Lunarglow – Astronomy & Space

Archive for March, 2010

The science of astronomy goes back as far as man does. Today it is an applied science based on carefully gathering and analyzing data, but there was a time it was little more than charlatan magic. Astronomy is something too many people ignore, but those who keep their eyes on current happenings in astronomy find a wealth of interesting information.

Australians were urged to look up and maybe duck in November when a 1400 LB Ammonia tank threatened to fall on them. It was tossed into space when it was deemed too dangerous to carry down to Earth on a shuttle. By good luck most of the pieces, no larger than fifteen pounds, were expected to fall harmlessly into the ocean. Although possible Ammonia residue would likely wash a lot of windows, this isn’t recommended as a mass cleaning method. Paul Hogan, the famous actor who played Crocodile Dundee, was unharmed. Unfortunately, according to the Daily Mail in the UK, Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, remained deceased after this incident.

New line China, September 2008, a 3rd manned space mission launches. It will include the first space walk for Chinese astronauts. Unfortunately for China it was revealed that “live video” of the successful launch and flight into orbit had actually been released before the craft left the ground. It wasn’t a hoax. China simply thought the event so important that they carefully staged a video log as public relations.

Also from China, a huge telescope has been commissioned for construction near Beijing, site of the 2008 summer Olympics. Revolutionary is the way this telescope tracks the sky – with two moving mirrors. The resulting look is something of a curiosity. This one is shaped like a leaning arch. That’s the Chinese, making art from science.

In Kazakhstan of all places a new satellite was launched in early November of 2008. Satellite Astra-1M will be used for telecommunications. The launch vehicle was called Proton-M.

Astronomy hobbyists will love Worldwide Telescope which is of Microsoft and  works in windows to call images from all over the world, delivered to the user. It’s like an observatory on a desktop. The only downfall is that no new discoveries can be made, because it’s all pre-compiled astrological data and images.

Astronomy is a fun science filled with many astronomy fun facts. This includes information about the size of stars and the distance of our earth from the center of our own Milky Way galaxy.

Astronomy fun facts about our own star, the sun, are almost endless. It’s somewhere between 91 and 94.5 million miles away from our home planet. It’s not that nobody knows for certain. It’s that the Earth orbits the sun in an elliptical, uneven, orbit. The distance fluctuates throughout that orbit.

Astronomy fun facts about our average sized sun’s size. As average as it is it accounts for about 98% of all the matter in the solar system. Everything else, counting the earth and all the planets, is a tiny 2%. Over 1.6 million earths would fit inside this star. An AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun. The solar winds extend 50 AU’s from the sun.

Shall we turn to some astronomy fun facts that don’t have to do with the sun? What about the moon? In all the universe man has only walked upon the earth and the moon. One fellow went there and stayed. Dr. Eugene Shoemaker didn’t make the cut for astronauts. After his death he was cremated and his ashes scattered over the moon by the Lunar Prospector spacecraft in 1999.

There are more astronomy fun facts about the moon.Tthe suits worn by the moon walking astronauts weighed 180 pounds on Earth but only 30 pounds on the moon. I’d bet the astronauts thanked their lucky stars for that.

Astronomy fun facts aren’t limited to our close neighbors. The stars we see are a gateway to the past. It can take millions of years for light from some stars to reach us. Some stars we see may no longer even be there. There are over 1 x 10 ^22 stars in the universe. That’s a 1 followed by 22 zeros.
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