PHYS 1000 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Alpha, Solar Eclipse

• School: University of Windsor
• Department: Physics
• Course: PHYS 1000
• Professor: Mr.Mark Lubrick

Document Summary

Earth not special, no special place in the universe: universe: totality of all space, time, matter, and energy, astronomy: study of the universe. Scales are very large, measured in light-years, the distance light travels in a year. About 10 trillion kilometres (300 million meters/second): about 3000 stars visible at any one times (6000 by both sides of the planet). Angular measure: each circle contains 360 , each degree contains 60" (arc-minutes) or 3600"", each arc-minute contains 60"" (arc-seconds), as distance increases angular measure decreases in size. Celestial coordinates: the simplest way of locating stars is to specify their constellations and rank them based on brightness. The brightest star is denoted by the greek letter alpha ( ), second brightest star is beta ( ) The brightest stars in the constellation orion is betelgeuse and rigel, also known as orionis and orionis (rigel is actually brighter than betelgeuse but the names are permanent) For the naked eye this method is satisfactory.