Astronomy SBG

        Science is a huge phenomena that studies the world we live in. Astronomy is one of the oldest shown aspects of science because it is so clear to humans. We see the stars and cannot help but asking what is out there and how it changes. Astronomy is a branch of science, it studies the planets and stars and moons and all of the galaxies. Also astronomy is described as one of the soft sciences which means that it is where experimentation does not show its viability. Astronomy's accuracy predominantly lies in observation of either what we see from Earth or what we see from satellites and such. Like every science our understanding of astronomy has changed and morphed with the evolution of technology but the laws remain true. Because astronomy is about our universe before the invention of the telescope and satellites and space ships, all we had to go on was what we saw. This is what prompted the idea that the sun revolved around us, it make sense if you do not have the big picture, but with technology this assumed theory was destroyed with evidence. In more recent times our understanding of astronomy has grown immensely. I don't think that in the past we could speculate on how truly far the sun was from the Earth or later the Earth from other planets. The visualization we did in the form of that walk was very eye-opening for me, and I live in the 21^st century.

       We used Harwood's Activity Model but not in the same way as we used it in physics. We asked questions about things we did not understand, tested hypothesis about the way the world works, and collaborated with our peers. One of the most interesting things we did in this unit was describe how much astronomy affects our daily living, in the form of seasons. We asked the question: Are seasons caused by the Earth's tilt or it's proximity to the sun, closer= hotter farther away=colder. After we had our question we did tests that involved the day length, temperature, and sun elevation, at different places on Earth and throughout the year. We discovered that the day length, temperature, and sun elevation are highest (meaning summer time) at completely different times of the year according to hemisphere. During this whole process we were speaking with our peers and ensuring that our data was legitimate. We concluded that without a doubt, seasons are caused by the the Earths tilt, not proximity to the sun. Although astronomy is not a hard science it still uses things like mass and length and time, especially in Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, which describes and proves how gravity works in the entire Universe. Mass and length are used in NLUG, because the different masses of two things make the force of gravity larger and the greater the distance the lower the gravity.

     Our project was about Mankind's efforts to discover the solar system in our attempts to go to Mars. It was so intriguing to learn what a conflict space exploration caused. It became a social issue between countries because space was the final frontier and the country that had control of that was clearly dominant. This was especially heated between the Soviet Union and American Both countries were seeking to be the world power and I believe space exploration was a factor in the Cold War. This just shows how things in science and especially astronomy affect us. Also in efforts to understand the planets they have names from Roman mythology which we found very interesting. It just shows you that there is something in astronomy for everyone. We also learned about the various stages of exploration and how we have evolved in just a few decades. We have moved from looking through a telescope, to fly-bys, to orbiting around Mars, and finally our current stage landers and rovers. This shows the evolution of science very accurately, because our technology has grown and become more and more advance. 

The truth is after having learned all of these remarkable things about our universe, I will never look at the heavens with anything but utter awe.