Category: solar system
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“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience.”
The full quote goes: “It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the…
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“While [Thales] was studying the stars and looking upwards, he fell into a pit, and a neat, witty Thracian servant girl jeered at him, they say, because he was so eager to know the things in the sky that he could not see what was there before him at his very feet.”
![“While [Thales] was studying the stars and looking upwards, he fell into a pit, and a neat, witty Thracian servant girl jeered at him, they say, because he was so eager to know the things in the sky that he could not see what was there before him at his very feet.”](https://stargazingguy.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/the_eclipse_of_thales_historical_eclipses.png?w=1024)
Plato, Theaetetus, 174a (trans. H. N. Fowler)Thales (624/623 BC – c548/545 BC) Thales – the father of science. According to Herodotus, Thales predicted the solar eclipse of 28 May 585 BC. The appearance of the eclipse was interpreted as an omen and interrupted a battle in a long-standing war between the Medes and the Lydians.…
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“The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church.”
– Misattributed to Ferdinand Magellan (4 February 1480 – 27 April 1521) Yes, another misattribution! Surely a misattribution of the moment: Magellan didn’t say it, but it’s still brilliant, “shadow on the Moon”. Credit: https://depositphotos.com/64932777/stock-photo-moon-phases-from-crescent-to.html So, who did say it? Also, is it true, what can the earth’s shadow on the moon tell you about…
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“The stars are the land-marks of the universe.”
— Sir John Frederick William Herschel (7 March 1792 – 11 May 1871) According to Wikipedia, Herschel, was an English polymath active as a mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor, experimental photographer who originated the use of the Julian day system in astronomy. He named seven moons of Saturn and four moons of Uranus – the seventh…
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“I’ve loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.”
Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) (Sarah Williams, Poet – December 1837 – 25 April 1868) This quote is often attributed to Galileo, incorrectly. The full poem, with that line, is quoted and fully credited below. Galileo was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer who studied speed and velocity, gravity and free…
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“The purpose of life is the investigation of the Sun, the Moon, and the heavens.”
— Anaxagoras (499 BC – 428 BC) Anaxagoras was a Greek mathematician, and he was imprisoned for proposing that the moon shines by reflected light from the “red-hot stone” which was the sun, the first such recorded claim. He went on to take the next step and become the first to correctly explain the reason…
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Have you ever wondered how we know the Earth is round?
Because we have photos taken from space, duh! I hear you say. True, but how did we know before space flight? Of course, the Earth isn’t round, it’s more technically accurate to say that it’s an oblate spheroid, though from space it just looks like a big blue ball. Credit Look out your window and…
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Space-Based Solar Power
Another amazing concept, like space elevators, with a long pedigree in science fiction and scientific speculation. From Isaac Asimov’s 1941 short story, Reason, to Gerard K O’Neil’s The High Frontier, space-based solar power satellites provide the emotional drivers and scientific background that can’t be kept down. The University of Southampton’s recent exciting new publication, Space…
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The solar system and exoplanets
Learn about the planets, asteroids, comets, meteors, visitors to the solar system, Kuiper objects and planets around other stars.
Stargazing Guy 