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Night Sky Experiment

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Our night sky, always seems to be sparkling at night, due to stars. Stars are luminous ball of gas, mostly hydrogen and helium, held together by its own gravity. Our night sky is filled with groupings of stars creating a galaxy, or also known as The Milky Way. The Milky Way, is one of many galaxies in a Local Group, containing between 100- 400 billion stars. Observing these stars with the naked eye is sometimes difficult, however technology today has made it much easier. In the experiment “Number the Stars”, we used two different types of telescopes, and a paper towel roll to record different counts of stars in different brightness’s in the sky. Between my partner and I we hypothesized that the larger focal point on the telescope, would …show more content…

When we compared the counts between the bright and dark locations. The bright locations average around 90% less stars than in the dark regions. However, when observing the sky with two different eye pieces, the number of stars drastically increased when viewing through the 40 mm, almost doubling. The viewings/counts came out to be very diverse in which the tables will show below.

a. Naked eye/ through the paper towel roll:

Observation #
Number of stars counted (5 random locations)
Number of stars counted (5 Bright locations)
Number of stars counted (5 Dark locations)
1
3
0
5
2
1
2
4
3
2
0
3
4
5
0
5
5
4
0
1
Totals
15
2
15

Telescope view:

Focal Length:
-Telescope Eyepiece 1: 26 inches
-Telescope Eyepiece 2: 40 inches

Observation #
Number of stars counted
(Eyepiece 1)
Number of stars counted
(Eyepiece 2)
1
11
10
2
11
19
3
6
17
4
5
10
5
7
15
Totals
40
71

III. Discussion

a. When looking at the data between the two different eyepieces, with different focal lengths, we can see that our hypothesis was correct. Eyepiece two has a larger focal point allowing us to see more stars in the dark night. Also, we can conclude that the darker the viewing/ observing area in the sky, allows the naked eye to see more visible light.
b. An experiment like this allows us to understand the visibility in light vs dark and the comparison between telescopes and the

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