Astronomy 101
Main Takeaways, Questions, Moments of Genius…
Astronomical unit [AU] = distance between the Earth and Sun, 93 million miles.
Light year [ly] = Speed of light; 300,000 kilometers per second X seconds in a year = 9.5 million kilometers, the distance light travels in a year.
Parasec [pc] = 3.26 light years
Megaparsecs [mpc] = millions of parsecs
Gigaparsecs [gpc] =Billions of parsecs [limit of visible universe is approximately 14gpc away, or 45.7 billion ly
Speed of Light [c]: 186,282 miles per second
Spectroscopy: gives information about how fast or slow an object is moving and helps determine how far away it is- objects moving toward us, Earth, are blue-shifted, and objects moving away are red-shifted
Solar Maximum:The sun goes through a natural solar cycle approximately every 11 years. The cycle is marked by the increase and decrease of sunspots -- visible as dark blemishes on the sun's surface, or photosphere. The greatest number of sunspots in any given solar cycle is designated as "solar maximum." The lowest number is "solar minimum." The solar cycle provides more than just increased sunspots, however. In the sun's atmosphere, or corona, bright active regions appear, which are rooted in the lower sunspots. Scientists track the active regions since they are often the origin of eruptions on the sun such as solar flares or coronal mass ejections.
Space weather: Space weather is a branch of space physics and aeronomy, or heliophysics, concerned with the time varying conditions within the Solar System, including the solar wind, emphasizing the space surrounding the Earth, including conditions in the magnetosphere, ionosphere, thermosphere, and exosphere.
Geomagnetic storms: A heavy solar outburst that causes ionosphereic disturbances; these can affect or even shut down GPS and power grids [The Great Outage of 1989]
Stellar Nucleosynthesis: process of stars creating new elements.
Three types of black holes:
——Mini [most if not all have probably evaporated]
——-Stellar [these form during the death of a massive star]
———-Supermassive [these live in the hearts of galaxies, The black hole at the center of our galaxy goes by the name Sagittarius A*. It has a mass equivalent to about 4.1 million of our suns. While that earns it the sobriquet “supermassive black hole” (more common black holes can be as small as five solar masses), it's actually something of a pipsqueak comparatively to others of its kind.] <*Why are supermassive black holes at the heart/centers of galaxies, do they play vital roles in how the galaxy evolves? The access to matter in galaxies allows for these black holes to devour their fill.>
Dark Matter: Substance that makes up the hidden mass of galaxies and our universe.
Galaxy Networks: Most galaxies are gravitationally bound together- all the galaxies and their clusters and superclusters link together to form the large-scale structure of the universe.
Evolution of galaxies: Constant; the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies are bound by a common pull of gravity , approaching each other at 68 miles per second. In approximately 5 billion years they will pass through each other. Over several billion years they will pass through each other several times before ending as a giant elliptical galaxy.
{I am thinking about collective mind theory, hive-mind related or just accessing information stored in the fabric of spacetime between electrons as Q.I theory suggests. Strange how similar the macro structures of the universe are to those structures in the microscopic world inside of our minds. Concept of ripples permeating spacetime and reaching out “informing” nature of events.}