LucasSchoolHouse.com

Astronomy can be a great hobby that turns to be a great job. If you have interest in astronomy and want to become an astronomer, then there are some programs that you may take to make your dreams come true. An astronomer’s work activities will be included the observing of many studies about stars, planets and also galaxies in the world we live in. You may have to get good grades in mathematics, physics and also computer science to be a good astronomer. You may also want to push yourself harder since the competition is really fierce in this field.

Taking the astronomy program as your base of reaching the dream is one thing. The next wise thing to do is to go visiting the library and read many books related to astronomy and always keep yourself starve to knowledge and anything related to the astronomy. The best thing you can get from the library is that you can read the whole books for free! So, keep yourself busy with all those books and you may be a great astronomer one day. Moving on to college is another challenge. You may have to carry at least 3.0 grade point average on your physic or astronomy major program. So, make sure that you get high grades while you are still undergraduate to keep yourself qualify for the next available position on the field. You also have to be proficient in writing as you have to publish your publications when you have becoming an astronomer. It will be such a challenging job, but it is also a dream job. So, if you want to try it, you need to keep your fighting spirit. Chin up!

It’s hard to say why people believe crazy things. Many people in our society believe that there will be an apocalypse, Armageddon, or an end of times, soon, “very soon” they say. Not long ago, I had the opportunity to meet someone who believed this. Indeed, he had convinced himself that the Earth was going to fall into the Sun. In fact, he has selectively dug up various scientific reports, and taken them all out of context to prove that his theory was correct.

His theory again, that we were all doomed to become crispy critters, and burn in a fiery hell as the Earth’s orbit decays and we fell into the Sun. Now then, in case you come across some conspiracy theorist, or hear something of this nature on Coast to Coast A.M. late-night conspiracy theory talk show on the radio, you will know that you don’t have to worry. Let me explain.

There was a very cool article I clipped out of the newspaper a couple of decades ago and saved it in the pages of one of my geo-science books. It appeared in the Washington Post on July 25, 1988 titled; “Variations in Air Pressure Tied to Wobble in Earth’s Poles,” by Boyce Rensberger. The article stated;

“Differences in air pressure at various points above the Earth push the planet around & make the poles wobble as much as 2-feet over periods of 3-weeks to a 3-months. Scientists at the US Naval Observatory here reported in the journal Nature. A small fluctuation within the previously known wobbles of about 16 ft happening over cycles of 365 to 433 days. Poles wobble when the axis of rotation-the line from the N. Pole through the Earth to the S. Pole shifts – exact positions wander over the surface.”

Our Earth wobbles, and as far as we can tell it always has, and it most likely always will. It seems to buffet within the atmosphere and within this bubble as it travels around the Sun. We could expect that to increase or decrease based on the changes in the weather, the patterns of flow in the ocean, or even the periodic melting of ice at either of our poles – ice age/warming periods. However, we shouldn’t be alarmed because this has been going on for hundreds of millions of years, and it is to be expected.

As our scientists learn more and more, and as our scientific technology for monitoring such things becomes more robust, and more accurate we should learn even more. But just because we are learning more about this phenomena doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world. It just means that various cycles are converging at various times and giving slightly different readings than we have come to expect based on previous research in the geosciences. Indeed, I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.

Do you ever look up at the night sky and wonder what are all those objects up there? Where do we on the earth fit in? We here on earth are part of the solar system, which is part of a larger entity, the Milky Way Galaxy.

A galaxy is a combination of gas, dust, and billions of stars that are held together by gravity. Galaxies can be spirals, barred-spirals, elliptical, and irregular shaped. Our Milky Way Galaxy is a spiral galaxy.

Our solar system is made up of eight (Or nine depending on how you count.) planets, asteroids, meteors, comets, and the sun. The sun is approximately 93,000,000 miles away from Earth and is the center of the solar system. The sun is a star that gives off energy from nuclear reactions in its core.

The planets in order from the sun are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto (If you count it.). The word “planet” has a Greek origin that means “the wanderer”. “Wanderer” because they seemed to “wander” across the sky. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Pluto are considered “terrestrial” meaning they are like Earth in that they have rocky surfaces. The outer planets are considered gaseous because they are made out of a hydrogen and helium inner and outer mantle with a rocky core. Each planet takes a different amount of time to orbit the sun. Mercury has the shortest orbital period of only 88 Earth days. Pluto of course has the longest orbital period of 248.5 Earth years.

Some of the planets have moons that orbit them. Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto all have at least one or more moons. Some of the outer planets have rings around them. Saturn is the most famous for this. The rings are made of billions of ice-covered rock fragments and dust particles.

There are a number of other celestial bodies orbiting our sun. Asteroids, comets and meteors are scattered throughout our solar system. Asteroids are pieces of left over planet, which mostly exist in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter. They can be as small as gravel or hundreds of miles across.

Comets are basically dirty snowballs that orbit the sun. We usually think of comets as having “tails” but the tail does not develop until the comet gets close to the sun. This is because they are burning off gases. The tail is made up of two parts the ionized gas, which is bluish in color, and dust partials, which are yellowish in color. A comet’s orbit is elliptical and planets can have a gravitational effect on their orbital path.

Meteors are pieces of comets that have broken off. The pieces continue to travel the same path as the comet was going when it broke up. If Earth crosses this path we experience a meteor shower, and if some of those meteors fall to Earth, they are called meteorites.

I hope you now have a better understanding of our small piece of the universe. It is really amazing when you stop to consider how small we are, or how small the earth is compared to the rest of the galaxy.

Incoming search terms:

• sun system galaxy way