Astronomy Topics.

Early in the semester the density of meteorites is measured.
These objects are possibly a hazard to earth (well maybe, if you worry about everything!) There is a character that worried about the sky falling. But there was a serious mandate from the United States Federal Government to investigate the possibility. The Near Earth Object Project, NEO project, came out of it.

1. Look at the website for Meteor City Arizona. This link will take you to a website of the Gigantic Crater on Scenic Highway 66 (I40)
When I took the tour at The Meteor Crater the tour group was told that the meteor was about the size of a Voltswagen!

2. A good friend of mine works on NEO: He observes at the 60 inch Telescope at Mt. Lemmon, Arizona.
The 60 inch Telescope on Mt. Lemmon, AZ
Either click on the words above or the telescope photograph and when you are at the University of AZ site, click on “Catalina Facilities (Mt. Lemmon) to see more.

Departmental Overview: Complete Report (you will be directed here-then pick Catalina Facilities (Mt. Lemmon): from this list you will find.
Optical / Infrared Facilities
Catalina Facilities (Mt. Lemmon)
Kitt Peak Facilities
MMT Observatory
Magellan Telescopes
Large Binocular Telescope (LBT)

This photo shows Dr. Al Grauer, Jeff Shaw and Steve Crawshaw underneath one of the telescope on Mt. Lemmon, which is part of the Steward Observatory, University of Arizona. At this time, Dr. Grauer was working on a project looking at PG1456: This is a white dwarf at about 40 degrees declination and 14 hours 56 minutes of right ascension. This star was from the Palomar Green survey gave rise of the choice of the possible candidate of a white dwarf located at 14 hour 56 minutes of Right Ascension. It was named PG1456 Attached on the bottom is “Lepus”, a three star photometer that was manufactured in the GIT UALR machine shop from Dr. Grauer’s design.

I was told that Astronomers looked for objects of certain temperatures. In the research from Palomar a survey was done. This Palomar Green survey gave rise of the choice of the possible candidate of a white dwarf located at 14 hour 56 minutes of Right Ascension. It was named PG1456.

Asteroseismology of a pulsating/variable white dwarf. The white dwarf stars have seismic activity as they give off their residual heat. The intensity of the light from the pulsating star gives information about the seismic activity. From what I gather similar to the study of earthquakes on earth, there is a study of the tremors of the White Dwarfs. More details are given in the “Scientific Justification”, that can be found at the University of Arizona Web site with its link shown here.

Whole Earth Telescope “WET” Project: Web site http://wet.physics.iastate.edu/
To find more about gaining information about White Dwarfs to to this link

This telescope is the one that Dr. Grauer and others used to look for asteroids.

Some Links to Animations of Asteroids

Asteroid Lanzia.mpg

Asteroid Britta.mpgThe Asteroid Lanzia and Britta. These two asteroids were imaged in the UALR 12 inch Meade Telescope. Mr. Jeff Shaw reprocessed the images using IRAF and then stacked them to give the “file.mpg”. So these images will also be refereed to in lab as an example of digital image corrections, animations and image processing that will be covered in lab.

Retrograde Motion:

Start with a fine example of multiple images of Mars take about a week apart illustrating what would been seen over time, credit is given to the web site from which it came. I will pose the dilemma that an artisan would have in drawing the sky for his King. If the artisan were to try an draw the part of the sky where the planet was, they would be confronted with the problem that the planet would stop its motion to the east, start going west and then without apparent reason the planet would start moving again to the east. That would require some explaining! This web site shows what would be seen over a long period of time.
http://cseligman.com/text/sky/retrograde.htm

http://cseligman.com/text/sky/retrograde.htm

The Start of the Explanation of Retrograde Motion

Image Celestial Sphere This photo shows a Celestial Sphere that was used earlier in the semester. The path of the sun, the ecliptic, and the position of all the stars could be actually used to make a celestial sphere from scratch. This is mentioned so that the actual position of the sun and stars could be thought of in one’s own mind.

This photo was taken to show off the change in the position of the sun. The lower portion of the picture was taken Saturday 3/20/2010 just before the equinox and the second was taken Sunday 3/27/2010.

This path show that if one is on the earth looking south, the sun will appear to travel from WEST to EAST relative to the starts. Then as one might naively expect that planets traveling around the sun too would appear to travel from west to east: The exception to that thought is due to the fact that when the earth and the planets are on the same side of the sun, the planet under observation appears to travel from east to west…and this is the retrograde motion. To help illustrate the concept of what is occuring when the earth and an observed planet are on the same side of the sun a device called an orrey will be used.

Mechanical Orreries, Planetariums and Telleriums

Orreries (named for the Earl of Orrery) are mechanical models of the solar system originally intended as educational tools, and also often used as ornaments. They are often called Planetariums.

Generally speaking they aren’t made to scale - it would be impractical to show orbital distances at anything like true scale, and the giant planets are so large that the small inner planets would be virtually invisible at any practical scale. Antique Orreries can be extremely expensive, but there are many fakes and replicas. face=”Trebuchet MS”>Telleriums are models of the Earth, Moon, and Sun; they are typically designed to show the seasons, eclipses, phases of the Moon and astronomical concepts such as retrograde motion, etc.

This is the web site that I have refered to gain this information-you may want to see the ebay site:

http://reviews.ebay.co.uk/Mechanical-Orreries-Planetariums-and-Telleriums_W0QQugidZ10000000007734323

Summary Commentary:

Every planet can be seen to undergo Retrograde Motion from any planet of observation.

Retrograde motion demonstrates that the Solar System is Heliocentric. This statement from Galileo landed him in jail: He was only had his edict of Inquisition lifted by the Pope in 2000.

From the observations of the planets retrograde phases the orbits of these planets can be determined to be smaller or larger than the orbit of earth.

The Start of Spectral Analysis

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Start of Spectral Anaylsis

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Start of Spectral Anaylsis

The light from a star (or other radiation) is the way that a star can be investigated: The light can give the position, the distance by using light intensity or by looking at the color of the light from the star, types and composition can be determined. Here is a spectrum of light from a standard light source that will be used to compare to that of a star spectrum.