POSC 3616 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Circumpolar Star, Angular Diameter, Leap Year
14 Mar 2016
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Document Summary
With the naked eye, we can see more than 2000 stars (bright lights) as well as the. Milky way (solid colored light), occasionally planets and moons. We are in a galaxy- our galaxy represents a big disc, centric part has mountain? (couldn"t hear); we are 2800 light years from center. Constellation= pattern of stars (big dipper, stars that outline orion) Live around the equator- star above you have patterns, named after animals- Brightest stars in a constellation may actually be quite far away from one another. Celestial sphere- as it rotates, lines of stars move. Ecliptic is the sun"s apparent path through the celestial sphere. Stars move from east to west- b/c earth rotates from west to east. Planets/sun originally had each own sphere- but realized retrograde motion (opposite motion?) Equinox- sun comes directly on equator, when days and nights are equal length. Sun starts at march 21, goes into northern part of celestial sphere; 3 mos later (june.
