Learning Astronomy, Teaching Astronomy
In this post we will learn how to use one bright star of Orion’s belt to visualize the Earth’s equator.
When you look up at the winter sky in the northern hemisphere, Orion and his famous belt are impossible to miss. The belt is made up of three stars of equal brightness.
One of these stars is called Mintaka and it is a guidepost for finding the Earth’s equator in space. Click here to continue reading…
Here is a quiz – what time of night is the best time to see the planet Venus? Is it sunset, midnight, sunrise? None of these? All of the above?
Think about it for a few minutes before you click to show the answer.
Use this technique to understand how seasons happen on the Earth. The Earth is tilted. When the northern part (your forehead and eyes) tilts away from the Sun the season is winter. When the northern part tilts toward the Sun the season is summer.
The Earth is tilted as it spins daily – it is not straight up and down like a top, but more like the Leaning Tower of Pisa (if the tower could spin!). As it goes through its yearly orbit, the Sun hits the northern and then the southern parts of the Earth.
In this model, when the northern part (your forehead and eyes) tilts away from the Sun the season is winter. When the northern part tilts toward the Sun the season is summer.
Did you like this season model? Any questions? Type in the comments to send me a message.
When you are in the southern hemisphere, the moon looks upside down.
When I came back to the US from living in Australia for 4 years, I published a poster with a picture of the moon on in and I placed it “upside down” – someone pointed it out and I looked at the moon and said “the moon is upside down.” This was true – in the Northern Hemisphere – but to people living in the Southern Hemisphere the moon appears “upside down.”
I was shocked, but the claim was true – in the Northern Hemisphere! But to Australians and other people living in places in the Southern Hemisphere the moon appears “upside down.”
In this exercise called “The Sky Below Us” you will learn to see the Earth as a giant ball and understand that the Earth is floating in space. This will allow you to see the sky below us.
The Speed of DayThe “speed of day” is the speed of Earth’s rotation: 1600 kilometers per hour (kph) which is about 1000 mph.
1600 kph is fast. Most people have never experienced anything moving at this speed. Commercial jet airplanes fly at 1000 kph (600 mph). Click here to continue reading…
Most people, when they look up at the night sky can easily see stars and identify some familiar groups of stars (asterisms and constellations). Some people can even find and name some planets – Venus, Jupiter, and Mars are all bright and easy to see.
But, there are many invisible wonders in the sky – and some of them can be seen without a telescope. In fact they are so big that a telescope is not the right tool to use; we have to use something even more powerful… imagination!
Using visualization and imagination, I am going to show you how to find and “see” a very large structure in our sky: the solar system disk itself.
“‘Night’ is not what time it is… it is where you are.” – Daniel Cummings
Learning to do Physical Astronomy? Stellarium is the perfect tool for you. It helps you learn to see patterns in the sky. In this article you will learn how to use the Time Control features of Stellarium.Click here to continue reading…
Practice the fundamental skills of observation. Learn to see the giant geometries of space.Click here to continue reading…