Download SMMP_BISANA - Infinity and Beyond

Infinity and Beyond
(Stars and Constellations)
Saint Louis University
School of Teacher Education
Preschool Major
Acela Bisana
Some Concepts
to Fathom
asterisms
astronomy
astronomical instruments
constellations
horoscope
planetarium
sky
stars
The Birth of Stars
The Mythology of Stars and
Constellations
Greek Perspective
Chinese Perspective
Varieties of Constellations
The Great Bear: Ursa Major
The Lesser Bear: Ursa Minor
The Hunter: Orion
The Dragon: Draco
The Crow: Corvus
The Chained Princess: Andromenda
The Winged Horse: Pegasus
The Scorpion: Scorpious
The Big Dog: Canis Major
The Queen: Cassiopeia
The Swan: Cygnus
The Lion: Leon
The Harp: Lyra
Instruments Used to
View the Stars
The Reflector Telescope
The Star Chart
Radio Telescopes
188- Element Adaptive Optics (AO)
High Dispersion Spectrograph (HDS)
Uses of Stars and
Constellations
Religion
Agriculture
Navigation
Horoscope
Zones to see the stars
Sky
Planetarium
asterism
- these are group of stars that are
within a constellation
astronomy
- study of heavenly bodies
astronomical instruments
-tool that are used to view and study the
different heavenly bodies
constellations
- group of stars that are seen in the
night sky
horoscopes
-a diagram of the relative positions of
planets and signs of the zodiac at
specific time/ an astrological forecast
planetarium
- a model or representation of the galaxy
sky
- the upper atmosphere or space where
the stars, moon and visible planets are
seen form the earth
stars
- a natural luminous body visible in the
sky especially at night
The Birth of a Star
Protostar:
The contracting cloud heats up due to friction and forms a glowing protostar; this
stage lasts for roughly 50 million years. If there is enough material in the protostar,
the gravitational collapse and the heating continue.
If there is not enough material in the protostar, one possible outcome is a brown
dwarf (a large, not-very-luminous celestial body having a mass between 1028 kg and
84 x 1028 kg).
A Newborn Star:
When a temperature of about 27,000,000°F is reached, nuclear fusion begins. This is
the nuclear reaction in which hydrogen atoms are converted to helium atoms plus
energy. This energy (radiation) production prevents further contraction of the star.
Young stars emit jets of intense radiation that heat the surrounding matter to
the point at which it glows brightly. These narrowly-focused jets can be
trillions of miles long and can travel at 500,000 miles per hour. These jets may
be focused by the star's magnetic field.
The protostar is now a stable main sequence star which will remain in this
state for about 10 billion years. After that, the hydrogen fuel is depleted and
the star begins to die.
Life span:
The most massive stars have the shortest lives. Stars that are 25 to 50 times
that of the Sun live for only a few million years. Stars like our Sun live for
about 10 billion years. Stars less massive than the Sun have even longer life
spans.
Greek Perspective
• Most ancient cultures saw pictures in the stars of the night
sky. The earliest known efforts to catalogue the stars date to
cuneiform texts and artifacts dating back roughly 6000
years. These remnants, found in the valley of the Euphrates
River, suggest that the ancients observing the heavens saw
the lion, the bull, and the scorpion in the stars. The
constellations as we know them today are undoubtedly very
different from those first few--our night sky is a
compendium of images from a number of different societies,
both ancient and modern. By far, though, we owe the
greatest debt to the mythology of the ancient Greeks and
Romans.
• The earliest references to the mythological
significance of the Greek constellations may be
found in the works of Homer, which probably date
to the 7th century B.C. In the Iliad, for instance,
Homer describes the creation of Achilleus's shield
by the craftsman god Hephaistos:
• On it he made the earth, and sky, and sea, the
weariless sun and the moon waxing full, and all the
constellations that crown the heavens, Pleiades and
Hyades, the mighty Orion and the Bear, which men
also call by the name of Wain: she wheels round in
the same place and watches for Orion, and is the
only one not to bathe in Ocean (Iliad XVIII 486-490).
• At the time of Homer, however, most of the
constellations were not associated with any
particular myth, hero, or god. They were instead
known simply as the objects or animals which they
represented--the Lyre, for instance, or the Ram. By
the 5th century B.C., however, most of the
constellations had come to be associated with
myths, and the Catasterismi of Eratosthenes
completed the mythologization of the stars. "At this
stage, the fusion between astronomy and
mythology is so complete that no further distinction
is made between them"--the stars were no longer
merely identified with certain gods or heroes, but
actually were perceived as divine(Seznec, 37-40).
Despite the many mentions of the stars in Greek and
early Roman texts, by far the most thorough star
catalogue from ancient times belongs to the Roman
Ptolemy of Alexandria, who grouped 1022 stars into
48 constellations during the 2nd century A.D.
Although Ptolemy's Almagest does not include the
constellations which may only be seen from the
southern hemisphere, it forms the basis for the
modern list of 88 constellations officially designated
by the International Astronomical Union (Pasachoff,
134-135). The influence of both the Greek and Roman
cultures may be plainly seen; the myths behind the
constellations date back to ancient Greece, but we
use their Latin names
Chinese Perspective
According to Chinese ideas, the sun, moon, and
planets influence sublunary events, especially the life
and death of human beings, and changes in their
colour menace approaching calamities. Alterations in
the appearance of the sun announce misfortunes to
the State or its head, as revolts, famines, or the death
of the emperor; when the moon waxes red, or turns
pale, men should be in awe of the unlucky times thus
fore-omened.
The sun is symbolized by the figure of a raven in a
circle, and the moon by a hare on its hind-legs
pounding rice in a mortar, or by a three-legged toad.
The last refers to the legend of Ch’ang Ô, detailed
later. The moon is a special object of worship in
autumn, and moon-cakes dedicated to it are sold at
this season. All the stars are ranged into
constellations, and an emperor is installed over them,
who resides at the North Pole; five monarchs also live
in the five stars in Leo, where is a palace called Wu Ti
Tso, or ‘Throne of the Five Emperors.’
In this celestial government there are also an heirapparent, empresses, sons and daughters, and
tribunals, and the constellations receive the names of
men, animals, and other terrestrial objects
The Great Bear, or Dipper, is worshipped as the
residence of the Fates, where the duration of life and
other events relating to mankind are measured and
meted out. Fears are excited by unusual phenomena
among the heavenly bodies.
The Constellations
http://calendargirl3.tripod.com/stargazing/id1.html
The Great Bear: Ursa Major
The Lesser Bear: Ursa Minor
The Hunter: Orion
The Dragon: Draco
The Crow: Corvus
The Chained Princess: Andromenda
The Winged Horse: Pegasus
The Scorpion: Scorpious
The Big Dog: Canis Major
The Queen: Cassiopeia
The Swan: Cygnus
The Lion: Leon
The Harp: Lyra
Instruments Used
to View the Stars
The Reflector Telescope
Developed in the early 17th century by Niccola
Zucchi and perfected later by Sir Isaac Newton,
the reflector telescope is still in wide use today
as the principal tool for studying stars. This
telescope operates by bouncing light through a
number of mirrors in a process called "folding
the optical path."
The result is a short, fat telescope, which has
better magnification ability than long barrel
refractory telescopes. Reflector telescopes
range in price from $250 to $5,000 and more, in
2010. What you can expect to see with a
reflector telescope depends on the aperture
size. A 4.5 inch aperture will show excellent
views of the moon, other planets and even faint
galaxies and clusters.
The Star Chart
Humans once used star charts to navigate while
traversing the oceans. These star charts included all the
directly observable formations in the night sky
including constellations, clusters and the cardinal stars
(e.g., the North Star.) Using these charts, sailors could
tell where they were in relation to their home country.
Today scientists using telescopes and other
instruments are able to create detailed star charts,
including stars invisible to the naked eye.
These charts are used not to navigate the
oceans, but to navigate the stars themselves
with telescopes. The detailed charts provide a
record of galaxies and other astronomical
objects and provide more accurate dates for
celestial sightings and events. Star charts can
often be downloaded free from universities with
astrophysics departments.
Radio Telescope
While reflector telescopes use light to show details in
the night's sky, radio telescopes use radio waves. These
waves often provide greater detail and use computer
telemetry to process very detailed images. One clear
advantage of using radio instead of light is that radio
captures an image that covers more than the entire
light spectrum.
This allows computers to filter out harsh light, which
can obscure the details of a star's inner workings. The
result is not just a clear picture of a star's surface, but
thermal images of a star's core and even profile images
of a star as it burns. Telescopes like this are responsible
for discovering sunspots and seeing other phenomena
such as black holes and supernovas that are not visible
by some other star-studying devices.
188- Element Adaptive Optics (AO)
Subaru’s 188-element AO system includes laser
guide star technology, which allows observers to
use a laser as an artificial star when there is no
bright guide star illuminating an object-star. The
development of the 188-element system was a
product of continual improvements to Subaru’s
earlier 36-element AO system,
which was designed, produced, and then made
available to astronomers worldwide in 1990.
The current 188-element AO system successfully
passed its first test on October 9, 2006 and
replaces the older system. This 188-element AO
mounts at the infrared Nasmyth focus.
High Dispersion Spectrograph (HDS)
HDS splits light into its constituent colors with
an accuracy of 1 part in 100,000. With this
precision, we can investigate the evolution of
elemental abundances by observing old stars,
as well as learn about the physical and chemical
state of intergalactic gas from quasar absorption
line studies. The instrument weighs 6 metric
tons and sits at the optical Nasmyth focus.
Uses of Stars
and Constellations
Religion
People thought that the Gods lived in the heavens and that they
created them. Many cultures believed that the positions of the
stars were their God's way of telling stories. So it seemed natural
to recognize patterns in the sky, give them names, and tell
stories about them. We inherited the names for our
constellations from the Greeks. And they named the
constellations after their mythological heroes and legends.
Agriculture
Before there were proper calendars people had no way of
determining when to sow, or harvest except by the stars.
Constellations made the patterns of the stars easy to
remember. The ancient peoples knew for example that
when the constellation Orion started to be fully visible
winter was coming soon. Or they could look at the
Summer Triangle to know when Summer or Spring were
coming as well. The stars allowed farmers to plan ahead
and form agriculture, and constellations made it easier to
recognize and interpret the patterns in the sky.
Navigation
It is fairly easy to spot Polaris (The North Star) once
you've found Ursa Minor (Little Dipper constellation).
One can figure out his/her latitude (North/South) just
by looking at how high Polaris appears in the night sky.
This allowed for ships to travel across the globe. It
allowed for the discovery of America, the spread of
European culture, and civilization as we know it today.
Horoscope
Fortune tellers uses the alignment of the stars in
order to read or study a person’s characteristics,
behavior and even their future.
Where to locate the Stars
Sky: stars seem to glimmer and change intensity
because these tiny points refract through the
atmosphere catching dust particles and water vapor,
causing the star to flash or twinkle
Planetarium: a theatre built primarily for
presenting educational and entertaining shows
about astronomy and the night sky, or for
training in celestial navigation
Characteristics of Stars
A. Color and Temperature
If you look up in the night sky, you can see slight differences in the colors of
stars. Like hot objects on Earth, a star’s color reveals its surface temperature.
If you watch a toaster heat up, the wires inside glow red hot. The wires
inside a light bulb are even hotter and glow white.
Stars are the same. The coolest stars, with a surface temperature of about
3,000 ⁰C appear reddish. The hottest stars, with surface temperatures over
20,000 ⁰C appear bluish-white.
B. Size
The stars in the sky all appear to be points of light of the same
size. Many stars are actually the same size of the Sun, which is a
medium-sized star. However, some stars are much larger and
are called giant and supergiant stars. Most stars are much
smaller than the Sun. Black and white dwarf stars are about the
size of Earth. Neutron stars are even smaller, only about 20m in
diameter
C. Brightness
The brightness of a star depends on both its size and its
temperature. How bright a star looks from Earth depends on
both its distance and how bright the star actually is. The
brightness of a star can be described in 2 different ways:
apparent brightness and absolute brightness. A star’s apparent
brightness is its brightness as seen from Earth. Astronomers can
measure apparent brightness easily, using devices similar to
those used by photographers. However, apparent brightness
does not take into account how far away a star is from Earth. A
star’s absolute brightness is the brightness the star would have if
all stars were the same standard distance form Earth. This
allows astronomers to compare the brightness of all stars.
Different types of stars have different
temperatures and lifetimes. Cooler red M-class
stars live a long time, while hotter blue A-class
stars have relatively brief lives. These four
pictures are actually four different views of our
own star, the sun. Each false-color view
highlights atomic emission in different
temperature regimes of the upper solar
atmosphere. Yellow is 2 million Kelvin, green is
1.5 million K, blue is 1 million K, and red is 60
to 80 thousand K.
ACTIVITIES
Activity 1
(Polka Stars)
a. Pupils will then create their own
constellations by connecting the dots that
were randomly plotted on their papers that
represent the stars.
b. After which, they would come up with their
own names of their designed constellations.
Activity 2
(Constellation Myth)
From the constellation that the pupils had
created, the pupils will write their own myth
that depicts of an original story of the birth or
use of their own constellation.
Activity 3
(Map the Constellations)
a. Pupils are assigned to observe the night sky
for 3 nights and observe and take down
notes of the constellations that were present
in their observation.
b. Pupils will design their own sky map through
a drawing using a graphing paper.
Activity 4
(Research)
Critique a journal and/or an article about the
new discovery of stars and constellations.
Activity 5
(The Planetarium)
Have a tour in a Planetarium to explore and
have a first hand experience in witnessing the
stars and constellations.
Questions to Ponder
Essential Question:
What are the things you see in space?
Unit Questions:
What can you see in the sky during sky fall?
What is a constellation?
What are the importance of constellations?
Content Questions:
How do constellations look alike?
How do stars and constellations could be seen?
Where should you see constellations?
When should you see constellations?
What do constellations indicate?
Class Question and Answer
References:
http://www.west468.com/works/constellation.html
http://www.theoi.com/Cat_Astraioi.html
http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0921899.html
http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/chinese.htm
https://www.bisque.com/help/TheSkyXSAEAndPro/stars_and_constellations.htm
http://cseligman.com/text/sky/constellations.htm
http://www.space.com/15722-constellations.html
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/40047/astronomy
http://subarutelescope.org/Introduction/instrument.html
http://www.ehow.com/list_6571627_instruments-used-study-stars.html
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=340
http://office.microsoft.com/enus/images/results.aspx?qu=aliens&ex=1#ai:MM900283735|
http://calendargirl3.tripod.com/stargazing/id1.html
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cfu/mlc/mlc07.htm