Astronomy 1021 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Simple Explanation, Flashlight, Precession
11 Oct 2017
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Document Summary
The sky patterns have not changed noticeably in the past few thousand years. Constellations: patterns in the sky, but to astronomers the term as more meaning: it is a region of the sky with well-defined borders; the familiar patterns of stars. The names and borders of 88 official constellations were chosen in 1928 by members of the international astronomical union. Every point in the sky belongs to some constellation. The celestial sphere: the stars in a particular constellation may lie at very different distances from earth. The illusion occurs because we lack depth perception when we look into space, a consequence of the fact that the stars are so far away. The milky way: the band of light circles all the way around the celestial sphere, passing through more than a dozen constellations. It traces our galaxy"s disk of stars the galactic plane as it appears from our location within the galaxy.
