Detox Treatise

How much information on astronomy should there be for all the objects and phenomenon in the entire universe? Consider that there are somewhere around 1 x 10 ^22 stars in the universe, that’s a one followed by 22 zeros. Then consider that many of those stars have planets revolving around them. Then consider all the moons that orbit those planets, then the comets and asteroids, the galaxies these stars form, the nebulae and black holes and everything else out there. The amount of information and data is staggering. This article, which presents astronomy facts, certainly won’t contain every fact. But these are quite interesting facts nevertheless.

Let’s take a look at a small subset of astronomy: “the brightest stars as seen from Earth”. That’s discounting the Sun which is about 250,000 times closer than the next nearest star. It’s so bright that when the sky is viewed from the Earth, it washes out all the other stars in the sky during a phenomenon called daylight.

So, while reading this list, please bear in mind that according to the scale we are using, lower numbers are brighter: the Sun would be roughly -26.73, whereas the full moon is about -12.6; keeping that in mind, here are the top 5:

#5 is Vega, meaning ” falling eagle” in Arabic. is in Lyra. It’s more or less 25 light years away and has a magnitude of 0.04.

When considering these astronomical facts, please remember that ‘brightest from Earth’ doesn’t mean largest or brightest. The Sun is not the largest or brightest star in the universe or even the galaxy, yet it appears so bright because it is so near compared to other stars.

#4 is Rigel – a very bright, bluish-white supergiant star in the constellation Orion. It is a binary star, with an average apparent magnitude of 0.12. It’s scientific name is Beta Orionis. Rigel is Arabic for ‘foot’. It’s about four light years from Earth.

#3 is Arcturus. The name is Latin/Greek and means ‘guardian of the bear’. This star is roughly 37 light years away. It is in the constellation of Bootes, behind The Great Bear. It has a magnitude of 0.00

#2 Canopus. Of these top five, Canopus, the Greek name for the pilot of the vessel Argo made famous in the stories about Jason and the Argonauts, is the brightest. But it’s 313 light years from Earth, so it’s just second on this list as seen from Earth. It has a magnitude of -.62 as seen from this planet.

#1 is Sirius, which translate from the Greek as ’scorching’. It’s also sometimes called the ‘Dog Star’ because it is the brightest star in the constellation of Canis Major, which means ‘The Big Dog’ in Latin. It is situated only 9 light years from Earth, which makes it easily the second closest of these top five. It has a magnitude of -1.44, which makes it very easily the brightest star that can be observed in the night sky.

These facts don’t even scratch the surface on the subject of astronomy but it’s something to think about anyway the next time you look up into the sky at night.

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Astronomy is the study of the universe. It is a serious science, but also an enjoyable hobby. Therefore, whenever an astronomy picture of the day is offered to people, they usually take it. There are plenty of such pictures to choose from, and plenty of interesting objects out there to keep people looking.

Of course ,NASA is one of the primary sources for an astronomy picture of the day. This site, NASA.gov, shows a new picture each and every day. There is also a section that shows films. These could be used to create your own picture site. Saturn’s moon Enceladus was the ’star’ feature on November 5, 2008.

This picture was taken by a passing rocket. It can reproduce details the size of a bus. The ice on this moon reflects as glare, nearly 100% of all the sun light that hits it. So you would need to wear sunglasses! This moon is so unusual that Cassini will continue to fly by for more photos later on in its mission.

NASA maintains an archive of all the astronomy image of the day dating all the way back to June 16 of 1995. It was a ‘what if’ picture of the Earth posing as a neutron star. The photo is a computer generation. The most interesting feature is that the constellation Orion is visible twice. Even light from behind a neutron star is visible because the dense star bends the light all the way around it. This causes some double vision.

The entry for September 8th, 1995 was an amazing picture of the central part of the ‘Milky Way’ galaxy taken by NASA’s COBE satellite. This area is generally invisible because of the dust masking it. But COBE scans in infrared, so produced that amazing photo of our very symmetrical galaxy.

The astronomy picture of the day was the same on January 1st, 2000 and January 1st, 2001. The explanation why both dates displayed this photo is that most people considered the year 2000 as the first year of the third millennium.

However, the third millennium actually began on January 1st, 2001. NASA figured it was better to just go with both. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010101.html depicts man’s view of the universe as it progressed from objects orbiting around the Earth all the way to the Big Bang creating the universe as we know it.

NASA has a lot more days with their very own unique astronomy picture of the day. Visit their web site, NASA.gov to see them.

Astronomy: pictures of the day are fascinating to vast numbers of people. If you are fascinated by astronomy, go along to our website at: http://astronomy.the-real-way.com Click here to get your own unique version of this article with free reprint rights.

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