MoreTelescopePower TV pdf More Telescope Power All New Activities and Projects for Young Astronomers GREGORY L MATLOFF with drawings by C Bangs John Wiley & Sons, Inc More Telescope Power Copyright ©[.]
More Telescope Power All New Activities and Projects for Young Astronomers GREGORY L MATLOFF with drawings by C Bangs John Wiley & Sons, Inc More Telescope Power Copyright © 2002 by Gregory L Matloff All rights reserved Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York Illustrations by C Bangs Figures 1.2, 3.3, and 6.1 courtesy of NASA Figures 4.2, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4A, 6.5B, 6.5, and 6.6 courtesy of NASA/JPL/CalTech Figures 5.3 and 5.4 courtesy of Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 750-4744 Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158-0012, (212) 850-6011, fax (212) 850-6008, e-mail: PERMREQ@WILEY.COM The publisher and the author have made every reasonable effort to ensure that the experiments and activities in the book are safe when conducted as instructed but assume no responsibility for any damage caused or sustained while performing the experiments or activities in this book Parents, guardians, and/or teachers should supervise young readers who undertake the experiments and activities in this book This title is also available in print as ISBN 0-471-40985-5 Some content that appears in the print version of this book may not be available in this electronic edition For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.Wiley.com Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge, They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure, The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine —Walt Whitman, “On the Beach at Night,” Year of Meteors (1859–1860) Contents Introduction: Tools of the Astronomer Limitations of Early Astronomers An Astronomical Revolution Telescope Evolution and Accessories 1★ The Many Satellites of Earth A Short History of the Early Space Age ACTIVITY 1-1 Observing Satellites in Low Earth Orbit Orbits and Conic Sections Acceleration, Mass, and Force 10 Gravity and Orbits 11 ACTIVITY 1-2 Estimating the Velocity of a Satellite in LEO ACTIVITY 1-3 Can You See Any Detail on a Large Satellite in LEO? 13 Geosynchronous Orbits 14 Other Satellite Observations 14 2★ Dust Grains from Heaven 17 Types of Meteors 19 The Origin of Meteors 19 Observing Meteors 20 ACTIVITY 2-1 Preparing Finder Charts for a Meteor Shower ACTIVITY 2-2 Meteor-Observing Party 22 ACTIVITY 2-3 Estimating Meteor Track Length 23 Meteors, Meteorites, and Life 24 3★ The Moon 20 25 Physical Characteristics and Motions of the Moon 27 ACTIVITY 3-1 Observing the Eccentricity of the Moon’s Orbit vii 12 27 Contents viii The Moon’s Phases 28 ACTIVITY 3-2 Keeping Track of Lunar and Solar Motions Moon Features 29 ACTIVITY 3-3 Simulating Crater Formation 32 ACTIVITY 3-4 The Rays of Copernicus 32 ACTIVITY 3-5 The Central Peak of Tycho 34 ACTIVITY 3-6 The Mountains near Schickard 34 ACTIVITY 3-7 Masking Your Telescope’s Aperture 34 Eclipses of the Moon and the Sun 35 Lunar Occultations 36 ACTIVITY 3-8 Observing Lunar Occultations 37 The Moon and Earth’s Tides 37 ACTIVITY 3-9 Observing the Moon’s Effect on the Tides The Astronaut’s Moon 38 4★ Comets 29 38 41 Comets in Myth and History 42 Visual Aspects of Comets 43 ACTIVITY 4-1 Sketching a Comet As Viewed through Your Telescope ACTIVITY 4-2 Estimating the Size of a Comet’s Coma 45 ACTIVITY 4-3 Keeping Track of a Comet’s Progress 46 ACTIVITY 4-4 Observing Changes in a Comet’s Tail 47 Where Do Comets Come From? 47 ACTIVITY 4-5 Observing Stellar Occultations by Comets 48 Comets and the Solar System’s Evolution 49 Comet Exploration 49 ACTIVITY 4-6 Comet Viewing with Color Filters 50 5★ The Sun 51 The Visible Sun 52 Observing the Sun 54 ACTIVITY 5-1 The Sun’s Spectrum 55 The Solar Interior 55 The Active Sun and the Earth 57 ACTIVITY 5-2 Using Sunspot Observations to Determine Solar Rotation 57 ACTIVITY 5-3 Monitoring Solar Activity 58 Solar Energy 59 The Sun’s Future 60 43 Contents 6★ The Planets ix 61 The Planets in History 62 ACTIVITY 6-1 A Scale Model of Solar-System Distances and Planet Sizes 64 Types of Planets 65 Viewing the Planets 65 Mercury 67 ACTIVITY 6-2 Observing Mercury 67 Venus 67 ACTIVITY 6-3 Observing the Atmosphere of Venus 69 ACTIVITY 6-4 Observing Venus’s Phases and Changes in Size 69 Mars 70 ACTIVITY 6-5 Coordinated Mars Observations 71 ACTIVITY 6-6 Atmospheric Variation and Mars’s Canals 72 Jupiter 73 ACTIVITY 6-7 Observing the Jovian Moons with a Reticle Eyepiece ACTIVITY 6-8 Identifying the Large Moons of Jupiter by Brightness ACTIVITY 6-9 Filter and Reticle Observations of Jupiter’s Cloud Bands and the Great Red Spot 76 Saturn 76 ACTIVITY 6-10 Observing and Estimating the Size of Saturn’s Rings ACTIVITY 6-11 Observing Saturn through Color Filters 78 Uranus 78 Neptune 79 Pluto 79 7★ The Stars 81 The Variety of Stars 82 The Significance of Star Colors 83 Binary and Multiple Stars 85 ACTIVITY 7-1 Observing Some Colorful Binary Stars 86 Mizar and Alcor 86 Rigel 87 Albireo 88 Castor 88 ACTIVITY 7-2 Reticle Observations of Binary Stars 89 ACTIVITY 7-3 Color-Filter Observations of Binary Stars 89 Variable Stars 90 74 75 77 Contents x Deep-Sky Objects 90 ACTIVITY 7-4 Observing M42 through Color Filters 90 ACTIVITY 7-5 Counting the Pleiades 91 ACTIVITY 7-6 The Milky Way Galaxy and M31, the Great Spiral Galaxy in Andromeda 92 Appendix A A Note about Measurement 95 Appendix B How to Use a Reticle Eyepiece 97 Appendix C Lunar and Solar Eclipse Table 99 Appendix D Appendix E Planet Data Table 101 Seasonal Finder Charts Reading List: To Dig Deeper Glossary Index 109 115 107 103