close astronomical neighbours. Looking at stars is like looking into the past. Some of the stars we see today in the night sky are so far away that their light takes a million years to get to Earth. Some of the stars you see may literally be images of stars a million years old that aren’t even there any more. There are over 1 x 10 ^22 stars in the universe. That’s a 1 followed by 22 zeros. The number is really quite staggering.

There are thousands of astronomy fun facts that we could relate. But, unfortunately, this article can not be that long. So, please, walk out there at night, look upwards and learn more about astronomy for yourself.

Interested in astronomy, then why not pop along to our website at: Astronomy Today