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What is Astronomy ?
Astronomy is the Study of the Planets
What are Some of The Planets That We Have Today ?
Earth
Mars
Jupitor
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
Venus
Each Planet has a Different Amount of Moons
Whats So Cool About Astronomy
Its cool to study about all of the different planets and to learn what the different planets are
and stuff and to hear about Many Things About A Planet that you like my favorite Planet is Mars I Think Mars Is Very Awesome
and Cool its Especially See it on The Telescope it may seem so Small From the Ground
but if you saw it on a telescope it would probally look a little bit bigger than it does without one
I Would Recommend To Anyone That Has a High Interest For The Study Of Stars and Planets to Do a
Course on Astronomy
There is a Cool Technology Called The Telescope You Can Use it At Night To look Far into The Sky
For a Closer Look At A Planet Please Note For the Best View I Would Do it on a Night Where there is Like Absolutly No Clouds
At all
It Would Be So Cool to Go Into Space and Go On a Different Planet just to see What A Different Planet
Looks Like There are Lots and Lots Of People That Do That
Some information about Mars
Mars is an exciting planet to study because the Martian surface features are easily visible from
Earth-based telescopes. As early as 1666, Italian Giovanni Cassini noted after watching Martian features that the rotational
period of Mars is 24 hours and 37 minutes, almost the same as Earth's 24 hour day. A century later, Englishman William
Herschel (discoverer of Uranus) determined that Mars' rotational axis is tilted at 25.2 degrees, which is almost the same
as Earth's 23.5 degree tilt. Because the Martian year of 686 Earth days is almost two Earth years, Martian seasons are
almost twice as long as Earth's seasons.
Two major features on Mars are the polar caps. Careful observation of the surface has revealed
changes in the brightness and color of surface markings that correlate with the annual growth and shrinkage of the Martian
polar cap. The south polar cap shrinks more than the north polar cap because Mars is closer to the sun at the time of
the southern hemisphere summer. The caps recede very rapidly in late spring but retreat only gradually in the summer.
The rapid retreat of the polar cap indicates that the seasonal cap is covered with a very thin layer of ice, probably CO2
ice. The permanent polar cap is a thick layer of mainly water ice (H20) that remains year round. These regular
changes in the polar caps and in the brightness and color of other visible features on Mars clearly indicate that Mars has
seasons.
Today, astronomers observing with the NASA Hubble Space Telescope study Mars in great detail.
NASA scientists have created a Quick Time rotation movie showing the rotation of Mars. NASA scientists are also able
to create a high-quality Quick Time time-lapse movie showing how the polar ice caps change over time.
In October of 1996 the maximum extent of the northern ice cap extended down to almost 60 degrees
latitude. In March, 1997, the northern ice cap shrunk to a little more than 1000 km in diameter.
Students might be very curious as to how a space telescope in near Earth-orbit can take pictures
that seem to be taken from above the Martian north pole. These images (Photo No.: STScI-PRC97-15b) were actually created
by assembling combinations of three sets of images taken by HST in October 1996, and in January and March 1997, and projecting
them to appear as they would if seen from above the pole.
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