AS101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Constellation, Aldebaran, Infrared Detector
Document Summary
When you look up at the stars, you look out through a layer of air only about 100 km deep. Atmospheric blurring can be avoided by in-space telescopes avoids the air (light bounces off the air). With the naked eye, we can see more than 2,000 stars as well as the milky way. A band of light making a circle around the celestial sphere. Our view into the plane of our galaxy. The band you see is when you"re looking straight into the milky way, along the plane. If you"re not looking along that plane you will just see other stars in the sky. If it were a sphere we would just see the milky way everywhere. Ancient civilizations around the world named groups of stars, called constellations. Names were based on ancient heroes, gods, animals, shapes and mythology was associated with them. Many star patterns recognized today originated 5,000 years with babylonians, egyptians, and later, the greeks.
