Visit to the planetarium essays

Visit to the planetarium essays Second Paper 11-27-00 I attended the Wagner College Planetarium(located in Spiro Hall)on November 15, 2000 at 11:00 for research and to observe the stars, planets and our entire solar system more closely. There was a clear dome on the ceiling for us to see the sky. The director of the show was Dennis Anderson. He put the latitude to forty degrees, and dimmed the lights. Up in the sky the stars are beautiful and bright. They seem, by the naked eye to be moving but the earth is what is actually moving. Everyone knows that the sky doesn't move. The earth rotates around the sun. The earth being in a different spot in its' orbit all the time gives us different stars to see at different times out of the year. A star is a huge ball of glowing gas in the sky. The Sun is a star. It is the only star close enough to the earth to look like a ball. The other billions of stars are so far away that they are no more than a pinpoint of light. A constellation is a bunch of stars in the sky that form a picture. Each Constellation has a definite time of the year when it reaches its highest point. At latitudes to far north or to far south of the equator, many constellations do not reach there culminates high enough to be seen. The constellations appear to move westward as the earth rotates around the Sun. For this reason, certain constellations can only be seen during one season of the year. There is Pegasus which is extremely large. If you connect the stars of Pegasus it is supposed to look like a horses body. However it is upside down. The instructor put a line going across the middle of the dome. It separated the sky from north to south. He said this line is called the Meridian. When a star is at the Meridian it is at its highest point. It is nine degrees elliptical on each side. The second brightest star is Mercury it has a very thick atmosphere. However the brightest star neares ...