1.
Astronomy
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Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It applies mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in an effort to explain the origin of those objects and phenomena and their evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and comets, while the phenomena include supernovae explosions, gamma ray bursts, more generally, all astronomical phenomena that originate outside Earths atmosphere are within the purview of astronomy. A related but distinct subject, physical cosmology, is concerned with the study of the Universe as a whole, Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history, such as the Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Nubians, Iranians, Chinese, during the 20th century, the field of professional astronomy split into observational and theoretical branches. Observational astronomy is focused on acquiring data from observations of astronomical objects, theoretical astronomy is oriented toward the development of computer or analytical models to describe astronomical objects and phenomena. The two fields complement each other, with theoretical astronomy seeking to explain the results and observations being used to confirm theoretical results. Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can play an active role, especially in the discovery. Amateur astronomers have made and contributed to many important astronomical discoveries, Astronomy means law of the stars. Astronomy should not be confused with astrology, the system which claims that human affairs are correlated with the positions of celestial objects. Although the two share a common origin, they are now entirely distinct. Generally, either the term astronomy or astrophysics may be used to refer to this subject, however, since most modern astronomical research deals with subjects related to physics, modern astronomy could actually be called astrophysics. Few fields, such as astrometry, are purely astronomy rather than also astrophysics, some titles of the leading scientific journals in this field includeThe Astronomical Journal, The Astrophysical Journal and Astronomy and Astrophysics. In early times, astronomy only comprised the observation and predictions of the motions of objects visible to the naked eye, in some locations, early cultures assembled massive artifacts that possibly had some astronomical purpose. Before tools such as the telescope were invented, early study of the stars was conducted using the naked eye, most of early astronomy actually consisted of mapping the positions of the stars and planets, a science now referred to as astrometry. From these observations, early ideas about the motions of the planets were formed, and the nature of the Sun, Moon, the Earth was believed to be the center of the Universe with the Sun, the Moon and the stars rotating around it. This is known as the model of the Universe, or the Ptolemaic system. The Babylonians discovered that lunar eclipses recurred in a cycle known as a saros
2.
Binary star
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A binary star is a star system consisting of two stars orbiting around their common barycenter. Systems of two or more stars are called multiple star systems and these systems, especially when more distant, often appear to the unaided eye as a single point of light, and are then revealed as multiple by other means. Research over the last two centuries suggests that half or more of visible stars are part of star systems. The term double star is used synonymously with binary star, however. Optical doubles are so called because the two stars close together in the sky as seen from the Earth, they are almost on the same line of sight. Nevertheless, their doubleness depends only on this effect, the stars themselves are distant from one another. A double star can be revealed as optical by means of differences in their measurements, proper motions. Most known double stars have not been studied closely to determine whether they are optical doubles or they are doubles physically bound through gravitation into a multiple star system. This also determines an empirical mass-luminosity relationship from which the masses of stars can be estimated. Binary stars are often detected optically, in case they are called visual binaries. Many visual binaries have long periods of several centuries or millennia. They may also be detected by indirect techniques, such as spectroscopy or astrometry, if components in binary star systems are close enough they can gravitationally distort their mutual outer stellar atmospheres. In some cases, these close binary systems can exchange mass, examples of binaries are Sirius, and Cygnus X-1. Binary stars are common as the nuclei of many planetary nebulae. This should be called a double star, and any two stars that are thus mutually connected, form the binary sidereal system which we are now to consider. By the modern definition, the binary star is generally restricted to pairs of stars which revolve around a common center of mass. Binary stars which can be resolved with a telescope or interferometric methods are known as visual binaries, for most of the known visual binary stars one whole revolution has not been observed yet, they are observed to have travelled along a curved path or a partial arc. The more general term double star is used for pairs of stars which are seen to be together in the sky
3.
Methods of detecting exoplanets
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Any planet is an extremely faint light source compared to its parent star. For example, a star like the Sun is about a billion times as bright as the light from any of the planets orbiting it. In addition to the difficulty of detecting such a faint light source. For those reasons, very few of the extrasolar planets reported as of April 2014 have been observed directly, instead, astronomers have generally had to resort to indirect methods to detect extrasolar planets. As of 2016, several different indirect methods have yielded success and this leads to variations in the speed with which the star moves toward or away from Earth, i. e. the variations are in the radial velocity of the star with respect to Earth. The radial velocity can be deduced from the displacement in the parent stars spectral lines due to the Doppler effect, the radial-velocity method measures these variations in order to confirm the presence of the planet using the binary mass function. The speed of the star around the center of mass is much smaller than that of the planet. An especially simple and inexpensive method for measuring radial velocity is externally dispersed interferometry, until 2014, the radial-velocity method was by far the most productive technique used by planet hunters. It is also known as Doppler spectroscopy and it is also not possible to simultaneously observe many target stars at a time with a single telescope. Planets of Jovian mass can be detectable around stars up to a few light years away. This method easily finds massive planets that are close to stars, modern spectrographs can also easily detect Jupiter-mass planets orbiting 10 astronomical units away from the parent star, but detection of those planets requires many years of observation. It is easier to detect planets around stars, for two reasons, First, these stars are more affected by gravitational tug from planets. The second reason is that low-mass main-sequence stars generally rotate relatively slowly, fast rotation makes spectral-line data less clear because half of the star quickly rotates away from observers viewpoint while the other half approaches. Detecting planets around more massive stars is easier if the star has left the main sequence, sometimes Doppler spectrography produces false signals, especially in multi-planet and multi-star systems. Magnetic fields and certain types of activity can also give false signals. When the host star has multiple planets, false signals can also arise from having insufficient data, so that solutions can fit the data. Planets with orbits highly inclined to the line of sight from Earth produce smaller visible wobbles, one of the advantages of the radial velocity method is that eccentricity of the planets orbit can be measured directly. One of the disadvantages of the radial-velocity method is that it can only estimate a planets minimum mass
4.
Nova
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A nova or classical nova is an astronomical event that causes the sudden appearance of a bright new star, that slowly fades from view over several weeks or many months. Novae should not be confused with more energetic astronomical phenomena known as supernovae. Several main sub-classes of novae exist, based on their many different scenarios, being classical novae, recurrent novae, dwarf novae and they are together under a group of variable stars collectively known as cataclysmic variable stars, which share some common properties as close binary systems. Classical novae eruptions are the most common type of novae and they are likely created in a close binary star system consisting of a white dwarf and either a main sequence, sub-giant or red giant star. This mostly hydrogen atmosphere is heated from the hot white dwarf star, which eventually reaches a critical temperature. A few novae produce short-lived nova remnants, lasting several centuries. Recurrent nova processes are the same as the classical nova, except that the ignition can be repeated because the companion star can again feed the dense atmosphere of the white dwarf. Occurrences of novae mostly occur in the sky along the path of the Milky Way, however, it is also quite possible for them to appear anywhere in the sky. They are far more frequent than galactic supernovae, presently averaging about ten per year, the majority are found telescopically, with few reaching naked-eye visibility, perhaps averaging about once every year to eighteen months. Novae reaching 1st or 2nd magnitude occur only several times per century, the last bright nova was V1369 Centauri reaching 3.3 magnitude on 14 December 2013. During the 16th century, astronomer Tycho Brahe observed the supernova SN1572 in the constellation Cassiopeia and he described it in his book De nova stella, giving rise to the name nova. In this work he argued that an object should be seen to move relative to the fixed stars. Though this was a supernova and not a nova, the terms were considered interchangeable until the 1930s, after this, novae were classified as classical novae to distinguishing them from supernovae, as their causes and energies were though to be different based soley in the observational evidence. Evolution of potential novae begins with two main stars in a binary system. One of the two evolves into a red giant leaving its remnant white dwarf core in orbit with the remaining star, the second star—which may be either a main sequence star or an aging giant—begins to shed its envelope onto its white dwarf companion when it overflows its Roche lobe. As a result, the white dwarf captures matter in an accretion disk steadily from the outer atmosphere. As the white dwarf consists of matter, so the accreted hydrogen does not inflate. Rapid, an all at once, uncontrolled fusion occurs when the temperature of this layer reaches ~20 million Kelvins
5.
Variable star
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A variable star is a star whose brightness as seen from Earth fluctuates. Many, possibly most, stars have at least some variation in luminosity, an ancient Egyptian calendar of lucky and unlucky days composed some 3,200 years ago may be the oldest preserved historical document of the discovery of a variable star, the eclipsing binary Algol. This discovery, combined with supernovae observed in 1572 and 1604, proved that the sky was not eternally invariable as Aristotle. In this way, the discovery of variable stars contributed to the revolution of the sixteenth. The second variable star to be described was the eclipsing variable Algol, by Geminiano Montanari in 1669, chi Cygni was identified in 1686 by G. Kirch, then R Hydrae in 1704 by G. D. Maraldi. By 1786 ten variable stars were known, John Goodricke himself discovered Delta Cephei and Beta Lyrae. Since 1850 the number of variable stars has increased rapidly, especially after 1890 when it became possible to identify variable stars by means of photography. The latest edition of the General Catalogue of Variable Stars lists more than 46,000 variable stars in the Milky Way, as well as 10,000 in other galaxies, and over 10,000 suspected variables. The most common kinds of variability involve changes in brightness, but other types of variability also occur, by combining light curve data with observed spectral changes, astronomers are often able to explain why a particular star is variable. Variable stars are generally analysed using photometry, spectrophotometry and spectroscopy, measurements of their changes in brightness can be plotted to produce light curves. Peak brightnesses in the curve are known as maxima, while troughs are known as minima. By estimating the magnitude and noting the time of observation a visual lightcurve can be constructed. The American Association of Variable Star Observers collects such observations from participants around the world, from the light curve the following data are derived, are the brightness variations periodical, semiperiodical, irregular, or unique. What is the period of the brightness fluctuations, what is the shape of the light curve. From the spectrum the following data are derived, what kind of star is it, what is its temperature, is it a single star, or a binary. does the spectrum change with time. In very few cases it is possible to make pictures of a stellar disk and these may show darker spots on its surface. Combining light curves with spectral data often gives a clue as to the changes occur in a variable star. For example, evidence for a star is found in its shifting spectrum because its surface periodically moves toward and away from us
6.
Natural satellite
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A natural satellite or moon is, in the most common usage, an astronomical body that orbits a planet or minor planet. In the Solar System there are six planetary satellite systems containing 178 known natural satellites, four IAU-listed dwarf planets are also known to have natural satellites, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. As of January 2012, over 200 minor-planet moons have been discovered, the Earth–Moon system is unique in that the ratio of the mass of the Moon to the mass of Earth is much greater than that of any other natural-satellite–planet ratio in the Solar System. At 3,474 km across, Earths Moon is 0.27 times the diameter of Earth, the first known natural satellite was the Moon, but it was considered a planet until Copernicus introduction of heliocentrism in 1543. Until the discovery of the Galilean satellites in 1610, however, galileo chose to refer to his discoveries as Planetæ, but later discoverers chose other terms to distinguish them from the objects they orbited. The first to use of the satellite to describe orbiting bodies was the German astronomer Johannes Kepler in his pamphlet Narratio de Observatis a se quatuor Iouis satellitibus erronibus in 1610. He derived the term from the Latin word satelles, meaning guard, attendant, or companion, the term satellite thus became the normal one for referring to an object orbiting a planet, as it avoided the ambiguity of moon. In 1957, however, the launching of the artificial object Sputnik created a need for new terminology, to further avoid ambiguity, the convention is to capitalize the word Moon when referring to Earths natural satellite, but not when referring to other natural satellites. A few recent authors define moon as a satellite of a planet or minor planet, there is no established lower limit on what is considered a moon. Small asteroid moons, such as Dactyl, have also been called moonlets, the upper limit is also vague. Two orbiting bodies are described as a double body rather than primary. Asteroids such as 90 Antiope are considered double asteroids, but they have not forced a clear definition of what constitutes a moon, some authors consider the Pluto–Charon system to be a double planet. In contrast, irregular satellites are thought to be captured asteroids possibly further fragmented by collisions, most of the major natural satellites of the Solar System have regular orbits, while most of the small natural satellites have irregular orbits. The Moon and possibly Charon are exceptions among large bodies in that they are thought to have originated by the collision of two large proto-planetary objects. The material that would have placed in orbit around the central body is predicted to have reaccreted to form one or more orbiting natural satellites. As opposed to planetary-sized bodies, asteroid moons are thought to form by this process. Triton is another exception, although large and in a close, circular orbit, its motion is retrograde, most regular moons in the Solar System are tidally locked to their respective primaries, meaning that the same side of the natural satellite always faces its planet. The only known exception is Saturns natural satellite Hyperion, which rotates chaotically because of the influence of Titan
7.
Comet
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A comet is an icy small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to evolve gasses, a process called outgassing. This produces an atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are due to the effects of radiation and the solar wind acting upon the nucleus of the comet. Comet nuclei range from a few hundred metres to tens of kilometres across and are composed of collections of ice, dust. The coma may be up to 15 times the Earths diameter, if sufficiently bright, a comet may be seen from the Earth without the aid of a telescope and may subtend an arc of 30° across the sky. Comets have been observed and recorded since ancient times by many cultures, Comets usually have highly eccentric elliptical orbits, and they have a wide range of orbital periods, ranging from several years to potentially several millions of years. Short-period comets originate in the Kuiper belt or its associated scattered disc, long-period comets are thought to originate in the Oort cloud, a spherical cloud of icy bodies extending from outside the Kuiper belt to halfway to the nearest star. Long-period comets are set in motion towards the Sun from the Oort cloud by gravitational perturbations caused by passing stars, hyperbolic comets may pass once through the inner Solar System before being flung to interstellar space. The appearance of a comet is called an apparition, Comets are distinguished from asteroids by the presence of an extended, gravitationally unbound atmosphere surrounding their central nucleus. This atmosphere has parts termed the coma and the tail, however, extinct comets that have passed close to the Sun many times have lost nearly all of their volatile ices and dust and may come to resemble small asteroids. Asteroids are thought to have a different origin from comets, having formed inside the orbit of Jupiter rather than in the outer Solar System, the discovery of main-belt comets and active centaur minor planets has blurred the distinction between asteroids and comets. As of November 2014 there are 5,253 known comets, however, this represents only a tiny fraction of the total potential comet population, as the reservoir of comet-like bodies in the outer Solar System is estimated to be one trillion. Roughly one comet per year is visible to the eye, though many of those are faint. Particularly bright examples are called Great Comets, the word comet derives from the Old English cometa from the Latin comēta or comētēs. That, in turn, is a latinisation of the Greek κομήτης, Κομήτης was derived from κομᾶν, which was itself derived from κόμη and was used to mean the tail of a comet. The astronomical symbol for comets is ☄, consisting of a disc with three hairlike extensions. The solid, core structure of a comet is known as the nucleus, cometary nuclei are composed of an amalgamation of rock, dust, water ice, and frozen gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, and ammonia. As such, they are described as dirty snowballs after Fred Whipples model
8.
Earth
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Earth, otherwise known as the World, or the Globe, is the third planet from the Sun and the only object in the Universe known to harbor life. It is the densest planet in the Solar System and the largest of the four terrestrial planets, according to radiometric dating and other sources of evidence, Earth formed about 4.54 billion years ago. Earths gravity interacts with objects in space, especially the Sun. During one orbit around the Sun, Earth rotates about its axis over 365 times, thus, Earths axis of rotation is tilted, producing seasonal variations on the planets surface. The gravitational interaction between the Earth and Moon causes ocean tides, stabilizes the Earths orientation on its axis, Earths lithosphere is divided into several rigid tectonic plates that migrate across the surface over periods of many millions of years. About 71% of Earths surface is covered with water, mostly by its oceans, the remaining 29% is land consisting of continents and islands that together have many lakes, rivers and other sources of water that contribute to the hydrosphere. The majority of Earths polar regions are covered in ice, including the Antarctic ice sheet, Earths interior remains active with a solid iron inner core, a liquid outer core that generates the Earths magnetic field, and a convecting mantle that drives plate tectonics. Within the first billion years of Earths history, life appeared in the oceans and began to affect the Earths atmosphere and surface, some geological evidence indicates that life may have arisen as much as 4.1 billion years ago. Since then, the combination of Earths distance from the Sun, physical properties, in the history of the Earth, biodiversity has gone through long periods of expansion, occasionally punctuated by mass extinction events. Over 99% of all species that lived on Earth are extinct. Estimates of the number of species on Earth today vary widely, over 7.4 billion humans live on Earth and depend on its biosphere and minerals for their survival. Humans have developed diverse societies and cultures, politically, the world has about 200 sovereign states, the modern English word Earth developed from a wide variety of Middle English forms, which derived from an Old English noun most often spelled eorðe. It has cognates in every Germanic language, and their proto-Germanic root has been reconstructed as *erþō, originally, earth was written in lowercase, and from early Middle English, its definite sense as the globe was expressed as the earth. By early Modern English, many nouns were capitalized, and the became the Earth. More recently, the name is simply given as Earth. House styles now vary, Oxford spelling recognizes the lowercase form as the most common, another convention capitalizes Earth when appearing as a name but writes it in lowercase when preceded by the. It almost always appears in lowercase in colloquial expressions such as what on earth are you doing, the oldest material found in the Solar System is dated to 4. 5672±0.0006 billion years ago. By 4. 54±0.04 Gya the primordial Earth had formed, the formation and evolution of Solar System bodies occurred along with the Sun
9.
Solar System
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The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system comprising the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly. Of those objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest eight are the planets, with the remainder being significantly smaller objects, such as dwarf planets, of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly, the moons, two are larger than the smallest planet, Mercury. The Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago from the collapse of a giant interstellar molecular cloud. The vast majority of the mass is in the Sun. The four smaller inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, are terrestrial planets, being composed of rock. The four outer planets are giant planets, being more massive than the terrestrials. All planets have almost circular orbits that lie within a flat disc called the ecliptic. The Solar System also contains smaller objects, the asteroid belt, which lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, mostly contains objects composed, like the terrestrial planets, of rock and metal. Beyond Neptunes orbit lie the Kuiper belt and scattered disc, which are populations of trans-Neptunian objects composed mostly of ices, within these populations are several dozen to possibly tens of thousands of objects large enough that they have been rounded by their own gravity. Such objects are categorized as dwarf planets, identified dwarf planets include the asteroid Ceres and the trans-Neptunian objects Pluto and Eris. In addition to two regions, various other small-body populations, including comets, centaurs and interplanetary dust clouds. Six of the planets, at least four of the dwarf planets, each of the outer planets is encircled by planetary rings of dust and other small objects. The solar wind, a stream of charged particles flowing outwards from the Sun, the heliopause is the point at which pressure from the solar wind is equal to the opposing pressure of the interstellar medium, it extends out to the edge of the scattered disc. The Oort cloud, which is thought to be the source for long-period comets, the Solar System is located in the Orion Arm,26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way. For most of history, humanity did not recognize or understand the concept of the Solar System, the invention of the telescope led to the discovery of further planets and moons. The principal component of the Solar System is the Sun, a G2 main-sequence star that contains 99. 86% of the known mass. The Suns four largest orbiting bodies, the giant planets, account for 99% of the mass, with Jupiter. The remaining objects of the Solar System together comprise less than 0. 002% of the Solar Systems total mass, most large objects in orbit around the Sun lie near the plane of Earths orbit, known as the ecliptic
10.
Telescope
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A telescope is an optical instrument that aids in the observation of remote objects by collecting electromagnetic radiation. The first known practical telescopes were invented in the Netherlands at the beginning of the 1600s and they found use in both terrestrial applications and astronomy. Within a few decades, the telescope was invented, which used mirrors to collect. In the 20th century many new types of telescopes were invented, including radio telescopes in the 1930s, the word telescope now refers to a wide range of instruments capable of detecting different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum, and in some cases other types of detectors. The word telescope was coined in 1611 by the Greek mathematician Giovanni Demisiani for one of Galileo Galileis instruments presented at a banquet at the Accademia dei Lincei, in the Starry Messenger, Galileo had used the term perspicillum. The earliest recorded working telescopes were the telescopes that appeared in the Netherlands in 1608. Their development is credited to three individuals, Hans Lippershey and Zacharias Janssen, who were spectacle makers in Middelburg, Galileo heard about the Dutch telescope in June 1609, built his own within a month, and improved upon the design in the following year. Also in 1609, Thomas Harriot became the first person known to point a telescope skyward in order to make observations of a celestial object. The idea that the objective, or light-gathering element, could be a mirror instead of a lens was being investigated soon after the invention of the refracting telescope. The potential advantages of using parabolic mirrors—reduction of spherical aberration and no chromatic aberration—led to many proposed designs, in 1668, Isaac Newton built the first practical reflecting telescope, of a design which now bears his name, the Newtonian reflector. The invention of the lens in 1733 partially corrected color aberrations present in the simple lens and enabled the construction of shorter. The largest reflecting telescopes currently have objectives larger than 10 m, the 20th century also saw the development of telescopes that worked in a wide range of wavelengths from radio to gamma-rays. The first purpose built radio telescope went into operation in 1937, since then, a tremendous variety of complex astronomical instruments have been developed. The name telescope covers a range of instruments. Most detect electromagnetic radiation, but there are differences in how astronomers must go about collecting light in different frequency bands. The near-infrared can be collected much like light, however in the far-infrared and submillimetre range. For example, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope observes from wavelengths from 3 μm to 2000 μm, on the other hand, the Spitzer Space Telescope, observing from about 3 μm to 180 μm uses a mirror. Also using reflecting optics, the Hubble Space Telescope with Wide Field Camera 3 can observe in the range from about 0.2 μm to 1.7 μm
. Bibcode:2013ApJ...767...60R. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/767/1/60.
