Measuring Distances

Keep your distance!

Hello, do you know what? This should have been the first post that I should have written but I just found out now. Sorry about that. Hopefully you will be able to catch up.

Measuring Distances

When measuring stuff in Astronomy, the numbers are big, not up to hundred but up to millions, to there's other words used. So the Astronomical Units, for example, are used. 1 Astronomical unit is equal to 150 million km, which is the distance of Earth from the Sun.

But obviously there are other galaxies, so the distance beyond our solar system are given in light years. Where 1 light year is the distance light travel in one year.
•Light travels 300,000 km/s .

• One year has roughly 365.25 days and each day has 24 hours of 3600 seconds
So in one year, light travels
365.25 x 24 x 3600 x 300000 km = 9.46 x 10^12 km

Radar

Radar signals are used to measure a distance of an object in our solar system, so when a radar signal is sent it travels there and bounces off the surface of the planet and comes back to Earth.
Radio Waves travel in the speed of light, so distance = speed of light x time taken / 2.

Heliocentric parallax

Obviously beyond the solar system distance are more difficult to work out, so people use the Heliocentric parallax method.

More than me blowing my mind out trying to explain the Heliocentric parallax, you will better off and less confused looking at the pictures below:



•The position of a star is measured against more distant stars. Six months later the position is measured again, when the Earth is on the other side of its orbit.

You can measure the distance of a star using this equation:
d = 1 / p .

d is Distance, and p is the parallax angle of a arcsec.

Arcsec...yes..i know, Parallax angles are measured in arcseconds (arcsec) where one arcsec = 1 / 3600th of a degree.

•The heliocentric parallax angles of all stars are less than one arcsec because they are so far away.

•This method works out to a distance of 500 pc – beyond this the parallax angles are too small to measure accurately

That's all for today..
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Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Leonardo DA Vinci

RECOVERY

I'M REALI NOT IN A GUD MOOD RYT NOW....i'll catch up 2moro.
WEL LUK AT DA PICS DAT I LYK LUKIN AT ...
Click on the pics 2 c it bigger.

+ =

+ = MA STYLE.

= MA DARLINGS.

= MA PPL.


= MA PEEPZ
(ANNOYING BRATZ AREN'T THEY NOT?)

= MA WRK.


= MA FUTURE.

+ = MA TIMES.

= MA WRDS.

+ = MA MUZIX.

+ = MA TOONZ.
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Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Leonardo da Vinci

Celestial spheres and co-ordinates

Hello....hope you are having a better time than me, some day it was for me, I FEEL SOO BAD! It wasn't my fault someone stole it, even though I didn't get told off by them, but I know the problems right now, and this problem suddenly comes and I'm part of the whole problem now, ahh...hopefully he'll get what he wants towards the end of this week.

Anyway..today's blog is about celestial co - ordinates..I think I should have posted this some time ago, but I just found it recently, so hopefully I am not too late.

Celestial spheres

From Earth all stars and planets appear equally remote.
This can be depicted as the celestial sphere that spins westwards in rotation of the Earth.
North celestial pole (NCP) and south celestial pole (SCP) lie above geographic poles of Earth.
Celestial equator is above terrestrial equator.

Local Reference Lines

Describes the location of a object in the sky with respect to the horizon.
The point that is directly above the observer is called the Zenith.
Celestial horizon is circle 90 degrees away from Zenith.
Local or observer’s meridian is great circle running through the north point on the horizon, the zenith and south point on the horizon (and directly beneath observer too). You'll probably recognize the picture in the last post.Sorry.
Rotation of the Earth is East to West direction (anti - clockwise) when viewed from above the North Pole, which means that stars appear to move in arcs across the sky in an east to west direction.
Looking towards south in northern hemisphere, stars move from left to right across the sky; looking towards north, stars move from right to left. (In the southern hemisphere these relations are reversed.)
In northern hemisphere a celestial body (star, planet, whatever) reaches its maximum altitude as it crosses the local meridian in the southern half of the sky. This is the upper transit or culmination of the body.
Location of stars and planets are described using the altitude and the azimuth.
Altitude changes from 0° at horizon to 90° at zenith.
Azimuth measures clockwise direction around horizon; 0° is due north, 90° is due east, 180° is due south, 270° is due west.

Celestial Co-ordinates.

Declination (Dec, d ) analogous to latitude. Measures star’s position north or south of celestial equator, runs from +90° at NCP through 0° at equator down to -90° at SCP
Right ascension (RA, a) similar to longitude. Measured eastwards from north-south line containing first point of Aries – position of Sun at vernal equinox. RA measured in hours, with 24h marking complete circle from 0h at vernal equinox. Each hour of RA corresponds to angle of 15° RA and Dec. of star will be same all over world and only change over long timescale due to the wobble of Earth’s rotation axis (precession)
RA and Dec coordinates on star maps altered every 50 years to account for precession. Last altered in 2000; these are labelled Epoch 2000 maps.

Circumpolar stars




Circumpolar are stars are stars that never sets.
Star is circumpolar if distance from pole is less than or equal to observer’s latitude. Stars of declination are circumpolar if Declination is less than or equal to 90 degrees take away observer's latitude.

The Ecliptic

Orbit of Earth around the Sun causes the apparent motion of from west to east background stars. The line of this path is called the ecliptic.
If the ecliptic is spotted on star chart based of the RA and Dec, then you'll see that a curve appear in the graph

Zodiac Constellations

Most planets move though a band in the sky centred ecliptic - the zodiac. There are thirteen zodiac constellations: Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpius, Ophiuchus, Sagittarius, Capricornus (ME!) and Aquarius.

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Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Leonardo da Vinci

Latitude & Longitude

Hello,..You are probably wondering about this topic...and yes.. Latitude and Longitude is not much of Astronomy...but it is..if you spot something you can give the exact location so people in another country will be able to see exactly what you are talking about.

Location on Earth described using latitude and longitude

You could easily see what latitude and longitude is from the picture above...but let me just say it..Latitude shows how far North or South you are, it's 90 degrees N at the North Pole and Zero at the equator , and 90 degrees S at the South Pole, the lines of latitude run parallel to the equator.

Longitude tell s you how East or West your position is, measured from 0 degree line of prime meridian at Greenwich, lines of longitude run from North Pole to South Pole.

Moving eastwards, longitude increases to maximum value of 180ºE (also 180ºW of Greenwich if approached from opposite direction). Moving further east, start to move back towards Greenwich
Points west of Greenwich described in units of ºW. So obviously when we move Greenwich towards east or west, the time changes.

The reason that the Sun rises from East to West is because the Earth's motion is from West to East.

For every 15° east or west of Greenwich meridian civil time changes by 1 hour forwards and backwards respectively. To find appropriate time zone, in hours, divide longitude, in degrees, by 15.

Yehhhh!!! I finished!!!LOL..

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Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Leonardo da Vinci

Equation of time

Hihi, I am back with Equations, I was going to do sundials but please...it's extremely boring. So I think this bit better. LOL.

Sundials give you apparent solar time.
Ou rmodern clocks give us the mean solar time.
Sometimes the apparent solar time is either shorter or longer than the mean solar time, this is because Sun motion in respect to the background stars change often throughout the year.
The difference between apparent solar time and mean solar time is apparent solar time.

•Equation of time = apparent solar time - mean solar time

The equation of time is positive when the sundial is fast, and it's negaive when is sundial is slow.

•Only on 4 days each year will an accurate sundial and an accurate clock give the same time: April 15, June 15, September 2 and December 25.

There are two effects that arises the equation of time.

Earth is near perihilion in January so its orbital period is higher, Earth has to turn a little more than the average angle for the Sun to reach it's meridian, so the sundial is slow and the equation of time is negative,

In July Earth is near aphelion, so the orbital period is slower, Earth has to turn a little less than the average angle for the Sun to reach it#s meridian, so the sundial is faster and the ewuation of time is positive.

Motion of Sun along ecliptic rather than celestial equator
•But only motion parallel to celestial equator causes variation in length of solar day
•Results from tilt of Earth’s axis with respect to ecliptic plane (obliquity)

THAT'S IT!!! YEH..NOW WASN'T THAT EASY??

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Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Leonardo da Vinci

Earth...Days and Seasons

"Hey Sunshine"
Today was one of those days where I tried to do something and something just keep interrupting me,Deja Vu?, yeh, I make mistakes and people do too, that's why we are Humans right? Then why is everyone just bugging me, is it wrong to get back at people? Is it wrong to tell them how I feel? I blanked her today when she called me, is that good? Does she deserve it? Should there be other life on other planets so they suffer like this? Well..that's depends how you look at it right??

Then lets go back to Astronomy..

• The time it takes the Earth to rotate on it's axis is a day.


• The mean solar day is a mean day according to the mean sun.


• Synodic month is a month according to the lunar phases, it is the interval between two moons, which is about 29.5 mean solar day.


• Mean Tropical Year is made to help so we don't get confused with the dates every year.


• Sidereal Day is a day according to a fixed star, meaning if you point at a star and the time it takes for you to come back to the same point is your Sidereal Day.


• Sidereal day is about 23 hours 56 minutes 4 seconds .


• Earth Rotates 360 degrees in a sidereal day, so therefore it turns 361 degrees for a solar day, which means the amount of degrees the Earth has to turn to come to same position as the Sun was before.


• Sidereal day is 3 minutes 56 seconds shorter than the mean solar day, so the difference between sidereal and solar day is that a given star rises 4 minutes earlier everyday.


• You see other stars because the Earth goes around the Sun.
  
• A sidereal year is the time taken for the Earth travel around the Sun in respect to the fixed stars, which is about 365. 256 years, so after one sidereal year the sun will appear in the same position against the star background.
  
• The Gregorian calendar work according to the cycle of seasons and the mean tropical year which is about 365.242 days, which means that the Mean tropical year is measured from one spring equinox to the next.


• Mean tropical year is 20 minutes shorter than the sidereal year because of the, because of the changes of the equinoxes every year.


• We now the Gregorian Calender which means the days are rounded up to 365 days per year so that people around the world is not getting confused when they travel around the world, which means that our calendar now makes a error of 1/4 days per year.


• Obviously which means that after 4 years an extra day is added to keep up with the seasons.


• These years are called leap years, but it still leaves an error of 0.008 days each year, corrected by a special rule, but these can only be leap years if it's divisible by 400 without having a remainder.

Ahhh was that too long?? Well, just a couple more!!

• An obliquity is the tilt of a planet, Earth is tilted 23.4 degrees which means that the Earth's obliquity is 23.4 degrees.


• Earth obliquity might have being different when it first because the moon must have stabilized it, which could mean that obliquity gives us seasons, and made this planet suitable for life.


• Mars and Saturn's obliquity is similar to Earth so the seasons re similar, obviously orbit matters, but Mercury and Jupiter have it's obliquity close to Zero so they do not have much planets.


• Obliquity of Uranus is about 98 degrees, so it does have seasons but it is different to Earth's seasons.
  

By looking at the picture above you must have been able to figure out that while Northern Hemisphere has Winter, Southern Hemisphere has summer because southern hemisphere is closer to the sun than the northern hemisphere. ( That's a lot of confused cut short to easy understandable diagram.) LOL.

• In winter the Sun's radiation touches the Earth at a shallow angle and days are short which explains why Winter cooler.


• In Summer the Sun's radiation touched the Earth steep angle and the days are shorter which explains why summer is warmer.


• In winter the Sun rise from the South - East and sets in South - West.


• At equinoxes Sun rises in east and sets in West.


• In summer Sun rises in north-east and sets in north-west .
  

That's all for today!!

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Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Leonardo da Vinci

Getting Started..

To get started off with you first have know what I am even talking about, the day today for me was a little inspiring, I'm here in my Science lesson, my favourite lesson of all just sitting there after finishing off my Resistance of Wire Coursework, I just showed a first bit of my first post to my friend, my friend got it the wrong way, we all have our goods and bads right? That's why I'm not showing this to my friend because I don't want to break up a good friendship, but I will email them after I leave school...ahhh...They are the most loveliest people but you know..nothing is perfect...maybe it's just me not keeping myself calm and eager to show to it, so it doesn't get it the wrong way in the future...it is those days where I run out of words in what I meant...so people take it the wrong way.

But anyway... Let me get on with the stuff that I was going to tell you.

Right...

The distance from Earth to the Sun is 1 Astronomical Unit (1AU), 1 Astronomical Unit is equal to 150 million kilometres.
The sun is a star and it gives out heat and light, Earth is a planet, and all other planets ONLY reflects light.
Stars twinkle because the light we see coming from the stars travels through the atmosphere around the earth and there is turbulence in the Earth's atmosphere.
It takes the light from the sun over eight (8) minutes to reach the Earth. That means that if the sun blew up right now, we would have eight more minutes of life before we were affected as well.

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Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Leonardo da Vinci

Me, Moi, Ik, Mich, Εγώ, Io, Mim, Mí

Welcome to my blog where I live my Dreams. Each time I will tell you that extra effort that I put into bring my Dreams into Reality. If you are one of those people who have no taste for beauty or those people who don't care about themselves.. about their future...Then I strongly suggest that you close this window by simply holding on to Alt F4 buttons on your Keyboard..because you will find this EXTREMELY USELESS AND BORING!!

I will try to keep the swearing to the minimum because it's extremely rude and I understand you must be those "intelligent" people who would read this. LOL.

To start off I have to say that I have been through a lot to get here, not the fact that I have to sign up to get this account and do all that nonsense, but the fact that I am here writing this in English. I am not a White but I am a Sri Lankan British Citizen. I came to Britain 5 years ago, and coming here back then was just a fantasy. I had times where I went through the worst to get to this stage, not just me, my second sibling and my parents.

But living in London doesn't make my life perfect.. living in Newham does.....I expected people to be mean and racist.. because I was different...but man was I wrong!! Yes there are people like those once in a while...but the amount of racial attacks is literally just 1%. I hate to break it to you..but nothing is perfect..but we can turn it into perfection.. the reason I am so speeding up to my dreams now is because of the people I knew and 'hanged' around with (mostly at school)..no not all of them are nice..two of my best friends seems to be jealous of me and literally seem to put me down because one of my friends was the third generation in this country and I was the first, but this doesn't matter to me because people are treated the same no matter WHEN they became a British Citizen. Then there's the other one, the one that can put me off sometimes, and then there's a new one..who I don't know a lot about.

It is totally unfair of me to point out their negatives, I have things I have to fix up too, I can be a show off sometimes, a little mean, and I LOVE when people praise me. On the other hand, I am an organising Freak!, very ambitious, independent, spoilt and can be competitive, and my friends are competitive freaks...BUT I LOVE THEM..because they stick up for each other.

I love my 4 friends because of their jealousy, they really made me fight against my limit and helped me to prove them wrong, and that's why I am here feeling so proud of myself that I actually achieved something better than most people without going to school for 3 years.

At the end of the day there is going to be more people jealous of you than people who actually inspire you, my bit was to use the jealous to gain success. Obviously, this is not the only thing that my four little friends did, we stick together, back each other on a fight..just that sometimes they and me can be a little jealous when another friend is better than them..and that's why I adore them because they could use me to succeed it their own lives, by having the eager to beat me in academic success.

My weakness is that I am a VERY SENSITIVE PERSON, I hate it when people mock illegal immigrants because I know how they feel, I haven't been one of them, but I know how they feel..to be those people where their family was destroyed and they have no job in their own country so that they could survive, but then suddenly to find themselves rejected by the Home Office. I also hate fighting, I argue but never get myself into a fight, yeah call me a chicken if you want..but I literally cry when my Mum hugs me..in fact I'm crying right now..writing this line, If I was writing in a paper, the words would just dissolve. But anyway..I am also a laughing freak, laugh at anything! But sometimes it can go a little far..

I love people who are smarter than me because they inspire me...but I can get a little jealous..because I know a girl in my school younger than me that has 10 times the brains I got. But this wouldn't matter to me, because at the end of the day it's about me and how I become successful. There are people that I know that are clever than me, but suddenly put all those intelligence to waste just to 'follow' their friends or just have that naive thought that doing no coursework will get you an A* in their GCSE. And then there are these people who think they are dumb, and don't try at all to read the question, but they are the most loveliest friends a person sometimes can ever have, and then there's other people who are not as gifted and talented as I am, but use me as an inspiration and always look up to me, and work hard, and I LOVE these people, they work so hard and I know for a fact that when they succeed in whatever they want to do, they will enjoy it to the full.

I am 16 now, my birthday was just three days ago, and for the past 16 years, I learnt one thing...that I should work at my own pace and forget what other friends are doing, but never let them feel as though they are being ignored because they will need you just as you will need them..even if you are enemies...because WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND..

Then there is the 'weird' part of life as people say, I DON'T HAVE ONE RELIGION, My Dads a Hindu, my Mums a Catholic/Buddhist.. I believe in all religions...because at the end of the day I think it's going to be the same god, no religion tells people to kill each other, so there should be nothing wrong with having more than one religion, but I don't agree to all the rules, the reason I think this is because the rules of the religion (especially catholic) is being changed because of those mindless politicians in the past (especially the Romans). But I am not a Catholic that HATES Science, I LOVE SCIENCE, and I hate when people say Science can never combine with religion! WHY NOT??!!! For god's sake, Science never disagrees to any of the gods creations, it simply agrees to it, the big bang theory for example, tells us how our universe was created..it was created by gas and dust..but this clearly shows that God has given these raw materials of gas and dust to make us, what other answer would there be?? I think that God has simply given us the mind to UNDERSTAND HOW he created us.

Here comes my interests...I love doing anything from playing hide and seek, to reading books, to gardening, to sleeping. LOL. I look up to many people, especially Leonardo DA Vinci, he lived the most awesome life, from Arts to Science to Maths and then to Religion (Gnostic Christians).

I am fascinated by Astrology, every time I have my palms read they say that one day I will become a Scientist, and they tell me stuff that has already happened to me, my Dad knows these things called Numerology, meaning that my name is counted up to a certain number that would bring success to my life. In the Birthdays and Fortune book my dad gave me, it tells me that Diplomats, Writers, Teachers, and lovers of the fine arts are born on the 19th of January(My B'day), I have a kindly disposition, consideration and a desire to help others. I am poetical, artistic and affectionate, and that I am capable of entering into almost any profession or field and being successful. This text might not be true, but it does put ideas into my brain and gives me a list of things that I can do, and I think that this is what that makes Astrology right, because you will find out that you will almost certainly do or become the same thing the person or the book have told you about, and you will doing this without even knowing you did it.

My Dad once told me that while my Uncle was in Iraq and my Dad somewhere working in the middle east, they heard a sort of psychic man or women taking about how America is going to end, and it was about a non political person bringing all sorts of trouble, such as 9/11 in the world trade centre in America, obviously my Uncle and my Dad had no idea who this non - political person that was going to destroy AMerica, until the day of 9/11. He also told me that the same person said that one day New York will be wiped out by a Nuclear Bomb from one of those Middle East countries or something as close because of one careless, dumb, mindless politician. I wish this never comes true, because I can't bear to see any human arms or heads or dead babies in the TV.

I want to be an Astrophysicist, working in the BNSC, ESA or NASA, this is because I always wondered what was outside the world we live, and I am obsessed about Dark Matter, Black Holes, Anti - Protons, Super Novas and all that stuff that people don't normally know about. I already started walking towards by career, by choosing to do GCSE Astronomy at Greenwich NMM. Once I succeed I want to be like Leonardo DA Vinci, where I will use the Creative and the Mathematical/Scientific side of my brain to create or hypothesize something exhilarating.
After this, the information will be most about Astronomy, I would like to send my Gratitude to Dr. Alan Longstaff - my Astronomy tutor at Greenwich NMM and ROS.

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Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. Leonardo Da Vinci