Astronomy

Astronomy: what is it? Why study it? When I initially signed up to take this class, there were many thoughts that ran through my mind. I thought there wasn’t much to it more than the stars and the things I had learned in my past classes. Over the course of this class, I have learned a lot about the sky and how things out there can affect me on Earth. Many words can help me to associate myself and the universe. I will be discussing these words and how they have affected me in this class thus far.

Vulnerability is the first word I will talk about. It is defined as susceptible or open to criticism. I think this word was a great initial start for our class to contemplate. I believe many of us were unaware of what to expect from the class. To me, this word comforted me in the fact that I really didn’t know much about this topic. I knew I had feelings of being overwhelmed and weak. I felt very vulnerable the first week or two of classes because we went over what our outcomes were going to be and how to do well in this class. We also talked about different assignments and work to be done in the class. Our class took a big step from that day to where we are at now.

Another word that was given to our class was weakness. Weakness is the state of being weak, a lack of vigor. I believe we still had many feelings of vulnerability when reviewing our class outcomes and expectations. We began learning about what sorts of habits we should consider picking up for this class such as turning in homework on time and coming to office hours regularly. Weak was a good word to explain how I was in this class. I knew time management was something I would need to keep in mind. We then began learning about Our Planetary Neighborhood. We were introduced to the earth, planets, the moon, the sun and the solar system. I started to recall many things from my past experiences of Astronomy.

The next word is something I am doing everyday in class. Learning is the act of process of acquiring knowledge or skill. After the first week or so, I started to gain confidence in myself and began to learn. We talked more in depth about the stars, like how they’re born and how they age. Also that clusters area collection of stars and how we’re in the Virgo Cluster. We conversed about the unknown universe such as the Big Bang, dark matter and dark energy. We discussed measurements regarding the moon, sun, earth and planets. This part of the class really got me to take my first step forward in astronomy. From this point on, I began a routine for myself and my study habits.

Ithaca? Not an ordinary word. When we were introduced to this word in class, I had no clue what it meant. Ithaca is an island of western Greece in the Ionian Islands. According to tradition, it was the home of Odysseus. I started to connect this word to my class. We started to learn about latitude and longitude and something called the celestial and local coordinates. Azimuthal is the angle along the horizon measured clockwise from North and altitude is the angle from horizon upwards/downwards from the horizon. These two measurements help to recognize where certain bodies are in the sky. We also discussed right ascension (which defines a star’s east-west position) and declination (which defines its north-south