Measure Distance Lab Report

During the first millennium B.C. scientists realized that astronomy had to become more scientific. Middle Eastern and Chinese cultures started studying the Sun, stars and the planets more closely in an attempt to learn more about our position in the universe.. Star positions also became important tools in understanding directions, and helping with navigation. One philosopher stated in 434 B.C. that the Sun was a ball of fire 60 kilometres in diameter, hovering 6500 kilometres above Earth’s surface. Around 130 B.C., Ptolemy wrote Almagest, which was a huge collection of astronomical data which included mathematical models, information about eclipses, and planetary and stellar positions and movements. It remained a major go to book for astronomy for hundreds of years, and was not seriously challenged until Copernicus disputed the geocentric model of the solar system in the 1500’s

The order in which the greatest blue shift to the red shift of the five distant stars is E, D, B, C, A. The arrows in the diagram represent the speed of movement of the star, the longer the arrow the faster the movement of the star and vice versa. Furthermore, the motion of the source of light is said to be blueshifted if it is moving towards the observer, but if the source is moving away from the observer it is called redshifted (Prather p75). As a result, the star that is moving faster toward the observer will have the greatest blueshift while the star that is moving away from an observer will have the greatest redshift.

This problem wasn't solved until the 1920s, when Edwin Hubble devised the first method of extragalactic distance measurement. His technique relied on stars known as Cepheid variables, whose luminosities can be easily determined by measuring their rates of pulsation. Comparing this luminosity with the stars' observed brightness allowed Hubble to estimate the distance to Cepheid stars in such galaxies, affirming their extragalactic location.

It is easy to flip to the index of an astronomy textbook to discover that, say, the Sun lies 150 million kilometers away from Earth.  It is far more difficult (if not impossible), however, to picture this distance in the human mind.  In this exercise, we will learn to access the often unpalatable distances encountered in astronomy by simply scaling the huge distances to more recognizable, pedestrian numbers.  So long as every distance within the system of interest is scaled by the same factor, we retain the meaningful information about relative distances between objects.

A stars luminosity is measured by the apparent magnitude and absolute magnitude of the star and the amount of the light that is being emitting from it’s surface.

14. Different levels of brightness are due to different levels of heat, and different distances.

It is easy to flip to the index of an astronomy textbook to discover that, say, the Sun lies 150 million kilometers away from Earth. It is far more difficult (if not impossible), however, to picture this distance in our mind. In this exercise, we will learn to access the often unpalatable distances encountered in astronomy by simply scaling the huge distances to more recognizable, familiar numbers. So long as every distance within the system of interest is scaled by the same

The farther away a star is, the less its parallax. The light year is a unit used to express stellar distance, which is the distance light travels in a year, which is approximately 9.5 trillion kilometers (5.8 trillion miles). The parallax angles are very small. Proxima Centauri is the parallax angle nearest to the star. It is less than one second or arc, which equals 1/3600 of a degree. A human finger is roughly 1 degree wide. The distances to stars are so large that conventional units such as kilometers or astronomical units are often too cumbersome to use.

One of the methods used to date supernova remnants (the remains of exploded stars) today is by using Answer

The base of the light triangle, b, was measured first. Then, the light positions, a, were measured f=or the first order (m=1) and second order (m=2) light beams to determine the angle Ɵ for each. This data was organized in an Excel table and used to find the wavelength, λ, of the laser through Equation 1. This value was then compared to the theoretical value for wavelength of the laser, which was 6.328x〖10〗^(-7)m, and the percent error was calculated between the two.

Many physical properties of stars can be found by using a little bit of light. One property of a star is luminosity. Luminosity is the quantity of energy created in a star and then released as electromagnetic radiation. The brightness of a star is a blend of luminosity and distance of a star and can also depend on the quantity of energy absorbed in the direction of a star. Another property of a star is distance. Astronomers use parallax to establish the distance to an object. As Earth travels around the Sun, they monitor neighboring stars from various positions. They are then able to measure how much the star seems to move to establish the distance to the star.

on measurements of the planet's brightness. Like all planets, this new one presumably shines by

The Sun is one astronomical unit away so in actuality, it’s 0.00001581 light years away. Sirius looks smaller than the sun because it’s almost 9 light years away, which means it’s 92,919,000 or the astronomical units away. Sirius has a dwarf or twin star next to it, this star is called Sirius B. Sirius B was assumed to exist in 1844 but it wasn’t actually discovered until almost 18 years later!

In 1610 on the 7th of January four moons, called the Galilean moons were discovered by Galileo Galilei. Using his homemade telescope he observed them for many nights, he drew notes and recorded the movement in a journal (Figure 3). Ganymede is one of the largest, most well-known moons of Jupiter and it is also the largest satellite in our solar system. It is larger than Mercury and Pluto, and three quarters the size of Mars. If Ganymede didn’t orbit Jupiter as moon it would easily be classified as a planet.

On April 18th, 2013, NASA’s Kepler satellite had detected an exoplanet in the Kepler-62 star system, Kepler-62e, one of the farthest exoplanets from its parent system within Kepler-62’s orbit. Using transit photometry, NASA could find a total of 5 exoplanets orbiting this star, including Kepler-62e. With a mass of around 36 earth masses and a radius 60 percent larger than Earth’s, Kepler-62e was a rather easy discovery using transit photometry. Transit photometry involves calculating the magnitude of a star over time; watching for deviations in the star’s magnitude to differentiate whether the deviation is normal or increased. For the record, any detected star system receives the designation “Kepler” in lieu of the Kepler satellite which detects them; planets are given the same name with the exception of a letter added onto the end.