An insight into life and Astronomy.

in #stemng6 years ago (edited)

An insight into life and Astronomy.

life and astronomy.jpg
Source at https://www.astronomy.com

Let's all take a moment to reflect on our life. Is it as it is now that it was some few years ago? Has some things not changed in us? How are we doing now and how were we then? Things keep changing day and night. So also the world is changing. Presently, we're in the computer age. For instance this message I'm passing across is made easy through the use of internet.

Stress-Free-Life.jpg
Source at https://www.nairaland.com

Let's reflect more and imagine we are living one hundred years ago with no internet, television, radio and satellite communications. So, what were people doing? How did they catch fun? I could remember when I was small, rarely would you see television showing nickelodeon and children playing with toys except the few rich. We usually engage in outdoor games like suwe, tenten , bojuboju (hide and seek), sand castle, police catch thief amongst others. (My tribe, the Yorubas of the South-Western part of Nigeria can relate wella. lol.)

Going furthermore back in time, let's say a thousand years ago or ten thousand years ago; Surely there was existence and humans survived but what was life like then? It was confirmed that Humans had spread across the world by this time and they occupied virtually every piece of dry land except the Antarctica and other few places like the Bermuda and Iceland because of the extreme cold in those regions. But, during those years, what did they do and also how did they amuse themselves? How did they fill up the empty hours of their days?

Surely they did catch fun and amused themselves. Since there were no external source of entertainment, they had no choice. They sang, danced, ate, made love, procreate and told stories under the moonlight etc. In other words, their lives were pretty much like ours, except they did it all themselves unlike now that things have been made easy through the use of technology and gadgets. Ten thousand years ago, your life was your own (or at least, it only belonged to the small collection of people around you).

Everything in life was so connected back then and the only thing larger than your tribe then was the universe itself. And so it still is. The only difference is that we in the present age have a better understanding of our habitat than those who lived before us ten thousand years ago.

Back then, one of the things you can do to occupy yourselves is to gaze up at the night sky and look directly at the stars. It's such a pity we don't get to see much of that in the urban areas nowadays. But during those great days of yesteryears before the advent of electricity, the sun, moon, planets, and stars were visible on any clear night.

images.jpg
Source at https://wikipedia.com

At this juncture, let's take a time to know more about the stars; a branch of study in Physics known as ASTRONOMY. It is one of the oldest science in the world. So, What is a star?

galil.jpg
Source at https://www.alamy.com

According to Wikipedia,

A star is any type of astronomical object consisting of a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its own gravity.

A typical example we'll be discussing on is the sun.

The Sun is the most easily seen object in the sky. It journeys round the Earth averagely every 24 hours. We can now infer that the meaning of the word "day" is the duration of time the sun is visible in the sky. For the people living on the equator, this period of time is constant while it varies for everyone else. In the Tropic region, the day is longest in the rainy season and shortest in the dry season. For people living in the Temperate regions, the day is longest in the summer and shortest in the winter. The farther one gets from the equator, the more extreme this kind of day changes in length. This changes are very more extreme at the poles to an extent that a normal day here will technically last half a year.

As we all know that the sun rises in the east, journeys across the sky rising highest above the horizon at a time called noon. It then disappears below the horizon to the west, travels below the Earth as it was reaching its lowest point beneath our feet at a time. The time when this is observed is called midnight and this event has become the dividing point separating one day from the next for most people in the world.

It is this period of time that physicists and astronomers mean by the word "day"

images.jpg
Source at https://www.freeimages.com

By gazing at the sky on a clear night, we can observe and picture in our minds that the stars are grouped and arranged in an excellent pattern or form. Although these patterns may be associated with mythological characters and events may arise to fit a supposed pattern after it has been seen. This cluster of stars named after an event is called a constellation.

When one looks at the sky seriously and studies it as the ancient people did, the first thing one notices is that the constellations remain essentially fixed relative to one another. The Big Dipper of today, (that is an asterism consisting of seven bright stars of the constellation Ursa Major) is also the same as that of ten thousand years ago.

star2.png
Source at https://www.pexels.com

Another thing one would notice is that the night sky seems to be rotating so that after 24 hours the stars make a complete circuit, returning almost exactly to the same place in the sky. So, if we divide our average day as defined above into twenty four evenly sized parts called hours and we count twelve hours from midnight to noon and then start over again with another twelve hours from noon to midnight. And we decide to go outside and check the stars every night at the same numbered hour, then we would notice that the pattern of the fixed stars had made a complete revolution across the sky plus a little bit more.

Conclusively, these little bits add up over the course of a year so that in this time the fixed stars make one more revolution about the Earth than the sun does. That is 366 revolutions for the stars versus 365 for the sun.

I'd like to shed more light on this broad topic of astronomy in my subsequent posts. Kindly look forward to it.

Thanks for reading, I really appreciate.

References

https://books.google.com.ng/books?isbn=1861797575
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomyhttp://www.thefreedictionary.com/mean+time
www.constellation-guide.com/big-dipper/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star
https://physics.info/geocentrism/

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Thanks @emperorhassy for enlightening us more about stars.
"366 revolution for the stars..." insightful, kudos.

@herbayomi, thanks boss. I will improve more.

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