Unit One- Vastness Of The Universe Flashcards
What makes up the scientific method?
Observation, reason, experiment.
About how many stars are visible at one time in the night sky?
About 3000
What is the celestial sphere?
Stars seem to be on the inner surface of a sphere surrounding the earth, allowing is to plot locations of the stars, similar to longitude and latitude.
What does a degree contain?
60’ arch minutes
What does each arch minute contain?
60” arch seconds
What is a solar day
Daily cycle, noon to noon.
What is a sidereal day?
It is the time it takes to rotate so that you are facing the same stars.
What is the ecliptic plane?
The path Stephens the sun at 23.5 degrees to celestial equator, and that is also the path that all planets take around the sun.
What is the significance of the precision of the earths axis?
It rotates a full circle about every 26000 years
What is a synodic month?
The amount of time, which is about 29.5 days to go through a whole cycle of phases.
What is a sidereal month?
Time for the moon to go 360 degrees around the earth. About 2 days shorter than the synodic month.
What is triangulation?
It is when you measure the baseline and angles to calculate a distance.
What is parallax?
Similar to triangulation, but looks at apparent motion of object against distance background (fixed stars) from 2 vantage points.
Use the earths position at one point and then one half of a year later
What is one parsec?
3.09x10^13
