Whenever we watch movies about space, the movie tends to influence our perspective of what is out there in space and how things work. Because of people’s lack of knowledge, it is easy for them to accept what the movies or pictures present to them. Therefore, there are many misconceptions in astronomy of how things really work out in the universe. In Neil Comens’ book, Heavenly Errors, he pinpoints over 1600 misconceptions! For example, many people have several different theories of how the moon changes shape every night or why the stars twinkle in the night time sky.
People believe that the sun is the biggest, brightest star in the universe. In reality though, it is not. The sun is classified as a star, but there are many other stars out there that make the sun look like a dull grain of sand. The sun is very powerful though. It fuses hydrogen atoms into helium. This energy will allow the sun to give off a ton of light and heat for a long time. Since the sun can give off this much energy and heat just think how much more the other bigger stars give off. This leads us to the idea that the North Star, Polaris, is another star that is up there on the list of the “biggest and brightest”. While it is really bright, this is only because it is so close to us. Technically it is an average size star in a convenient spot for us to guide to.
Everyone has a Zodiac sign that they base their daily horoscope on. But do they really know where those signs come from? First of all, all that horoscope stuff is really astrology, but the real signs come from the constellations on the ecliptic. In our celestial atmosphere there is the ecliptic which is the path of the stars and constellations. On this path there are twelve constellations including Virg...
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...eaky fast reflexes needed to avoid an asteroid. Asteroids have collided with each other before, but it is super rare considering how far apart from each other they are.
As you can see we have been temporarily blinded from the truth by fictional things that are easy to believe and that we want to believe. There are so many incorrect theories and ideas and most of them are just plain ridiculous. Astronomy can be a very complicated subject, but it is very necessary to understand what really happens in our galaxy and out in the huge frontier we call space.
Works Cited
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Vera Cooper Rubin was born July 23, 1928 in Philadelphia, PA. Her father was Philip Cooper, an electrical engineer, and her mother Rose. She first developed an interest in astronomy at the age of 10 while stargazing from her home in Washington D.C. Her father encouraged her to follow her dreams and took her to amateur astronomer meetings. She earned her Bachelor’s degree from Vassar University in 1948 of which she was the only astronomy major that year. Later she earned her master’s from Cornell in 1950 with her masters’ thesis was controversial and centered around the possibility of bulk rotation by looking for “sideways” motion of galaxies. She finally got her Ph.D. from Georgetown University in 1954. Her doctoral thesis was on the clustering of galaxies and how she describes the definite clumping and not random distribution throughout the sky. She had attempted to enroll in Princeton for her master’s degree, but at the time women were not allowed in the graduate astronomy program. She was married in 1948 to Robert Rubin and has four children all with Doctorate degrees.
Since elementary school, I have been fascinated with the field of astronomy and have enjoyed learning, researching, and reading about this topic, purely to satisfy my own intellectual curiosity. I began visiting our school planterium and eventually found myself venturing into research on complicated celestial bodies such as black holes, quasars, and pulsars. Though my school does not offer courses on astronomy, I pursued topics of relevance such as calculus and physics, thus enabling me to delve deeper into topics at a collegiate level which are interrelated to astronomy.
Edwin Hubble. (2003, March 25). Retrieved January 19, 2014, from Edwin Hubble Biographical and Information Resources: http://www.edwinhubble.com
As the Hubble telescope’s life comes to a historic end, we look back at all it has done for the scientific community. The Hubble has helped scientists make many new discoveries about our universe. Galileo Galilei and Edwin Hubble were huge contributes to the astronomical community, therefore a major help in transforming the first telescope into something as amazing as the Hubble. The first telescope was perfected by Galileo in 1609, and around four hundred years later the Hubble was launched into space. Since then the Hubble has shown scientists many new discoveries about space that they would have never been able to figure out without the Hubble’s help. Since April 1990 the Hubble telescope has been greatly appreciated by the scientific community because of everything it has done. However, the Hubble has faced many problems along its way as well.
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The theory of how quasars are created is based on the idea that the universe is expanding. Among astronomers, the popular consensus is that the Earth is in an expanding universe in which the laws of physics will hold true beyond this planet as well. G. Mark Voit, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, believes that the beginning of the universe was a time when many galaxies would be visible to the naked eye b...
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The first person to ever observe the Milky Way was Greek philosopher, Democritus, who said the galaxy may consist of distant stars. In 1610, Galileo Galilei used a telescope to study the Milky Way and came to the conclusion that it was composed of billions and billions of faint stars. Then, in 1750, Thomas Wright c...
Space has always been a pivotal and utmost important subject for many years. In the past, scientists have made monumental advances in this field such as sending people into orbit and landing a man on the moon. Of course, this has only barely been explored and we still have a lot more to see of the ever-vast outer space. One of the most significant topics of all of science has only been touched and there’s still more to come.
“Sheltered as we are by Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field, which deflect lethal radiation from space, we are like coddled children who have never ventured into a tough neighborhood” (Folger 2). Humans have been fascinated with space since the beginning of our time. Just like children and rough neighborhoods, we have tackled obstacle over obstacle to make it home again. In the end, we have a better knowledge and strength than before. The future of space exploration can assist us in answering the everlasting question of how the universe came to be. The more we explore the infinite galaxies, the more we can scientifically discover and create new technologies as science advances. As we continue to discover, we can create new fields and occupations for aspiring young students like myself.