AST101H1 Lecture : Chapter 2

• School: UTSG
• Department: Astronomy & Astrophysics
• Course: AST101H1
• Professor: Clifford Orwin

Document Summary

on clear and moonless night, assuming you are away from city light, more than 2000 stars can be seen to the naked eye along with milky way identified by the whitish band of light. patterns of the stars at night have not noticeably changed over the past few thousand years. constellation: a region of the sky with well-defined borders, and the patterns of stars help to locate the borders. official names for constellations visible in the northern hemisphere can be traced back to the ancient civilizations of the middle east. Southern hemisphere constellations carry names that originate from the 17th century european explorers. stars appear to lie close to one another, but it is an illusion because we lack depth perception when looking into space. This happened to greeks and they imagined the stars and constellations to like on a celestial sphere that surrounds earth. earth is at the center of the celestial sphere.