Astronomy for Teachers, 3rd session: 25 January 2006

Announcements

• New Horizon launch! Arrival: 14 July 2015. MRO will beat it to Mars by a little bit, but with more than a 5 month head start! 3rd stage of the rocket will beat it to Jupiter, but not pluto.
• Seen on Bad Astronomy: A planet with 5 times Earth's mass found 25,000 light years away.
• Cool Fact: Objects in space? How long do they stay there? US space surveillance is tracking more than 13000 objects, greater than 10cm in size in orbit around Earth.
• A cool website for kids: NASA space place
• A lab about Synchronous rotation with regards to Saturn's moons (as we see with our Moon). From the Cassini/Huygens mission.

The nature of science (as it pertains to astronomy)

The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, isn't 'Eureka!' but rather 'hmm....that's funny.' -- Isaac Asimov

Tantulus

Greek myth about a man who stole the secrets of the gods. As punishment, he was placed in a pool with fruit over his head. The fruit receded when he reached for it, and the water drained when he bent to drink.

The Tantulus principle

We can look, but we can't touch.

Unfortunately for astronomers, we cannot go out and directly experiment on our subject matter. Processes can take far longer than a single human lifetime and distances are so far as to make travel essentially impossible. So we have to rely on our observations of the universe. We observe in all parts of the Electromagnetic spectrum, because not all objects produce light in the range that we can see with our eyes.