Month: January 2016

Blog #2 | Zodiacs and Precession

Posted on by briannagalgano

I am never one to really pry much life into zodiac signs, or how they should tell about my personality or future. However, the zodiac constellations have some real hard science about them.

Zodiacs signs corresponding to the constellation that the Sun is located in front of from our perspective on Earth. There is usually a new constellation that corresponds to the zodiac sign for every month. According to astrology calendar we use today I am an Aries, as I was born April 9th.

The initial beginning of the zodiacs came from Babylonian astronomers, and later the Romans and Greeks further conceptualized their ideas. The calendar they used about 2,200 years ago is the same one we use today (Source). As you may have guessed, the calendar has needed some updating.

Since the initial birth of the calendar, the Earth has precessed every so slightly on its axis, causes the timing of the zodiac calendar to be shifted. As a result of being born about 2,200 later than the ancient astronomers, I should be a Pisces instead of a Aries. If you don’t know, these are signs have drastically different personality descriptions.

Blog #1 |Discovering Scale of the Universe

Posted on by briannagalgano

It is hard to imagine the actual scale of the universe from a human perspective. Humans have personally witnessed the vastness of space only as far as the Moon and Earth orbit (International Space Station, as one vehicle). Instead, computer stimulations can help us get an idea of exactly how far the universe, as we know it, spatially extends.

The video above was created by the Astrophysics Department at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The stimulation starts with the highest point above sea level on Earth (the Himalayas) and ends at the most distant light we can see (the Cosmic Microwave Background). The most distant “object” created as a byproduct of human civilization are the first radio signal broadcasts. Since the first signals were sent 70 years ago, they are only 70 light years ago. Thus, humans have only been able to touch an extremely small space in the Universe.

The best method to measure the distance of very, very far objects in the universe is by redshift. The farther an object is, the faster it appears to travel away from us as the universe expands. As of this expansion, the light from these objects appear shifted towards redder, or longer, wavelengths. The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is a large survey that observes both extremely distant corners of the universe and stars as close as the Milky Way Galaxy. Scientists observe the amount of redshift of these objects and we are able to create a large scale map of the universe below:

Image Credit: SDSS

The last marked redshift measurement, 0.14, is equivalent to about 1.928 billion light years.  This is quite small compared to the maximum distance we were able to see, about 13.2 billion light years far away (see Hubble’s XDF). The black areas mark places in the universe we cannot see, due to obstruction from the Milky Way. Perhaps one day we will have the technology to observe these areas, too.

 

Hello, ASTR 2110

Posted on by briannagalgano

My name is Brianna and I love food and astronomy.

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Photo taken by me. Nikon D3100.

This is a picture of the most amazing dish I’ve had so far in my life. I think one way to get to know a person is to know the things that they like, so I would say that my perception of this meal is one very accurate way to get to know me.

The best single word I can use to describe this is a ceviche. Those are raw cuts of salmon topped with rice puffs, some kinds of leafy greens I can’t name, with a scoop of lemon sorbet in the middle. But the very best part of this dish, the part that made me want to lick the plate (public etiquette be damned), was the coconut milk on the bottom. This wasn’t your average tropical watery stuff–they somehow prepared it, or added ingredients to the coconut base to enhance it so much it could have been nectar of the gods.

I had the privilege of this culinary experience during 2015 summer restaurant week in New York City at a place called Perry St. Nashville does its own restaurant week, if you want your own experience.