Astronomy

By Adams Jones

The study of astronomy offers an unlimited opportunity to obtain a deeper understanding of our planet, the solar system, galaxy milk, and the known universe. Using the Linglanguage approach that has proven to be very popular in the other Fleisch student guides, this book is ideal for the largest of the notices that take introductory astronomy courses. The authors face the problems that students find more problematic, in subjects ranging from stars and from gravity and black holes. Dozens of fully processed examples and more than 150 exercises and trouble activities help readers face concepts in every chapter. A website that accompanies it has a large number of support materials, including interactive solutions for each exercise and problem in the text and a series of video podcasts in which the authors explain the important concepts of each section of the book. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jones Books
• Release date: Sep 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9791220844932

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Published by by Jones Adams

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Table Of Content

Astronomy

Copyright page

Table Of Content

What is astronomy?

Introduction

Are astronomy laser pointers legal?

Are astronomy binoculars good?

What are the differences between astronomy and astrology?

Is Astrology A Science?

Why is astronomy important to society?

Astronomy: the main science

Some derivations of astronomy

How astronomy works

Coincidence

Real student research

Conclusion

What is astronomy?

Introduction

Astronomy is the study of everything that exists in the universe beyond the earth's atmosphere. This includes objects that we can see with the naked eye, such as the sun, moon, planets, and stars. It also includes objects that we can only see with telescopes or other instruments, such as distant galaxies and tiny particles. Dark matter and dark energy are even included among questions we cannot see.

What are the big ideas of astronomy?

1. When we look up at the night sky, we see the patterns and want to explain them.

The first observer who looked up at the night sky noticed the patterns in the stars. These patterns, which we call constellations, may seem to change position, but they do not change shape. People from all over the world named them (such as Hunter Orion or Leo Leo) and told stories about them. You may know that some of these stories are myths or astrology. Astrology may be interesting, but it is different from astronomy. Astrology is not a science!

Early observers also noticed that some bright objects in the sky seemed to hover between the stars. Ancient Greek philosophers called these objects planets, which means wanderers in Greek. Planets are our immediate neighbors, and they are moving. They orbit the sun, just like the earth.

2. The sky is vast, and the distance between objects may be large.

At first glance, stars look like small spots of light. But stars are not small. They are huge balls of burning gas, just like our sun. They look small because they are too far away. The closest star to our solar system is 4 light-years away or 20 trillion miles. All the stars appear the same in the distance as if they were stuck on the wall of a huge dome. But this is also an illusion. Some stars are tens of thousands of light-years from Earth than others. You can see this illusion with your own eyes by building your own Big Dipper.

How Do You Know How Far You Are From The Stars?

One clue is its brightness. Distant stars look dimmer than when we are close to them. But this clue is not very reliable, because the brightness of the stars varies a lot. Some stars that stand out in the sky are not very far compared to other stars, they are just very large and bright. Some nearby stars are very dark. Proximus Centuri, our sun's closest stellar neighbor, is so faint and tiny that we need a telescope to see it.

So, astronomers rely on measuring parallax to calculate the distance from