Astro2110 – The Solar System | Aggregating the class blogs of Astro2110 at Vanderbilt

HW3- Historical Figures in Context

Posted on September 13, 2024 by Mercedes

Tycho Brahe was important in the history of astronomy. He created many new astronomical instruments and accurately calibrated them. Tycho was one of the first to correct for “atmospheric refraction.” In addition to this, he and his assistants discovered several anomalies that would lead to the future astronomical developments and models.

Photo from The Galileo Project.

Historical Context

French Wars of Religion, 1562-1598

The French Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants began in 1562. These took place under King Henry IV and created a long-lasting conflict that sparked many more religious conflicts under French rule.

The Pencil, Jan 1, 1565

The invention of the pencil (use of graphite inside of wood) was in 1565. This was popularized due to a large lead discovery in England.

Michelangelo, 1475-1564
Michelangelo (death Feb 18, 1564) is a prominent figure of the Renaissance. He is known for sculpting, painting, engineering, and architecture.

Reflection

It is interesting to learn about the context of astrological developments. It helped me realize how recent what we know is. I found it very interesting that Tycho lived during the same time as popular Renaissance figures such as Michelangelo. While it makes sense in the years, before reading more, it felt like they were very different times. In addition to the Renaissance, placing astronomical figures in context allows people to understand how much of history the science people believed was incorrect. It makes me wonder if there is anything we believe today that will be proven false in the future.

Tags: astro2110, Brahe, HW3, Tycho

Categories: Class, Historical

Mercedes

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Historical Astronomers in Context -Leo

Posted on September 9, 2024 by Leo Silva

Johannes Kepler
Access more information about him here:
1) New Mexico Space Museum
2) American Museum of Natural History

The Thirty Years War
Access more information about the Thirty Years War here:
1) History.com

Publication of Shakespeare’s Works
Access more information about the publication of Shakespeare’s works here:
1) Royal Shakespeare Company

René Descartes
Access more infromation about René Descartes here:
1) Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Reflection
Thinking about these other important happenings/individuals at the same time makes me consider how the evolution of modern thought (as well as the things we consider important/striking) didn’t happen as one-off events. Instead, a large portion of discoveries/developments can be said to have been enabled by other discoveries/developments. Because of this, we can’t consider ourselves fully satisfied with the understanding of only fragments of the development of science. In order to get a full picture, we must tap into the stories/concepts that influence the roots of our knowledge.

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A Moving Sky

Posted on September 4, 2024 by Ian Vasquez

Stars in Yellowstone National Park

Have you ever heard of horoscopes, zodiac signs, or noticed you can see different constellations in the sky during different times of the year? This is all due to the shifting of our perspective on Earth throughout the year. No, the stars are not rotating around us out there. They are staying put as we rotate around the sun. This rotation around the sun changes our perspective because the Earth is tilted. As we rotate around the sun we end up pointing in a different direction in space during different seasons. As a result, in the northern hemisphere’s winter you would see constellations like Orion, and in the southern hemisphere, Orion would be only visible in the summer (which is at the same time as the north’s winter).

Earth viewpoints at different times of the year

blog1, astro2110, Orion

Class, stars, Constellations, Earth

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Solstices/Equinoxes

Posted on September 3, 2024 by Alekzander Waller

Stone Henge

Throughout a year on Earth, the sun changes positions in the sky due to the 23.4 degree angle of our axis. The points at which the sun reaches maximum and minimum heights in the sky are called the Summer and Winter solstices while the points half way between are called the Fall and Spring equinoxes (Where each equinox has around 12h of sunlight all across the Earth).

In the northern hemisphere, the summer equinox occurs in June while at the same time the winter equinox occurs for the southern hemisphere (and vice versa in December.

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The vast size and scale of the Universe

Posted on September 3, 2024 by Elias Ibrahim

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is wmap_2012.png.webp

Cosmic Background Radiation

Astronomy, Class, Uncategorized

Today in this blog post I will describe the size and scale of the universe from my understanding. To start off, light from the sun takes approximately 8 minutes to reach Earth, yet light from the farthest parts of the observable universe would take 13.8 billion years. Keep in mind, counting one billion seconds, one second per each number, would take nearly 100 years (34,722.2 days). In another scale such as the galactic scale, according to NASA’s Cosmic Distance Ladder, the Milky Way galaxy contains over 100 billion stars, with an estimated 2 trillion galaxies in the observable universe. With in these trillions of galaxies exists large voids out side of galactic clusters. As seen in the image above there is pockets density in the red and green and pockets of empty space between them, spanning hundreds of millions of lightyears.

astro2110 me

astro2110, blog1, me

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Solstices and Equinoxes

Posted on September 3, 2024 by jasonljohnson465

Diagram of the Equinoxes and Solstices from Article from The Conversation about what a Solstice is

What are the Solstices and Equinoxes?

As stated in The Cosmic Perspective by Jeffrey O. Bennett, they are terms used to define one of four specific moment in the year that mark the changing seasons—as depicted above in the diagram.

The June Solstice, also referred as the summer solstice, occurs sometime around the 21st of June and it is when the Northern Hemisphere is tipped most directly toward the sun with increased exposure to sunlight
The December Solstice, also referred to as the winter solstice, occurs sometime around the 21st of December and it is when the Northern Hemisphere is pointed away from the sun and receives the least amount of sunlight
The March Equinox, also referred to as the spring equinox, occurs sometime around the 21st of March and it is when the Northern Hemisphere goes from being slightly tipped away from the Sun to being slightly tipped toward it.
The September Equinox, also referred to as the fall equinox, occurs sometime around the 22nd of September and is when the Northern Hemisphere goes from being tipped slightly toward the sun to being slightly tipped away from it

*The info above is also derived from The Cosmic Perspective by Bennett

There is not an exact date for the solstices and equinoxes but they generally occur around the 21st of their given months. An interesting fact about the solstices and equinoxes is that the leap year is included in our modern calendar to keep the date the solstices and equinoxes around the same date.

But What’s the Difference?

While both the Equinoxes and Solstices mark the change of a season, there is one key difference: the Solstices result in longer days and shorter nights, but the Equinoxes do result in an equal amount of night and day time.

Here is an informative video further discussing the differences between the Equinoxes and Solstices:

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The Speed of Light In Respect to the Scale of the Universe

Posted on September 3, 2024 by Justinc

The estimated time/distance it takes for light to travel to different places on Earth

Distances in space is so great that it needs to be measured in how long it takes for light to travel to that location. Light travels around 299,792,458 m/s or about 671,000,000 mph. Compared to the speed of sound on Earth, which is about 373m/s or about 767 mph, the speed of light is more than 800,000x faster than sound! If one were to travel at the speed of light, one would be able to travel to the moon from Earth in 1.3 seconds! However, if one would like to visit another star system (Alpha Centauri) it would take a whopping 4.4 years of non-stop lightspeed travel to reach their destination (which according to a unit converting website, is a whopping 41,627,214,079,352,190 meters). Because how slow light travels relative to the scale of space, when something happens on Alpha Centauri (such as the star exploding), it would take 4.4 years for that information to travel back to the Earth. Currently the observable universe is 93 billion light-years (or 880 septillion meters), which is a distance difficult to grasp.

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Blog 1: Cosmic Calendar and Biology

Posted on September 3, 2024 by Michael

When we learned about the cosmic calendar in this class, I was immediately reminded of something I had learned two years ago in BSCI 1511 here at Vanderbilt, which was the biological timescale clock.

I remember seeing this diagram and being really surprised by how recent humans, or even multicellular organisms, are in the history of the geological timescale. But when presented with the cosmic calendar, which puts the origin of earth (the start of the clock) during September, it becomes even more clear that human existence is very very recent. I do, however, think it is interesting that the first sign of life (prokaryotes) was 3.5 billion years ago, as the universe is only 13.8 billion years old. I think this shows how conducive earth was to life, as it took (relatively) little time to form.

astro2110, astrobiology, blog1, history, time