4 Best Applications for Sky Observation

Posted on January 31, 2023 by Rocket Man

Since the day humans first appeared on earth to this day when we have come to the modern era of science, the colossal sky that stays above us has always made us think about our existence in this universe. In ancient times, people used to only observe the sky with their bare eyes. But as we moved towards the modern era of Astronomy, we started using different tools like telescopes, binoculars etc. And now in this post modern era when we have the strongest computational tools, we have a lot of different options to observe the sky. We can now do sky observation on our device-screens sitting at home, and see how the sky looks like from a different city or even from a different planet.

Some of the famous modern sky observation tools of our time are given below.

Stellarium

Seeing the sky from Saturn in Stellarium. Source: Me

Stellarium is a free, open-source planetarium software that allows users to explore the night sky in 3D. The program includes detailed information on stars, planets, constellations, and deep sky objects, and allows users to customize the view of the sky according to their location and time. Stellarium is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. One of the great features of Stellarium is its ability to display the sky with realistic lighting and atmospheric effects, allowing users to experience the beauty of the night sky in a more immersive way.

Star Chart

Seeing the Sky in Star Chart. Source: Stream

Star Chart is another popular app for sky observing. It uses the device’s camera to display an augmented reality view of the sky, making it easy to identify stars and planets. The app also includes information on constellations and deep sky objects, as well as a time-lapse feature that allows users to see how the sky changes over time. Star Chart is particularly useful for those who are new to sky observing, as it provides clear and concise information on the objects in the sky, as well as an interactive and engaging interface.

SkySafari

Doing observation in SkySafari. Source: 9to5toys

SkySafari is a comprehensive app for sky observing that is available for both iOS and Android devices. The app includes detailed information on over 100,000 celestial objects, including stars, planets, galaxies, and nebulae. It also includes a feature that allows users to control telescopes remotely, as well as a time-lapse feature that shows how the sky changes over time. One of the great features of SkySafari is its ability to simulate the sky at any time and place in the past or future, allowing users to plan their observing sessions or learn about historical or future astronomical events.

SkyView 

SkyView is a popular app that allows users to explore the night sky using their smartphone or tablet. The app uses the device’s GPS and compass to display a detailed map of the sky, including stars, planets, constellations, and deep sky objects such as galaxies and nebulae. Users can also search for specific objects, set reminders for astronomical events, and even control telescopes remotely using the app. One of the great features of SkyView is its ability to display the sky in different modes, such as a live camera view, an augmented reality view, or a traditional star chart view. This allows users to choose the view that best suits their needs and preferences.

Doing Observation in SkyView. Source: Pinterest

As the postmodern era of Astronomy emerges it’s our opportunity to explore the new possibilities that have become possible with these sky observation applications and websites. We should keep in mind what Carl Sagan said, “

“Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.”

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historical astronomers in context

Posted on January 30, 2023 by Emma Williams
Image of Johannes Kepler from Futura Sciences

Johannes Kepler (born December 27, 1571– died November 15, 1630) contributed to the field of astronomy by the formulation of his 3 Laws of Planetary Motion, which were later derived and formalized by Isaac Newton. The laws are 1) that planets move in elliptical orbits around the sun at one focal point, 2) that a planet will always cover the same area over the same time, and 3) that the square of a planets time to orbit (p) is exactly related to the cube of its average distance from the sun (a). This view diverged from the traditionally-held notion that celestial bodies moved in perfect circles, building dynamically on Copernicus’ heliocentric model. 

Learn more about Kepler, his life, and his intellectual contributions here!

“O telescope, instrument of much knowledge, more precious than any sceptre!”

Johannes Kepler, quoted by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada

To put into context the time at which Kepler was living, we can look to some of his contemporary historical events.

In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII introduced the Gregorian Calendar with the intent to change the date of Easter. The Julian calendar, first introduced in 46 BC by Julius Caesar, miscalculated the length of the solar year. The Gregorian Calendar is still off by about 26 seconds but has been the norm since. 

In 1607, the first permanent English settlement in North America, Jamestown Colony was established. The intersection of conflict with Indigenous tribes, lack of resources, and disease led to many deaths, but the colony held out until more settlers arrived, enabling expansion and growth.

Another historical figure who lived at the same time as Kepler is William Shakespeare (baptized April 26, 1564– died April 23, 1616). He is considered to be the greatest playwright of all time, with such notable works as A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare lived during the early modern period at the end of the middle ages, and his many plays and sonnets are frequently read and referenced in the modern era. 

“I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.”

Julius Caesar, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (III, I, 60-62)

Learning this context helped me put into perspective the timeline of astronomical research. For the last blog post, when I was looking at the Cosmic Calendar, I became increasingly aware of how minuscule the lengths of time that seem so great to us actually are; so, the 400-ish years that have passed since the time of Kepler, his peers, and the historical developments of their time– such as implementation of the Gregorian Calendar and English settlement in North America– are only about 1 second of this compressed timeline. Another thing that was interesting to me is how much changed in the field of astronomy over this short period of time; for centuries, our understanding of the universe was relatively static and clung to misinformed paradigms such as geocentricity. Suddenly, during just one century, knowledge increased dramatically; I’m curious how much of this acceleration is due to contextual factors and how much is just the cultivation of a ripe intellectual community that reinforces each other. Is there, then, a way for us today to foster such an environment and enable such dramatic levels of discovery?

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Who is The Rocket Man?

Posted on January 26, 2023 by Rocket Man

The Rocket Man came from a galaxy far far away. He came down to earth to study Astronomy. He is in Dr. G’s class at present.

The Rocket Man participating in International Olympiad on Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA) 2019 in Keszthely, Hungary. SOURCE: Rocket Man

What is The Rocket Man’s favorite star?

The Rocket Man likes Astronomy because Astronomy has made it possible for him to make it to the planet earth. His favorite star on earth’s sky is the star Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse is a red giant, and it’s recent dimming from earth’s sky confirms there is a huge possibility that the star has already exploded. Maybe within a few years it would be possible for the people on earth to see the explosion as a bright little object in the place of Betelgeuse in the night sky.

Illustration of explosion of Betelgeuse. SOURCE: CNet
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The Unfathomable Scale of the Universe

Posted on January 24, 2023 by georgeboardman20
Logarithmic map of the Observable Universe

A logarithmic scale of the universe, used to highlight humanity’s cumulative knowledge about the universe. Source: A Logarithmic View of the Universe

The above image will highlight what I’m writing here about today, because in all of our daily lives we’re pretty myopic, but for good reason! We grew up here on this planet with our heads in the sand, so to speak. We focused on food, water, and survival. However, with the vast amount of knowledge we’ve gained, now we can look to the stars to perceive the whole universe. And here it is, at a logarithmic size scale so one can see the main features

The universe is truly massive, with most estimates showing that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on planet earth, 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars! It’s so, vast that the universe is incomprehensible to most people. Everything that we know, even our Milky Way Galaxy is one out of an estimated 100 billion galaxies in the OBSERVABLE universe. This is what we can see in the universe because the it’s so far away that light has taken since the beginning of the universe to reach Earth here today. There could be even more to it!

Last night when I was doing homework for my Judicial Process class, I took a break and started surfing the web with several questions. What is it like at the edge of the universe? How could cosmologists ever think the universe is infinite if it had a beginning? What I found is that basically no one knows for sure, but there’s no reason to believe the universe ends at the cosmological horizon, the edge of what we could ever see. The answers are very complicated, so I can provide a link if anyone is curious to learn more: Size of the Universe. But essentially, the observable universe is estimated at 93 billion light years in diameter, but hypothetical models extend the actual universe’s size to 7 trillion light years at the low end, to 10 sextillion, to potentially even infinity. That’s a ridiculously large number, and even more scary that our observable universe could be a drop in the pond for all of reality.

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Post 1

Posted on January 23, 2023 by berlinbe

Like other electromagnetic particles, light has a specific velocity at which it travels. Further, it is presumed to be the fastest theoretical speed of any particle. The speed of light–referred to as “c” in a vacuum–is roughly 300,000,000 m/s. Since it moves so fast, most people never observe light as a moving particle or something that takes time to see. However, in the scale of the universe, the constant “c” can be useful to describe fast distances.

A light year is the distance that light travels in a year at its constant speed “c.” This is not only useful for breaking down/assigning meaning to vast distances, but it is also useful to think about in terms of our observation of the universe. If something is “x” light years away, the light we observe from it on earth is “x” years old. Essentially, we are looking into the past.

Here is a diagram putting the speed of light into context with our solar system and galaxy. It is taken from a Quora post.

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Scale and Travel Times

Posted on January 23, 2023 by dromalley
A map of local stars from the ESO

At this very moment, the Voyager 1 spacecraft is hurtling through space at about 61,500 km/h each and every hour, carrying it ever further from our Solar system which it left 18 years ago. But despite this staggering speed, it would still take Voyager more than 75,000 years to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. By 2025 the Parker Space Probe is expected to travel briefly at around 692,000 km/h as it swings in close to our sun, at this blistering speed it would still be around 7,000 years before it reached our nearest cosmic neighbor. Our best be then will be radio signals and other forms of light, which still take an astonishing four years to reach this closest star despite traveling at the universal speed limit. Humanity has been pumping radio waves into the sky since the turn of the century, although it was with the advent of higher powered broadcasts, especially TV, in the 1920’s that Earth truly lit up from a cosmic perspective. These radio signals have travelled 100 light years in the time since they were emitted, an astonishing 950 trillion kilometers or 570 trillion miles, but this represents only 1/1000 of our Galaxy’s diameter, or about 14,000 of our Galaxy’s 100 billion stars.

A representation of how far radio signals have traveled (from Popular Mechanics)

As you can see, the odds of anybody having noticed our early shouts don’t seem great. The Universe may simply be too big for us to ever properly leave an impact on. However, just because Humanity is too young for our signals to travelled very far at all doesn’t mean that everyone else is as late to the game as us. As long as the SETI continues, there’s always a chance that tomorrow will be the day a message finally reaches us, and the long isolation of distance is ended, and until then all we can do is keep exploring and keep crying out.

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The Cosmic Calendar 🪐

Posted on January 23, 2023 by lightwyrs

“We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st.”

-Carl Sagan

The Cosmic Calendar is a concept presented by famous astronomer Carl Sagan. In this diagram, the 13.8 billion year history of the universe is condensed into a single calendar year with the Big Bang happening on January 1st and recorded humanity being comprised in the last day of the last month of the last minute in which we exist.

This concept is so interesting to me as our history as humanity is only in the last few minutes but in reality it’s been hundreds of thousands of years since we’ve been here. I often think about the quote that says “too late to explore the Earth, but too early to explore the Universe,” (which comes from a meme, mind you) because it’s sooooo true. We have the math and such to date us back, but not the technology to actually move at the speed of light to explore the things we are discovering. It’s also so interesting because all of this progress in technology has been done in relatively such little time compared to the universe!

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Blog #1: The Power of Ten

Posted on January 23, 2023 by reidwalker87

The Power of Ten video puts into perspective the miniscule size of not only individuals on Earth but of the Solar System entirely. At only 3 minutes into the video, we were already far beyond the Solar System with so much time remaining. Not only was I struck by the immense scale of the universe, but I was even more fascinated by the level of detail and intricacy at even the smallest units of measurement we know. The same building blocks apply to everything for billions of light years across the whole of the universe. The distance between galaxies also was startling to me as its hard to imagine the size of the empty chasms of space that separate us from other galaxies. The increasing rate of expansion detected in the universe also indicates that one day it might be impossible to even see some of the galaxies visible today. The other scary thought is the fragility of Earth at the mercy of such a large universe. The complexity at the atomic level and the specific forces required for us to live comfortably are truly a miracle.

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We Were the Closest To the Moon than We Have Ever Been

Posted on January 23, 2023 by thisisntzenon
Photo of Moon (Image credit: NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University)

As a child, I spent a considerable time looking at the Moon, and at one point, I may have even believed it was my friend. From the backseat of many late-night car rides, it “followed me”. In fact, during this period, my mornings consisted of watching Bear in the Big Blue House and the character – Luna -. It is safe to say that in the early 2000s, I felt close to the Moon. I will go a step further and share that my favourite movie and book in the Twilight series is New Moon. Thus, when I discovered that during this past Saturday’s New Moon was the closest to Earth since the Middle Ages, I knew I had to share.

Since the Moon does not have a perfectly circular orbit, it does not maintain an equal distance to Earth as it orbits. That said, New Moons at this proximity have occurred about three times in the past 2000 years. The last was in 1030, according to astronomers’ algorithms. Of course, the most recent was yesterday. The next will be far past our life spans.

Beyond our nearness being simply astonishing, I also experienced an overwhelming sense of gratitude at the revelation. I do not know if I will ever touch the surface of the Moon, but yesterday I savoured the fact that I was the closest to it than I had ever been. Even when studying objects in our solar system, I often find it difficult to grapple with how they are both near and far. Yesterday, I simply closed my eyes and made peace with how close but equally distant the Moon was to my heart.

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The “Ten”ets of the Universe

Posted on January 22, 2023 by oilrigatoni
Pixabay

Our brains struggle to comprehend the magnitude of our universe. We make comparisons based on that which we can see, yet it is totally inadequate to what reality holds. For example, the average person is just under 2 meters tall. But their size of the Earth when compared to that is substantial. The mean diameter of our planet is 12,742 km (Universe Today). That’s nearly 6400 times in magnitude. (That means in one day, someone at the equator travels a speed of over 330 miles per hour, since the equatorial bulge makes its diameter even longer than the mean.)

The distance from our Sun to Pluto is much larger. At its farthest point, the distance is 50x the distance from the Earth to the Sun (Nasa). The distance to the near the edge of our solar system (the outer edge of the Oort Cloud), is 2000 times (NASA). At a speed of 100 mph, it would take us about 106,000 centuries to make it to that point. One light-year is around 1016 meters. If you think that is a long distance, the Milky Way Galaxy is 100,000 light-years across(Universe Today). But the universe contains many galaxies, spread out amongst the system. The nearest one is 2.5 million light-years away (Astronomy). The universe is such a large expanse our brains can not comprehend its immensity. This video (Powers of Ten) gives a small glimpse into it, by changing the power to which 10 meters is given, yet it can only do so much!

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