Astronomy Definition and 833 Threads

I am looking for a book to read that will give me a good introduction to astronomy. I am going to be a freshman in college this fall and am looking for a not too advanced but interesting book with good pictures that will provide a good outline of astronomy. Thanks

I'm not 100% sure what I want to do after college, but I know I major in physics. I ultimately want to be a college professor. Currently, my top choice is University of Maryland. I'm going into my senior year of HS, and I'm going to have nearly 70 credits going into college. For this reason, I...

Does anyone happen to know anything about the Rutgers Astronomy/Astrophysics and, or the James Madison U. Astronomy program? This is speaking in terms of their undergraduate program, I'll be in California for grad school. I'll be visiting JMU and Virginia Tech this weekend with my...

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/main/index.html http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080611143818.htm 11 June launch went smoothly, as far as I can tell. Anybody hear further news? This page has some tutorials about why gammaray astronomy is especially interesting...

The astronomy picture of the day is pretty neat today it was taken on may 31st (saturday) Shows a few planets and the path of the International Space Station. I live in Brockville, Ontario outside of town so the stars at night are pretty clear, some friends and I were out there and we saw a...

Hey everyone, Does anyone know what limitations non-U.S. citizens face when applying for non-academic jobs in physics, astrophysics, and astronomy? Can we still work in government positions, NASA, the Department of Defense and the defense industry, or national labs? Is funding limited for...

Hi everybody!I am a new member of this site and i am very happy! I would appreciate it if you could tell me any website in which i can find astronomy exercises.

Hi, i am very much interested in astronomy. I was wondering whether there were great opportunities in this career path. and what the work consisted of? thanks

Every now and then we come across a deeply ingrained falsehood or half-truth in places that otherwise seem authoritative, and we wonder how that came to be. I think they spread in a manner very similar to "urban legends", where each authority takes a previous authority as its basis, without...

Astronomy Que! Homework Statement Three stars lie on a line (1,2,3). The distance from star 1 to star 3 is labelled as D. If star 1 is four times that of star 3, and seven times of star 2, what is the distance between star 1 and 2 if the net force of star 2 is zero? Homework Equations...

This guy did a very nice job of collecting many astronomy videos (I am unsure if it is copyright infringement). The link is http://www.youtube.com/user/NGC6822

Can anyone tell me how to find a club close to my home

Is it even possible? (A double degree Ph.D in both fields) Both of them are pretty much related to physics...so I think it would be possible. Is there any other field, particularly in physics, that is better then nanotechnology with astronomy. I know that there are extensive research in...

I have had a love for astronomy when I was a child. Today, I am well on my way toward becoming an engineer (Mech). I would like to find out how much of a common thing is it for engineers to go work for astronomical societies/research institutes/ observatories doing any kind of engineering...

Homework Statement Q. Given that the population of Mumbai is about 13,000,000. Estimate the amount of tea that would be consumed by the city in a day? 2. The attempt at a solution Now at first place I could not understand why such kind of a question is given in Astronomy Olympiad...

1. Homework Statement It's a very simple (I guess) astronomy problem but I have no idea how to start and what to do, so please show me something. One star Σ has (right ascension) α=1h25m18s. What is the (sidereal time) ST at Thessaloniki (φ=40.5°, λ=-23°) when the star is at its upper...

Hi everyone. I'm currently in the second semester of my second year, doing a combined degree in physics and astronomy. I really love physics, and have no doubt I will continue in that direction. However, I've always been interested in astronomy outside of school... So it seemed like the...

well, dear all first i want to introduce myself, i am a mechanical engineer working professionally as a piping stress analyst in a multi-national firm, well cosmology and the things abt the origin of time and space etc seems to be very nice things to study and i am new to them, can u please tell...

My friend has a telescope that I think is controlled with a motor. Does this kind of telescope have to be hooked up to a computer or something. Were going out to look at Mars and I don't really know anything about setting up telescopes or anything. What kind of computer program would I need...

Can you double major in Engineering as well as Astronomy/Astrophysics

Hi There, I'm a novelist working on a science fiction adventure, and I could use a little help on the astronomy side. I'm not looking to get down to the inner workings of quantum formulas, but I do want to make sure that I'm at least being reasonably on point given the fact that I can fudge...

Hey Physics Gang, I'm onto my next writing phase and would appreciate any help you can give me on this round of questions. Here we go (Many of these questions will relate to Space Shuttle launches): As is, the Space Shuttle essentially hitches a ride on a rocket, which handles the launch...

Hello, I have a few questions for astronomers. 1) When you look up at the sky at night with the naked eye, are all those stars within the milkyway galaxy? Or can we see past our own galaxy and see stars from other galaxies mixed in with stars from the milky way? 2) I heard the universe...

http://www.physics.utah.edu/~cassiday/p1050/homework05.html I am a procrastinator- this assignment is due tomorrow morning, I need some help. I am really confused with 7 and 8 and that's how far I am. Any help or tips are appreciated!

Hi There, I am working on my second novel, a kind of Buck Rogers-type adventure, and I want to make sure that I'm being at least reasonbly accurate in regard to what an "outer space" journey might be like. It's going to be light in tone and I'm not looking to get into lots of particle talk...

Homework Statement I'm wanting to convert barycentric julian date to the equivalent UT time. Here is a description of the barycentric julian date given to us: Barycentric Julian Date (TT) – Observation epoch, given in terrestrial time, that has been corrected for light propagation time to...

I am a high school student right now (11th grade) and I am really interested in studying Astronomy and Physics. I asked my Astrophysics teacher if NASA has Astronomy jobs, and I believe he said that it would lean more into Physics or "Astrophysics" And he said that they look for people with...

I cannot figure out the answers for the following problems: 1) If a star has a parrallax of 0.016 second of arc and an apparent magnitude of 6, how far away is it, and what is its absolute magnitude? 7) If a star is 10 times the radius of the sun and half as hot, what will its luminosity be...

Homework Statement When the Sun becomes a red giant star its brightness will increase by a factor of 5000 and its mass will decrease to half of its present mass. When this happens particles smaller than a critical size will be blown out (light force = gravity force) of the solar system by the...

Homework Statement An airliner flies from London Heathrow (latitude 51^{o}30' N, longitude 0^{o} 10' W) to Tokyo Narita (latitude 35^{o} 40' N, longitude 139^{o} 45' E). Assuming that the Earth is spherical and the aeroplane takes a great circle route, a)what is the total distance flown...

[SOLVED] Astronomy Question Homework Statement This is a two part question. I believe the problem I'm running into is coming from the answer to the first question. Q1: Hold your hand 7.5 cm from a 100 watt light bulb and you will feel the same heat sensation that you feel when your hand is...

I am having a hard time with these astronomy questions. Our teacher gives us no help and I am lost with this stuff. If anybody could help me out not just with the answer but on How to do it I would be most appreciative. What would be the frequency of an electromagnetic wave having a...

I am looking at a cheap $100 shortwave radio, the Kaito KA-2100 (google it, there are a bunch of links, too many to mention), and I would like to know if disabling the AGC (automatic gain control), is possible for use as a radio telescope. Now I don't know that much about radio and electronics...

Hello there, I was searching the net to find some empirical formulas on how to estimate the loss in temperature (and increase in luminosity of a star as it ends the main sequence. I've found that some of these formulas could be located in a book called "Astronomy & Astrophysics 210" by Maeder...

A few days ago I guess I got to a new article regarded to astronomy in Yahoo! I don't remember exactly what was the title since I just had a glance at that and didn't have enough time to read it but it seemed to me there was something like "planets splash the satrs(eh?) like flies splash...

Homework Statement I'm absolutely desperate for help on this. The image supplied below is an image of a frequency histogram for the V-band Tycho photometry data (from the Tycho Epoch Photometry Annex). What I've done is this: 1. I've converted the V-band magnitudes into flux so that it is...

Homework Statement My class is doing an assignment where we have to create a programme to convert the Hipparcos data from magnitudes to flux so that it when you plot a frequency histogram of the data you will have an approximation of a normal distribution. I've completed this OK, but I was...

I didn't realize there was such "animosity". http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v447/n7141/full/447122a.html" in this week's edition of Nature (the link is open without subscription only for a short time). So, for people who are majoring or working in this field, do you share White's...

I have a question about dead stars. I have only read about 2 ways a star can die. Either explode into a supernova or collapse into a black hole. It seems strange to me that when a star consumes all its energy that it could not simply become a huge lump of slag out there. Is it possible that...

i have 2 questions: 1. what is the difference between astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology? 2. what did Alan Guth mean when he said, "The universe is the ultimate free lunch"?

Homework Statement Compare this to the power received on the ground from a geostationary satellite with a 1 W transmitter and with a transmission footprint of 1000 square km across (assume uniform power in footprint). The Attempt at a Solution I don't know where to start on this one...

i have been trying to do this problem for an hour and i have no clue what to do for it... please help me It's on the 4th page down and it is called "Spectroscopic eclipsing Binary System" htt p://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/fellows/sci_olympiad/Spok_2000_C_Instrcs_&_Quests.pdf...

Hey guys, Do any of you know a free database with a wide variety of journal articles that I can search? I want the full text articles, but most databases search abstracts and then give you a link to a site where you have to pay for the full text version. I mean I am told of these...

Having seen the horrors of long times between posts, and the starving databanks ready for more information, I am officially moving to the astronomy section. My experience may be questioned, but I can assure you that I do know a lot about Space in general, even though my AstroPhysics is...

This problem deals with two main sequence stars in an eclipsing binary star system. I need to determine the system's peiod and separation (P and a). Right now i know that the brightest star has an absolute magnitude of -1 (219 solar luminosity), is 17,000 degrees kelvin, has a radius of...

Recently I gave my Astronomy Olympiad. There were some questions of descriptive type. If you all don't mind I would like to discuss them here. :rolleyes:

Homework Statement The hydrogen atoms in a star are also moving at high velocity because of the random motions caused by their high temperature. As a result, each atom is Doppler shifted a little bit differently, leading to a finite width of each spectral line, such as the 656.46-nm line we...

Homework Statement I posted a similar question before but I am just having some difficulty understanding the relevance of one of things mentioned in this question and I'm wondering if anyone here can help clarify it. The problem is what is the relevance of the star spinning at a velocity of...

Alright, basically you have to think of a song that in some way relates to a planet, star, moon, astronomer, concept, theory, astronomical term, etc. Expect some to be funny. I'll start off: I still haven't found what I'm looking for - U2 - Dark matter/energy Here comes the Sun - The Beatles...

Hello all, I am currently doing a 3rd year Astronomy and Astrophysics course and I am having some trouble with the current problem set (this is mainly because our teacher doesn't really teach us anything but that's another story). This is the question in particular that is bothering me...