Tag Archives: blog2

goddess of love

Venus is many things. I don’t know much about it besides the fact that it is hot, orange, it’s the second planet in the solar system, and is the goddess of love in Roman mythology. On June 5th, 2012, a couple of days after I graduated from high school, my dad and I woke up at … Continue reading goddess of love Continue reading

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Sky Map

In our Solar System class, we’ve been using Stellarium to investigate the relative motion of constellations and our Sun.  Beyond the ability to lapse time, the features that were most helpful to me were the ones that labelled the constellations and drew lines in between the stars that formed these constellations. As an amateur astronomy student, I’ve […] Continue reading

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Are we at the center of the Universe?

It’s not surprising that at first, humans believed in a geocentric universe. When you look up at the night sky while standing on earth, it appears as though the sun, moon, and stars are moving around the earth. Now of course we know that this effect is actually due to the rotation of the earth […] Continue reading

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Are we at the center of the Universe?

It’s not surprising that at first, humans believed in a geocentric universe. When you look up at the night sky while standing on earth, it appears as though the sun, moon, and stars are moving around the earth. Now of course we know that this effect is actually due to the rotation of the earth […] Continue reading

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Fuller-Mooning in the Winter

Whoa there. Before you flag this post as inappropriate, answer this question. Was this photo taken at noon or at midnight? If you answered midnight, congratulations! And surprisingly enough, this stunning photo of a full moon could only have been photographed in the winter. But why winter? Don’t we get full moons year-round? This is […] Continue reading

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Chase’s Solar System blog 2016-01-26 19:46:22

Earth’s Elliptical Orbit and Seasons Though a common misconception about the cause of seasons is that they are caused by the Earth’s distance to the Sun, in actuality, seasons are caused by Earth’s 23 degree axial tilt. But why do changes in Earth’s distance from the Sun have virtually no effect on temperatures on Earth? […] Continue reading

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Stargazing: There’s an App for That!

Source: Google Play Ever look up at the sky and wonder what that one bright star is called? Well there’s an app for that! Google Sky Map allows the user to hold their phone up to the sky, day or night, and scan the area for constellations, planets, and more. It has features similar to those […] Continue reading

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Mayans Predicted the 1991 Solar Eclipse

Okay so this picture may look like just a bunch of doodles on a piece of clay, but it actually is hieroglyphs from four ancient Mayan codices that predict with surprising accuracy the 1991 Solar Eclipse. The Mayan astronomers were able to predict within a day, the time of the 1991 solar eclipse. Keep in […] Continue reading

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Your Zodiac Sign is Wrong: 3 Misconceptions You Have About the Night-Sky

We all get it. You’re a Capricorn or a Taurus or a Sagittarius or a(n) [any other zodiac constellation]. You’ve read all of your horoscopes, and they fit your personality soooo well. “This is so me,” you might yell to your friends, completely disregarding the fact that they don’t care which vague internet prediction you identify with. […] Continue reading

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“Goodnight Nobody, Goodnight Mush”

When we think we can’t see the moon, it can definitely see us. This doesn’t just hold true when we’re sleeping. As the children’s book, “Goodnight Moon,” goes, we may say “Goodnight” to the moon – but it’s still there outside our window and outside our atmosphere. Different parts of the moon disappear at different […] Continue reading

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