The Planetarium at UT Arlington
Monday, November 23, 2009
Today's Events
| 2:30 pm | Secret of the Cardboard Rocket |
| Join two children on a magical journey through the Solar System, aided by a talking astronomy book, a cardboard rocket, and a vivid imagination. During this imaginative show, audiences will land on Venus, fly through the rings of Saturn, and discover the secrets of the Solar System. | |
| 5:30 pm | Seven Wonders |
| Turn back the pages of time and witness the ancient wonders of the world as they have not been seen for thousands of years. We will investigate the theories of how these wonders were created and get a glimpse of some of the universe's greatest wonders. | |
Ask the Astronomer Q&A
Tag: "star"
- How far apart are Betelgeuse and Rigel from each other? That is to say how large is the constellation Orion if measured from one of these stars to the other?
- According to the celestial coordinates of the stars, they are 18.56 degrees apart in the sky.
From these vectors, we can find the distance of Rigel to Betelgeuse; 392 light years
This still doesn’t give any clue about how large the constellation is as we don’t know the distance from other stars yet (Think 3D; On Earth, Rigel appears on the right and is the farthest away, however that may not be true for the whole universe.)
The best description of the size of the Orion would be as follows;
The Orion Constellation’s size is about 18 degrees across in the sky.
(Tags: star universe) - How far away are the stars?
- The closest star system, the Alpha Centauri triple star system, is about 25 trillion (25,000,000,000,000) miles away.
To put that in perspective, it could take us around 30 years to fly to Neptune, the furthest planet in our Solar System. But going at the same speed, it would take around 100,000 years to get to Alpha Centauri.
(Tags: solar system star universe) - Is Jupiter a "brown dwarf" star?
- No.
A brown dwarf is a kind of star. For Jupiter to exhibit any resemblance to a star it would have to fuse lighter elements into heavier ones in the core. An object needs to be about 80 times more massive than Jupiter for this to occur.
(Tags: brown dwarf jupiter planet star) - When will the Milky Way collide with Andromeda? Are those estimates accurate?
- The Andromeda Galaxy will collide with the Milkyway in 3 billion years as they are separated by 2.2 million light years and approaching to each other at approximately 500,000 km/hour speed. Are those numbers accurate? Yes and No.
We measure distances and velocities accurately. That would allow us to give a specific date and time for the collision, if the galaxies were like solid objects. However, galaxy collisions are not similar to collision of 2 vehicles. Galaxies don’t have sharp boundaries that you can tell when the collision starts. Moreover, the collision will last approximately 1 billion years. During the collision, it is unlikely that any star will run into another! If there is life on a planet at that time, probably the life will not be affected. After the collision, galaxies change their shape, they either merge or form 2 “new” galaxies orbiting each other.
Based on scientific data, numerous simulations have been computed and galaxy collision animations created. More specific information and animations can be found at the following link: http://www.galaxydynamics.org/tflops.html
(Tags: andromeda galaxy milkyway galaxy physics star universe)
