Astronomy — Spring 2011

Want to see the shuttle or the International Space Station (ISS) from York? Dates and times here, compliments of NASA. Check out this site on how to interpret the information. An example is shown below for the ISS. Naked-eye viewing is fine. You will see a white object (no bigger than stars and planets seen from Earth) moving slowly across the sky. Let’s hope for some clear mornings! Note the times – you’ll have to get up early!

We discussed the concept of the word theory in light of the Big Bang and then watched Part 1 of Contact. A great movie but some of the scientific inconsistencies are:

• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When Dr. Arroway first hears the alien signal at the VLA, she shouts into her walkie-talkie the Right Ascension and Declination that the signal is emanating from. Twice, she says, “Declination plus 36 degrees,” but when she repeats it the third time, she accidentally says “Declination 36 hours.”
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): Ellie has two telescopes set up to watch the Leonid meteor shower (flashback). Telescopes are useless to view meteors because of their tiny field of vision.
• Errors in geography: A satellite image of Earth is shown when Ellie first receives the alien signal in the evening, however, the satellite image suggest morning in New Mexico as the sun is centered off the U.S. east coast.
• Factual errors: The Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico featured in this film does not listen for radio transmissions, but in fact takes radio “photographs” of space, utilizing the large dishes at long and short focus configurations. In their Visitor Center they acknowledge the filming of Contact (1997) but debunk the premise of the film that their dishes could be utilized for the purpose described.
• Factual errors: The radio and TV signals that are said to have reached the star Vega could not. By SETI’s own calculations, these signals are imperceptible from noise within 2 light-years; Vega is 25.7 light-years away.
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): When the alien signal is heard for the first time and Ellie and her colleagues are excitedly recording data, they state that the star Vega is about to set. Yet outside the window the radio telescope array is clearly still pointing up at the sky, when it should be pointing to the horizon as it would be for a setting star.
• Errors in geography: The opening sequence contain impossible physics with the four planets (Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) that appear completely desynchronized as the sequence zooms out. The Great Red Spot on the gas planet Jupiter appear larger and centered near the equator rather than slightly positioned at the middle lower line of the planet.
• Factual errors: The suggestion that a man-made Earth-orbiting satellite could have been used to simulate a signal emanating from a star is absurd. A satellite within Earth’s or the Sun’s gravitational fields can not carry enough fuel to maintain a position in front of a distant star for more than a fraction of a second out of every several hours. And since the signal was tracked from several locations on Earth, the sky would have to be filled with hoax satellites to fool more than one listening station. Moreover, the VLA alone would be able to confirm the distance of the signal from parallax.
• Plot holes: When the signal is transmitting the prime numbers, we are able to hear and count the transmission to number eleven. However, after that, when the actors stop counting and start talking at once with each other, the signal never pauses after what would be the next prime number, thirteen. Later it is revealed that the signal transmitted all the prime numbers to 101.

Complete and submit time lines via a comment on this blog entry. Include in your comment your first name and last initial, the URL for your time line, and a comment on the one item you found most interesting and why. Read NASA’s review of the Big Bang Theory.

Students had the period (shorter due to a Flex day) to work on their time lines. Time lines should be finished and submitted by the mid-point of Monday’s class.

Student use xtimeline to create online digital time lines of the evolution of cosmology and our understanding of the universe. DO NOT make it a time line of the actual Big Bang. Students need to sign up (can use any email even a “fake” one) and need to create (and remember) a username and password (might I suggest your YSSD username and password). Each time line (for a passing grade) MUST have at least 10 items (15+ is the goal). Each item must have a properly cited image and a 2-4 sentence summary. Check out this article from NASA on dark energy!

Solar system quizzes returned (in one day!). We watched Cosmic Journeys – How Large is the Universe? and students jotted down dates, names, topics that will be useful when making a cosmology time line. We started some notes on cosmology and did the same. Click on the image below for the notes in Google presentation.

Click on image for notes.

Quiz today on the Solar System that included the planets, minor members, Kepler’s Laws, and eccentricity of ellipses. Student then worked on the Telescope Microviewer activity.

Today the students review the types of telescopes and then began the Microviewer (401) activity on telescopes. The solar system quiz is tomorrow and covers material from 4-27-11 to 5-13-11 (not galaxies). Telescope basics and quiz review found here – Smartboard Notes 5-16-11

Students worked on the collaborative Google Doc about the solar system. This should form the outline to study for the solar system quiz on 5-17-11. The quiz will cover the formation of the solar system, planets, Kelper’s Laws, comets, asteroids, and meteoroids (meteors and meteorites).

Continued work on the Solar System Google Doc. Students also complete their models of the Milky Way galaxy. Do you know its dimensions? Where are the cooler, older stars? Where are the younger, hotter stars? Where are we?