• OLD ASTRO LINKS •
(Just general Astro-related coolness left over from when I taught Astronomy.)
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Lots of clips about James Webb Deep Field; I'm going with these two for now.
- A/B comparison of the same part of the sky as imaged first by Hubble, then by JWST.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPOGgUl4aWY
- The scale of the James Webb Deep Field image, starting with a standard view of the sky and zooming in to the area of the image. (It's on Reddit: apologies for the blue url.)
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LOCAL PLANETARIUMS (PLANETARIA? PLANE'ARIA?)
Omni-Sphere (Greensboro Science Center)
• https://www.greensboroscience.org/visit/what-to-do/omnisphere/index.html
Culp Planetarium, HPU
• https://www.highpoint.edu/planetarium/
UNCG Planetarium
• https://physics.uncg.edu/planetarium/the-planetarium/
Morehead Planetarium (It's in Chapel Hill, but it's worth the drive!)
• https://moreheadplanetarium.org/
South Park Plane'arium
• No explanation required. You've either seen this (and know it) or need to. For when you can't find the constellation "The Crusades."
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All things ECLIPSE! http://www.mreclipse.com/
If you EVER have seen a scientific prediction of ANY eclipse—lunar or solar, partial or total—odds are very strong that prediction looked something like *this* and was drawn up and presented by Mr. Fred Espenak.
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- How accurate is your phone's clock? What is the current time accurate to within a tenth of a second or better? The most accurate time server on the web, https://time.is/ will be only too happy to tell you! (Not a paid ad; Just a time-junkie's rave.)
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If this isn't my favorite Wikipedia page, it's surely in the top...no, forget it. This totally my favorite Wikipedia page!
• List Of Solar System Objects by Size!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_objects_by_size
Start with the Sun and just cascade your way down to Deimos! Which isn't fair to Deimos. Deimos is my go-to when I need to refer to a small thing in the solar system, but that's mostly because (I think) as a moon of Mars it's relatively close to us. But Deimos is a solid 4 miles in diameter. Sure you could probably STEP OFF OF IT (not really, but it's escape speed is only 12 mph...you could easily throw a rock off of it) but little Polydeuces and Methone, moons of Saturn, are not even 1 mile across!
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SPACE NEWS:
• NASA.gov - Why not go straight to the horse's mouth? (Although there's now more than just one horse of course of course....Blue Origin, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, etc.)
• Universe Today - https://www.universetoday.com/
• Space.com - https://www.space.com/
• Sky & Telescope - https://www.skyandtelescope.com/
• Astronomy Now - https://astronomynow.com/
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Geologic Map of the Moon!!
https://www.usgs.gov/news/usgs-releases-first-ever-comprehensive-geologic-map-moon
The lunar map, called the “Unified Geologic Map of the Moon,” will serve as the definitive blueprint of the moon’s surface geology for future human missions. The digital map is available online now! (It shows the moon’s geology in high detail....1:5,000,000 scale!)
Animated globe version
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Here' the April 10, 2019 Event Horizon Telescope Project press conference announcing the first image of a black hole's event horizon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnJi0Jy692w
This black hole drives an enormous galaxy known as M87, and the black hole itself is so big....(how to describe this)...Neptune is the furthest planet from the sun, but for this purpose let's talk about Pluto. Pluto's average distance from the sun is 40 AU. (Earth is 1 AU. That's what an AU--Astronomical Unit--is: one earth-sun distance: 93 million miles, 150 million km. It's handy yardstick for the solar system.) WHICH MEANS the diameter of Pluto's orbit is 80 AU, a distance light travels in 11 hours. THIS BLACK HOLE--which has the same density the earth would have were it COMPRESSED TO THE SIZE OF A GRAPE (I swear to you I'm not kidding)--is 250 AU in diameter, or about three times the orbital diameter of Pluto. It's an OBJECT. An object so dense that its gravity is SO STRONG that even light--moving 186,000 miles per second--cannot get away from it. (Thus the name Black Hole: its light can't escape, which means the black hole can't emit light, which means it's a "black hole" in space.)
Here's another way, specific to Northwest High. If you were standing in the crosswalk between the upper student parking lot and the New Building [IN PROGRESS...TO BE COMPLETED SOON] (5/31/21: Would LOVE to know where I was going with this! - smr - )
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Stuff In Space. http://stuffin.space/ 3D interactive modeling of all man-made satellites currently orbiting earth. Drag the globe to rotate it, mouse over any dot to bring up the satellite's orbit, click to bring up a data panel with info about that satellite.
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Orbital Mechanics in 60 seconds! https://gfycat.com/boldorangeamphiuma
You know how in space movies they’re always talking about needing a “20 second main engine burn” here or a “seven minute burn” there? Here’s why!
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What is the LARGEST GALAXY? (asked 04APR19)
The Milky Way, our galaxy, is an astonishing 150,000 light years across. The largest galaxy discovered to date is IC1101, which is estimated to be 6 MILLION LIGHT YEARS ACROSS.
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MARS WEATHER - Weather report from Elysium Planitia, courtesy of Insight Station probe.
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/weather/
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NASA's Planetary Fact Sheets - All the data one could ever want on individual planets, moons, dwarf planets, etc., in stripped down, no-bells-and/or-whistles format.
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/planetfact.html
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Here is the Astrology vs. Astronomy calendar correlation chart I have on my wall in my room behind my desk. I've added an "every-day-of-the-year," day-by-day calendar correlation to the file so you can see where the sun actually was on your birthday. (The "month at a glance" and "day by day" views are two different sheets within this one excel file; If you DL it, see the two tabs at the bottom after you open the file. CLICK HERE TO DL.)
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- A long-haired astronaut washes her hair on the ISS! - For me, the take-away from this is: every interior surface of the ISS must be waterproofed! Astronaut Karen Nyberg washes her long hair with minimal amounts of water, during which she seems not at all concerned about water drops and blobs that clearly are going off in all directions! Subscribe to NASA Johnson's YouTube channel for all KINDS of cool "Life In Space" videos!
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- OK, so maybe The Martian isn't as solid on the science as I'd thought. It's still better than most. And this guy is whining about a lot of superfluous stuff. Yes, the disco music thing was annoying, but the amount of money the producers would have had to cough up to have current music was, presumably, prohibitive. AND ALSO this guy is calling BS on one of the cooler correct depictions; At the end when the stripped-down Ares IV return vehicle launches Watney off Mars with just a tarp over it, that actually makes sense. REMEMBER: Mars's atmosphere is so thin it barely qualifies as an atmosphere. As they said in the movie, by the time the vehicle has accelerated to a speed where drag (wind resistance) would be a problem, it's climbed high enough that it's above most of the stuff that would cause the problematic drag (i.e. the wind/air).
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British physicist Brian Cox explains Black Holes to Joe Rogan in plain English!
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20 Ways The World Could End. http://discovermagazine.com/2000/oct/featworld
I refer to this article OFTEN in class. YES, big asteroid, no doubt. BUT NOT ONLY.
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CAN A MOON HAVE A MOON? Short answer? Yes. But...there are some conditions...
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/our-solar-system/44-our-solar-system/the-moon/general-questions/104-can-moons-have-moons-intermediate
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- How Many Decimals of Pi Does NASA Use For Orbital Calculations - https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2016/3/16/how-many-decimals-of-pi-do-we-really-need/
Quick answer: Anything beyond 15 places after the decimal 3.141592653589793 is completely worthless. Read the link for interesting explanations of why!
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Mars: EXPLORERS WANTED posters! https://mars.nasa.gov/multimedia/resources/mars-posters-explorers-wanted/
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We all know what E = mc^2 means and is: Einstein's equation of mass-energy equivalence. But HOW DID EINSTEIN DERIVE THAT ELEGANT LITTLE EQUATION THAT EXPLAINS MUCH ABOUT THE UNIVERSE?? Check this out, and in two minutes you'll get as good an explanation as you're likely ever to find.
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- GTCC CLINE OBSERVATION SCHEDULE - EVERY CLEAR FRIDAY OF THE YEAR
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The Very Large Array in New Mexico....see what configuration it's currently observing in!
https://public.nrao.edu/vla-configurations/
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- James Webb Space Telescope! https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/observatory/index.html
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- Greensboro Astronomy Club
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- Guilford College Cline Observatory, Frank Family Science Center
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- IF THE MOON WERE ONLY 1 PIXEL. There are many scale models of the Solar System available on the web. This is one of the coolest! http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html
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DOES EARTH HAVE A SECOND MOON? Not really...but sorta!
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6537
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3753_Cruithne
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- Will Betelgeuse go supernova? http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/betelgeuse-will-explode-someday
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- The WOW! Signal - A lucid description from Skeptoid's Brian Dunning.
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4342 (Remember: Just because the Wow! signal is our *best* candidate for an alien radio transmission, doesn't mean it's a *good* one.)
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- The Theory of Everything movie - What's fact, and what's "artistic license?
http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/theory-of-everything/
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- Where is the ISS right now? http://iss.astroviewer.net shows a map with ISS's track, as well as a moving map showing the view ISS astronauts have right now! THIS ONE'S EVEN BETTER...it's INTERACTIVE! http://www.heavens-above.com/ISS_3D.aspx
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- So you want to be an astronaut, do you? Why then, apply!
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- You still want to work on the ISS? Here's a glimpse of what you'll go though if you get invited by NASA to train as an astronaut. But if you're serious about it, brace yourself. (To paraphrase this article: "Astronaut Tom Jones flew up in 2001 to help build the ISS. He spent 53 days in space, for which he trained for seven years." Yeah.)
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- In many sci-fi movies and TV shows, space ships that can "warp" faster than light are often shown screaming though streaks of stars. This is an exaggeration-for-effect that originated with the original 1977 Star Wars movie...it was an utterly mind-blowing moment when the Millennium Falcon first makes the jump to light speed, but this is a tremendous exaggeration; When the nearest star to us is 4+ light-YEARS, THERE'S NO WAY YOUR INTERSTELLAR MOTION, EVEN AT WARP SPEEDS, COULD BE PERCEIVED BY YOU AS ANYTHING EXCEPT VIRTUALLY STANDING STILL...UNLESS you happened to be located near enough to a star to perceive it as a disk rather than a point. Here's what it REALLY looks like if you travel near a star while going light speed. https://vimeo.com/117815404
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- WHERE ARE THE PLANETS IN THE SKY? This link looks like a lot of complicated data tables, but if you know what to look for there's nothing to it.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHERE A PLANET IS AT THIS MOMENT: Look at the "Altitude" row, on the left side of the table. If the Altitude is GREEN, the planet is above the horizon that many degrees. If Altitude is RED (and negative) the planet is BELOW the horizon that many degrees. The compass direction is the "Azimuth" heading, right below the Altitude.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHERE A PLANET WILL BE TONIGHT: Either reset the "Time" box to the time you'll be observing, then click the Update box. *OR* Look at the "Rises" row, two above Altitude. If the planet rises between 10 AM and about 6 PM, you should be able to see it sometime before Midnight that night. (Again, azimuth is the compass direction: 0˚ or 360˚ is north, 90˚ is east, 180˚ is south, 270˚ is west.)
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• A Sky Map that makes finding RA/DEC and ALT/AZ coordinates EASY!:
https://in-the-sky.org/skymap.php
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- IN THE MOVIE GRAVITY: Who is the Chinese guy Dr Stone talks to on the radio, with the dog, singing lullabies to his baby? You'd be surprised. I sure was. (Spoiler alert: Not only is he not Chinese, he's not even Asian. His village is located in none other then Greenland, which makes that guy--you guessed it--North American! This nine-minute short was written and directed by one of Gravity's screenwriters.)
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- IN THE MOVIE 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY: What happens? Monkeys? Monoliths? Trippy light shows? Space babies?? What the hell??
People with and without advanced degrees in language and philosophy, in art in general and specifically in cinema, have been debating this since the movie's premiere in 1968.
* A 2018 io9.com article citing a very rare 1980 interview featuring Kubrick himself discussing the film's meaning and seeming impenetrability:
https://io9.gizmodo.com/this-may-be-stanley-kubrick-himself-explaining-the-end-1827363975
(NOTE: The explanation Kubrick gives lines up so nicely with explanations I'd seen online--but NOT attributed to Kubrick--that I think my online sources simply passed Kubrick's explanation off as their own. ALSO, as to whether it's actually Kubrick speaking on the phone in 1980...the 2001 ASO DVD has a different interview, a 75 minute audio recording of a 1966 interview, and if the guy on the phone talking to the Japanese reporter in 1980 isn't Kubrick, it's a genius level mimic: the speech patterns, timbres, accents, modulation shifts are identical.)
* An exhaustive Wikipedia page devoted to this very topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_2001:_A_Space_Odyssey
* Can you believe IT'S ALL ABOUT FOOD! ;-) Characters are eating in so many scenes...and then important stuff happens! (One of my favorite theories about 2001!)
https://io9.gizmodo.com/fascinating-theory-says-2001-a-space-odyssey-is-really-1688951999
An impressive and frankly astonishing 7-part YouTube series explaining nearly everything about how 2001: A Space Odyssey was made:
Part 1: The Dawn of Man
Part 2: The Floyd Section
Part 3: The Lunar Surface (TMA-1)
Part 4: Jupiter Mission (A)
Part 5: Jupiter Mission (B)
Part 6: Jupiter and Beyond The Infinite (A)
Part 7: Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite (B)
A quite a bit shorter video explaining why the world's great directors and special effects supervisors STILL sing 2001's praises, half a century later:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCDdEq9ZYjI
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- NASA's Mars Trek. Interactive Map of the Martian surface: http://marstrek.jpl.nasa.gov/
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- National Geographic: MARS. http://www.makemarshome.com/
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- Pluto is still a dwarf planet, and was not recently "re-promoted" back to full planet status. In September 2014 a debate was held by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics where the public wanted Pluto's planetary status reinstated, but "the public" is not the governing body that names planets, the International Astronomical Union is, and until they change the designation, Pluto remains a dwarf planet.
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- WANDERERS, a short film by Eric Vernquist. https://vimeo.com/108650530. THIS IS AWESOME!
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- Why are there no green or purple stars? It's not because they don’t exist (they do) but the way the rods & cones work in our retinas, they only see best…what they see best! What do I mean. *** We have three types of cones in our retinas: red, green and blue. The color green, as anyone who memorized ROY G BIV in their youth knows, is basically in the dead center of the visible light spectrum. So a star that emits strongest in green will ALSO be emitting a very balanced amount on either SIDE of green, and to our eyes, with this balance, will appear white. (If the star were emitting ONLY green, then green it would be!) *** A star emitting most strongly in the purple/violet range will also be emitting strongly in the blue range. Our blue cones take over, and the star appears to us to be blue. (If it were emitting ONLY purple, then it would indeed appear purple!)
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- Why Astronomers Don't Report UFOs. (Simple & quick answer…most UFO sightings turn to to be Venus, satellites, or, no kidding, the moon.)
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- Jupiter at perihelion? Saturn at opposition? What is the state/location of the Outer Planets? How many days ago? How many days from now? Find out at this terrific Outer Planet site! https://in-the-sky.org/newsindex.php?feed=outerplanets
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- What would happen if the Sun went out? - Students ask me this all the time. Google the question to see how many answers there are out there, but I like this link...the thing about the differentiated snow layers as the atmosphere condenses and freezes is something I hadn't seen before.
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- 10 Popular Misconceptions About Astronomy. We've discussed several of these in class!
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- Mars MSL/Curiosity images - fresh from NASA/JPL. As of 15JAN13, the photos from the landing and after begin at about page 11 (as you look at the page numbers across the top when you follow this link.)
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- More MSL/Curiosity Details and info! http://www.space.com/34036-spectacular-mars-landscape-photos-curiosity-rover.html
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- A simple way to use hands and fingers to measure angular distance in the sky (jpg image)
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HOW MUCH WOULD YOU WEIGH ON OTHER PLANETS? I don't know what's the most surprising, the significant difference in my Earth weight and my Venus weight (since the two planets are almost always described as "twins" or "sisters" or "nearly identical") or that fact that my Venus weight and my Saturn weight are ESSENTIALLY IDENTICAL. (Or the fact that my Jupiter weight is "only" twice my Earth weight!)
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CASSINI IS STILL GOING STRONG IN ORBIT AROUND SATURN, AND HAS BEEN SINCE 2004!. One of the cooler Planetary web sites from NASA/JPL.- (NOT AFTER FRIDAY, 9/15/17 when Cassini was famously deorbited and sent to its meteoric death in Saturn's upper atmosphere, transmitting data the entire time, like the badass explorer of alien worlds that it is and was!)
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- SOHO (Solar & Heliospheric Observatory) IMAGES
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BLACK HOLE EXERCISE
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- You don't need a telescope to get into astronomy!: Use binoculars or easier still, try downloading Stellarium, a free sky simulator program.
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- Astronomy Pic Of The Day (APOD). "Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer."
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- JOURNAL ARTICLE - 31AUG11.. This is the "raw feed" from the Associated Press about the ISS possibly being temporarily abandoned in the wake of the recent--and uncharacteristic--Russian rocket failure. Compare to the News & Record version to see how the Greensboro editor changed the raw article to meet local needs and tastes.
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- Europeans Are Taking Asteroid Impacts Seriously
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- Human Mission to an Asteroid: Why Should NASA Go?
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- DETAILED ANIMATION OF COMET ISON's TRIP THROUGH THE INNER SOLAR SYSTEM. The pass is shown several times from several angles.
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- Isn't Astronomy used to calculate the date of Easter each year?
SORT OF. You will occasionally hear that Easter is the "first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox," which is true IN THEORY (along with references to "Paschal full moon" and the Jewish calendar which is partly lunar.) In practice though, because the Vernal Equinox migrates a little each year (it can range from March 19 to March 22) religious leaders have more or less finalized this definition: Easter is the first Sunday AFTER the first full moon that occurs ON OR AFTER March 21.
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Why is the longest day of the year (June 21, +/-) NOT ALSO the day of the earliest sunrise (June 13, +/-) and latest sunset (June 27 +/-). BY THE SAME TOKEN: Why is the shortest day of the year (Dec 21, +/-) NOT ALSO the day of the latest sunrise (Jan 7, +/-) and earliest sunset (Dec 7 +/-).
http://www.astronomycorner.net/games/analemma.html
The answer to takes a long time to explain in class (I have to draw at least TWO analemmas on the board) and EVEN THEN half my students don't get it. Here is as good an online explanation as you'll find, AND IT'S TOUGH TO UNDERSTAND!
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What damage would a ton of wood inflict if you dropped it onto a car? A lot, of course. But check out what would happen if you did this on DIFFERENT PLANETS, WITH THEIR DIFFERENT GRAVITATIONAL STRENGTHS!
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- Bob Braunig's Rocket & Space Technology Site http://www.braeunig.us/space/index.htm. A TERRIFIC resource, which features one of the -- if not the -- most thorough, surgical refutations to moon landing deniers you will find anywhere on the interwebs! [Well, it DID. For whatever reason he zapped his moon landing denier section. :-( ]
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Here's the Sci-Fi LOVE tee-shirt you'll see (or have seen) me wearing throughout the year.
https://shirt.woot.com/offers/i-love-scifi
(Just general Astro-related coolness left over from when I taught Astronomy.)
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Lots of clips about James Webb Deep Field; I'm going with these two for now.
- A/B comparison of the same part of the sky as imaged first by Hubble, then by JWST.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPOGgUl4aWY
- The scale of the James Webb Deep Field image, starting with a standard view of the sky and zooming in to the area of the image. (It's on Reddit: apologies for the blue url.)
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LOCAL PLANETARIUMS (PLANETARIA? PLANE'ARIA?)
Omni-Sphere (Greensboro Science Center)
• https://www.greensboroscience.org/visit/what-to-do/omnisphere/index.html
Culp Planetarium, HPU
• https://www.highpoint.edu/planetarium/
UNCG Planetarium
• https://physics.uncg.edu/planetarium/the-planetarium/
Morehead Planetarium (It's in Chapel Hill, but it's worth the drive!)
• https://moreheadplanetarium.org/
South Park Plane'arium
• No explanation required. You've either seen this (and know it) or need to. For when you can't find the constellation "The Crusades."
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All things ECLIPSE! http://www.mreclipse.com/
If you EVER have seen a scientific prediction of ANY eclipse—lunar or solar, partial or total—odds are very strong that prediction looked something like *this* and was drawn up and presented by Mr. Fred Espenak.
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- How accurate is your phone's clock? What is the current time accurate to within a tenth of a second or better? The most accurate time server on the web, https://time.is/ will be only too happy to tell you! (Not a paid ad; Just a time-junkie's rave.)
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If this isn't my favorite Wikipedia page, it's surely in the top...no, forget it. This totally my favorite Wikipedia page!
• List Of Solar System Objects by Size!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Solar_System_objects_by_size
Start with the Sun and just cascade your way down to Deimos! Which isn't fair to Deimos. Deimos is my go-to when I need to refer to a small thing in the solar system, but that's mostly because (I think) as a moon of Mars it's relatively close to us. But Deimos is a solid 4 miles in diameter. Sure you could probably STEP OFF OF IT (not really, but it's escape speed is only 12 mph...you could easily throw a rock off of it) but little Polydeuces and Methone, moons of Saturn, are not even 1 mile across!
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SPACE NEWS:
• NASA.gov - Why not go straight to the horse's mouth? (Although there's now more than just one horse of course of course....Blue Origin, SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, etc.)
• Universe Today - https://www.universetoday.com/
• Space.com - https://www.space.com/
• Sky & Telescope - https://www.skyandtelescope.com/
• Astronomy Now - https://astronomynow.com/
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Geologic Map of the Moon!!
https://www.usgs.gov/news/usgs-releases-first-ever-comprehensive-geologic-map-moon
The lunar map, called the “Unified Geologic Map of the Moon,” will serve as the definitive blueprint of the moon’s surface geology for future human missions. The digital map is available online now! (It shows the moon’s geology in high detail....1:5,000,000 scale!)
Animated globe version
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Here' the April 10, 2019 Event Horizon Telescope Project press conference announcing the first image of a black hole's event horizon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnJi0Jy692w
This black hole drives an enormous galaxy known as M87, and the black hole itself is so big....(how to describe this)...Neptune is the furthest planet from the sun, but for this purpose let's talk about Pluto. Pluto's average distance from the sun is 40 AU. (Earth is 1 AU. That's what an AU--Astronomical Unit--is: one earth-sun distance: 93 million miles, 150 million km. It's handy yardstick for the solar system.) WHICH MEANS the diameter of Pluto's orbit is 80 AU, a distance light travels in 11 hours. THIS BLACK HOLE--which has the same density the earth would have were it COMPRESSED TO THE SIZE OF A GRAPE (I swear to you I'm not kidding)--is 250 AU in diameter, or about three times the orbital diameter of Pluto. It's an OBJECT. An object so dense that its gravity is SO STRONG that even light--moving 186,000 miles per second--cannot get away from it. (Thus the name Black Hole: its light can't escape, which means the black hole can't emit light, which means it's a "black hole" in space.)
Here's another way, specific to Northwest High. If you were standing in the crosswalk between the upper student parking lot and the New Building [IN PROGRESS...TO BE COMPLETED SOON] (5/31/21: Would LOVE to know where I was going with this! - smr - )
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Stuff In Space. http://stuffin.space/ 3D interactive modeling of all man-made satellites currently orbiting earth. Drag the globe to rotate it, mouse over any dot to bring up the satellite's orbit, click to bring up a data panel with info about that satellite.
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Orbital Mechanics in 60 seconds! https://gfycat.com/boldorangeamphiuma
You know how in space movies they’re always talking about needing a “20 second main engine burn” here or a “seven minute burn” there? Here’s why!
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What is the LARGEST GALAXY? (asked 04APR19)
The Milky Way, our galaxy, is an astonishing 150,000 light years across. The largest galaxy discovered to date is IC1101, which is estimated to be 6 MILLION LIGHT YEARS ACROSS.
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MARS WEATHER - Weather report from Elysium Planitia, courtesy of Insight Station probe.
https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/weather/
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NASA's Planetary Fact Sheets - All the data one could ever want on individual planets, moons, dwarf planets, etc., in stripped down, no-bells-and/or-whistles format.
https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/planetfact.html
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Here is the Astrology vs. Astronomy calendar correlation chart I have on my wall in my room behind my desk. I've added an "every-day-of-the-year," day-by-day calendar correlation to the file so you can see where the sun actually was on your birthday. (The "month at a glance" and "day by day" views are two different sheets within this one excel file; If you DL it, see the two tabs at the bottom after you open the file. CLICK HERE TO DL.)
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- A long-haired astronaut washes her hair on the ISS! - For me, the take-away from this is: every interior surface of the ISS must be waterproofed! Astronaut Karen Nyberg washes her long hair with minimal amounts of water, during which she seems not at all concerned about water drops and blobs that clearly are going off in all directions! Subscribe to NASA Johnson's YouTube channel for all KINDS of cool "Life In Space" videos!
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- OK, so maybe The Martian isn't as solid on the science as I'd thought. It's still better than most. And this guy is whining about a lot of superfluous stuff. Yes, the disco music thing was annoying, but the amount of money the producers would have had to cough up to have current music was, presumably, prohibitive. AND ALSO this guy is calling BS on one of the cooler correct depictions; At the end when the stripped-down Ares IV return vehicle launches Watney off Mars with just a tarp over it, that actually makes sense. REMEMBER: Mars's atmosphere is so thin it barely qualifies as an atmosphere. As they said in the movie, by the time the vehicle has accelerated to a speed where drag (wind resistance) would be a problem, it's climbed high enough that it's above most of the stuff that would cause the problematic drag (i.e. the wind/air).
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British physicist Brian Cox explains Black Holes to Joe Rogan in plain English!
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20 Ways The World Could End. http://discovermagazine.com/2000/oct/featworld
I refer to this article OFTEN in class. YES, big asteroid, no doubt. BUT NOT ONLY.
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CAN A MOON HAVE A MOON? Short answer? Yes. But...there are some conditions...
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/our-solar-system/44-our-solar-system/the-moon/general-questions/104-can-moons-have-moons-intermediate
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- How Many Decimals of Pi Does NASA Use For Orbital Calculations - https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2016/3/16/how-many-decimals-of-pi-do-we-really-need/
Quick answer: Anything beyond 15 places after the decimal 3.141592653589793 is completely worthless. Read the link for interesting explanations of why!
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Mars: EXPLORERS WANTED posters! https://mars.nasa.gov/multimedia/resources/mars-posters-explorers-wanted/
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We all know what E = mc^2 means and is: Einstein's equation of mass-energy equivalence. But HOW DID EINSTEIN DERIVE THAT ELEGANT LITTLE EQUATION THAT EXPLAINS MUCH ABOUT THE UNIVERSE?? Check this out, and in two minutes you'll get as good an explanation as you're likely ever to find.
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- GTCC CLINE OBSERVATION SCHEDULE - EVERY CLEAR FRIDAY OF THE YEAR
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The Very Large Array in New Mexico....see what configuration it's currently observing in!
https://public.nrao.edu/vla-configurations/
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- James Webb Space Telescope! https://jwst.nasa.gov/content/observatory/index.html
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- Greensboro Astronomy Club
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- Guilford College Cline Observatory, Frank Family Science Center
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- IF THE MOON WERE ONLY 1 PIXEL. There are many scale models of the Solar System available on the web. This is one of the coolest! http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html
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DOES EARTH HAVE A SECOND MOON? Not really...but sorta!
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6537
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3753_Cruithne
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- Will Betelgeuse go supernova? http://earthsky.org/brightest-stars/betelgeuse-will-explode-someday
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- The WOW! Signal - A lucid description from Skeptoid's Brian Dunning.
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4342 (Remember: Just because the Wow! signal is our *best* candidate for an alien radio transmission, doesn't mean it's a *good* one.)
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- The Theory of Everything movie - What's fact, and what's "artistic license?
http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/theory-of-everything/
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- Where is the ISS right now? http://iss.astroviewer.net shows a map with ISS's track, as well as a moving map showing the view ISS astronauts have right now! THIS ONE'S EVEN BETTER...it's INTERACTIVE! http://www.heavens-above.com/ISS_3D.aspx
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- So you want to be an astronaut, do you? Why then, apply!
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- You still want to work on the ISS? Here's a glimpse of what you'll go though if you get invited by NASA to train as an astronaut. But if you're serious about it, brace yourself. (To paraphrase this article: "Astronaut Tom Jones flew up in 2001 to help build the ISS. He spent 53 days in space, for which he trained for seven years." Yeah.)
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- In many sci-fi movies and TV shows, space ships that can "warp" faster than light are often shown screaming though streaks of stars. This is an exaggeration-for-effect that originated with the original 1977 Star Wars movie...it was an utterly mind-blowing moment when the Millennium Falcon first makes the jump to light speed, but this is a tremendous exaggeration; When the nearest star to us is 4+ light-YEARS, THERE'S NO WAY YOUR INTERSTELLAR MOTION, EVEN AT WARP SPEEDS, COULD BE PERCEIVED BY YOU AS ANYTHING EXCEPT VIRTUALLY STANDING STILL...UNLESS you happened to be located near enough to a star to perceive it as a disk rather than a point. Here's what it REALLY looks like if you travel near a star while going light speed. https://vimeo.com/117815404
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- WHERE ARE THE PLANETS IN THE SKY? This link looks like a lot of complicated data tables, but if you know what to look for there's nothing to it.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHERE A PLANET IS AT THIS MOMENT: Look at the "Altitude" row, on the left side of the table. If the Altitude is GREEN, the planet is above the horizon that many degrees. If Altitude is RED (and negative) the planet is BELOW the horizon that many degrees. The compass direction is the "Azimuth" heading, right below the Altitude.
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHERE A PLANET WILL BE TONIGHT: Either reset the "Time" box to the time you'll be observing, then click the Update box. *OR* Look at the "Rises" row, two above Altitude. If the planet rises between 10 AM and about 6 PM, you should be able to see it sometime before Midnight that night. (Again, azimuth is the compass direction: 0˚ or 360˚ is north, 90˚ is east, 180˚ is south, 270˚ is west.)
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• A Sky Map that makes finding RA/DEC and ALT/AZ coordinates EASY!:
https://in-the-sky.org/skymap.php
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- IN THE MOVIE GRAVITY: Who is the Chinese guy Dr Stone talks to on the radio, with the dog, singing lullabies to his baby? You'd be surprised. I sure was. (Spoiler alert: Not only is he not Chinese, he's not even Asian. His village is located in none other then Greenland, which makes that guy--you guessed it--North American! This nine-minute short was written and directed by one of Gravity's screenwriters.)
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- IN THE MOVIE 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY: What happens? Monkeys? Monoliths? Trippy light shows? Space babies?? What the hell??
People with and without advanced degrees in language and philosophy, in art in general and specifically in cinema, have been debating this since the movie's premiere in 1968.
* A 2018 io9.com article citing a very rare 1980 interview featuring Kubrick himself discussing the film's meaning and seeming impenetrability:
https://io9.gizmodo.com/this-may-be-stanley-kubrick-himself-explaining-the-end-1827363975
(NOTE: The explanation Kubrick gives lines up so nicely with explanations I'd seen online--but NOT attributed to Kubrick--that I think my online sources simply passed Kubrick's explanation off as their own. ALSO, as to whether it's actually Kubrick speaking on the phone in 1980...the 2001 ASO DVD has a different interview, a 75 minute audio recording of a 1966 interview, and if the guy on the phone talking to the Japanese reporter in 1980 isn't Kubrick, it's a genius level mimic: the speech patterns, timbres, accents, modulation shifts are identical.)
* An exhaustive Wikipedia page devoted to this very topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_2001:_A_Space_Odyssey
* Can you believe IT'S ALL ABOUT FOOD! ;-) Characters are eating in so many scenes...and then important stuff happens! (One of my favorite theories about 2001!)
https://io9.gizmodo.com/fascinating-theory-says-2001-a-space-odyssey-is-really-1688951999
An impressive and frankly astonishing 7-part YouTube series explaining nearly everything about how 2001: A Space Odyssey was made:
Part 1: The Dawn of Man
Part 2: The Floyd Section
Part 3: The Lunar Surface (TMA-1)
Part 4: Jupiter Mission (A)
Part 5: Jupiter Mission (B)
Part 6: Jupiter and Beyond The Infinite (A)
Part 7: Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite (B)
A quite a bit shorter video explaining why the world's great directors and special effects supervisors STILL sing 2001's praises, half a century later:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCDdEq9ZYjI
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- NASA's Mars Trek. Interactive Map of the Martian surface: http://marstrek.jpl.nasa.gov/
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- National Geographic: MARS. http://www.makemarshome.com/
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- Pluto is still a dwarf planet, and was not recently "re-promoted" back to full planet status. In September 2014 a debate was held by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics where the public wanted Pluto's planetary status reinstated, but "the public" is not the governing body that names planets, the International Astronomical Union is, and until they change the designation, Pluto remains a dwarf planet.
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- WANDERERS, a short film by Eric Vernquist. https://vimeo.com/108650530. THIS IS AWESOME!
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- Why are there no green or purple stars? It's not because they don’t exist (they do) but the way the rods & cones work in our retinas, they only see best…what they see best! What do I mean. *** We have three types of cones in our retinas: red, green and blue. The color green, as anyone who memorized ROY G BIV in their youth knows, is basically in the dead center of the visible light spectrum. So a star that emits strongest in green will ALSO be emitting a very balanced amount on either SIDE of green, and to our eyes, with this balance, will appear white. (If the star were emitting ONLY green, then green it would be!) *** A star emitting most strongly in the purple/violet range will also be emitting strongly in the blue range. Our blue cones take over, and the star appears to us to be blue. (If it were emitting ONLY purple, then it would indeed appear purple!)
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- Why Astronomers Don't Report UFOs. (Simple & quick answer…most UFO sightings turn to to be Venus, satellites, or, no kidding, the moon.)
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- Jupiter at perihelion? Saturn at opposition? What is the state/location of the Outer Planets? How many days ago? How many days from now? Find out at this terrific Outer Planet site! https://in-the-sky.org/newsindex.php?feed=outerplanets
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- What would happen if the Sun went out? - Students ask me this all the time. Google the question to see how many answers there are out there, but I like this link...the thing about the differentiated snow layers as the atmosphere condenses and freezes is something I hadn't seen before.
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- 10 Popular Misconceptions About Astronomy. We've discussed several of these in class!
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- Mars MSL/Curiosity images - fresh from NASA/JPL. As of 15JAN13, the photos from the landing and after begin at about page 11 (as you look at the page numbers across the top when you follow this link.)
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- More MSL/Curiosity Details and info! http://www.space.com/34036-spectacular-mars-landscape-photos-curiosity-rover.html
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- A simple way to use hands and fingers to measure angular distance in the sky (jpg image)
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HOW MUCH WOULD YOU WEIGH ON OTHER PLANETS? I don't know what's the most surprising, the significant difference in my Earth weight and my Venus weight (since the two planets are almost always described as "twins" or "sisters" or "nearly identical") or that fact that my Venus weight and my Saturn weight are ESSENTIALLY IDENTICAL. (Or the fact that my Jupiter weight is "only" twice my Earth weight!)
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CASSINI IS STILL GOING STRONG IN ORBIT AROUND SATURN, AND HAS BEEN SINCE 2004!. One of the cooler Planetary web sites from NASA/JPL.- (NOT AFTER FRIDAY, 9/15/17 when Cassini was famously deorbited and sent to its meteoric death in Saturn's upper atmosphere, transmitting data the entire time, like the badass explorer of alien worlds that it is and was!)
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- SOHO (Solar & Heliospheric Observatory) IMAGES
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BLACK HOLE EXERCISE
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- You don't need a telescope to get into astronomy!: Use binoculars or easier still, try downloading Stellarium, a free sky simulator program.
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- Astronomy Pic Of The Day (APOD). "Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer."
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- JOURNAL ARTICLE - 31AUG11.. This is the "raw feed" from the Associated Press about the ISS possibly being temporarily abandoned in the wake of the recent--and uncharacteristic--Russian rocket failure. Compare to the News & Record version to see how the Greensboro editor changed the raw article to meet local needs and tastes.
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- Europeans Are Taking Asteroid Impacts Seriously
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- Human Mission to an Asteroid: Why Should NASA Go?
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- DETAILED ANIMATION OF COMET ISON's TRIP THROUGH THE INNER SOLAR SYSTEM. The pass is shown several times from several angles.
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- Isn't Astronomy used to calculate the date of Easter each year?
SORT OF. You will occasionally hear that Easter is the "first Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox," which is true IN THEORY (along with references to "Paschal full moon" and the Jewish calendar which is partly lunar.) In practice though, because the Vernal Equinox migrates a little each year (it can range from March 19 to March 22) religious leaders have more or less finalized this definition: Easter is the first Sunday AFTER the first full moon that occurs ON OR AFTER March 21.
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Why is the longest day of the year (June 21, +/-) NOT ALSO the day of the earliest sunrise (June 13, +/-) and latest sunset (June 27 +/-). BY THE SAME TOKEN: Why is the shortest day of the year (Dec 21, +/-) NOT ALSO the day of the latest sunrise (Jan 7, +/-) and earliest sunset (Dec 7 +/-).
http://www.astronomycorner.net/games/analemma.html
The answer to takes a long time to explain in class (I have to draw at least TWO analemmas on the board) and EVEN THEN half my students don't get it. Here is as good an online explanation as you'll find, AND IT'S TOUGH TO UNDERSTAND!
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What damage would a ton of wood inflict if you dropped it onto a car? A lot, of course. But check out what would happen if you did this on DIFFERENT PLANETS, WITH THEIR DIFFERENT GRAVITATIONAL STRENGTHS!
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- Bob Braunig's Rocket & Space Technology Site http://www.braeunig.us/space/index.htm. A TERRIFIC resource, which features one of the -- if not the -- most thorough, surgical refutations to moon landing deniers you will find anywhere on the interwebs! [Well, it DID. For whatever reason he zapped his moon landing denier section. :-( ]
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Here's the Sci-Fi LOVE tee-shirt you'll see (or have seen) me wearing throughout the year.
https://shirt.woot.com/offers/i-love-scifi
Firefly
This clip on YouTube, if you're a Firefly fan, is probably the best explanation you'll ever get -- from none other than Joss Whedon himself -- for why the show was cancelled so abruptly. And there's always my own Firefly/Serenity page...
This clip on YouTube, if you're a Firefly fan, is probably the best explanation you'll ever get -- from none other than Joss Whedon himself -- for why the show was cancelled so abruptly. And there's always my own Firefly/Serenity page...