Daily Archives: January 28, 2013

SkyView?

SkyView gives you the entire sky at your palm… and for only $1.99! By pointing your Iphone camera anywhere in the sky, SkyView will show you constellations, stars, planets, and satellites that you can tap and zoom in on to learn more. It provides you with a search interface that will tell you exactly where … Continue reading » Continue reading

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Sunsets

Sunsets baffle me. My favorite part about living in Virginia Beach, VA is that I live on the bay and walk in the opposite direction not even half a mile and land on the beach. I’m lucky enough to get incredible photo shots of the sun rising in the East over the ocean and setting … Continue reading » Continue reading

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Precession Is All But Precision

The earth has an axis of tilt of about 23.5 degrees, and precession, a gradual wobble that alters the orientation of Earth’s axis, does not change the amount of axis […] Continue reading

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The Cosmic Calendar

The idea behind the cosmic calendar is to put the timeline of the entire universe into the perspective of one calendar year. Below is a picture of the calendar. This calendar really puts into reality how short humans have really been around. It takes until 11:54 on December 31 for modern humans to appear on […] Continue reading

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The Universe is More Observable Than What Meets The Eye

In class we talked about how the observable universe is 13.7 billion light years. The reason for this is because the universe is 13.7 billion years old so we therefore […] Continue reading

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The 13th Sign of the Zodiac

The zodiac system was first developed roughly 2,500 years ago in ancient Babylonia. Unfortunately, the astronomers who first developed the system did not know about the precession of the Earth’s axial tilt. Even after this precession was known, W… Continue reading

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The speed of light in everyday terms

The idea of light years is pretty mind blowing.  Click on the above picture to watch a cool video explaining how we measure distance with time in everyday life.  The difference between saying I live 10 hours from Nashville and … Continue reading Continue reading

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Twinkle Twinkle Little Planet

Sounds wrong because the extra syllable blemishes the aesthetic quality of the symmetry of the rest of the poem. Planets do twinkle, in fact. Its just that we do not notice. And it is the hallmark of a truly good (and bored) scientist to correct a misconception, even if it is only superhuman vision that […] Continue reading

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Once in a Blue Moon?

While studying lunar phases for tomorrow’s test, I wondered what the common phrase “Blue Moon” meant.  According to Wikipedia, Blue Moon is a term used to describe the second full moon in one month.  A two-full-moon month occurs approximately once every 3 years, and the it can only occur is because most months (with the […] Continue reading

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