What does studying astronomy do for society?

We study astronomy because it is not a stand-alone profession. The study of astronomy combines many other fields such as mathematics, chemistry, geology, biology and physics. When astronomers study the universe, they study everything because the universe is made up of everything, including us. By studying the universe, we can understand where we came from, where we are going, and how things in outer space work. We have to study everything in outer space because it is impossible to recreate the same conditions that are up there, down here on Earth. We also study astronomy because since the beginning of time we have used things like the constellations for navigation, and the sun which provides us the necessary energy to live. Because of the study of astronomy we know that the Earth’s spin gives us day and night, the axial tilt gives us the seasons, and the Earth’s orbit provides us with our annual calendar. Without astronomers, astronauts, and scientists to study and interpret all the data we have accrued over the years, many other fields of study may not be as advanced as they are. After all, we are the most advanced planet as we know of; we might as well do something with our knowledge.

Why do science and pseudoscience overlap as we get closer to the begining of the big bang?

As we get closer to the beginning of the big bang, science and pseudoscience come closer to overlapping. They begin to overlap because some of the details from science and religion coincide with each other. For example, when God said, “Let there be light”, he could have really meant to create the sun and moon to give us light. In addition, there could have been a “big bang”, which also would have created an enormous amount of light. In Genesis 1, it also says that the earth expanded. The earth could have expanded because he created things like vegetation, animals, water, land, and human beings or it could have expanded because of the heating and cooling of the earth. There are many different explanations and theories of how the universe came about, but no one know for sure. This is why we look to science and religion for the answers. They only help us with some of the answers, the rest is up to us and what we believe really happened.

Difference between quasars, pulsars, and black holes.

Quasars: The word quasar is short for "quasi-stellar radio source", which means star-like emitters of radio waves. Quasars also emit visible light, ultraviolet rays, infrared waves, X-rays, and gamma-rays. Quasars give off more energy than 100 normal galaxies combined. They are believed to be the most distant object detected in the universe to date. The amount of energy they give off can be up to a trillion times brighter than the sun! Quasars are located in black holes in the center of the galaxy. They are so bright their light drowns out the light from other stars. A quasar is approximately 1 kiloparsec in width and most of them are larger than our solar system.
Pulsars: A pulsar is formed when a massive star collapses and exhausts its supply of fuel. It then creates a giant explosion known as a supernova. A pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star which also has a powerful magnetic field. The magnetic field causes the neutron star to emit strong radio waves and radioactive particles from its north and south poles. Pulsars appear to be blinking as their rotating poles sweep past the Earth. The pulse rate depends on the size and mass of the neutron star. If a pulsar has a binary companion, the pulsar may begin to pick up matter from this companion. This can cause the pulsar to rotate even faster-up to well over one hundred times a second!
Black Hole: A black hole is a collapsed star. Its gravity is so strong that its escape velocity exceeds the speed of light. Since nothing is known to exceed the speed of light, nothing can escape from a black hole. Jets of hot gas are occasionally found streaming out of the region surrounding a black hole. There is an imaginary sphere around the black hole; it is known as the event horizon. Once matter reaches the inside of the event horizon, it is crushed into a single point and reaches infinite destiny-meaning it can never escape. There are three types of black holes: miniature black holes, supermassive black holes, and stellar black holes.

Life Cycle of A Star

Stars come from the stellar nursery.
Sun-like stars turn into red giants while,
Huge stars and giant stars alter into red supergiants.
Each of these stars transform into,
Pretty planetary nebulae or sparkly supernovas.
A planetary nebula shrinks to a white dwarf,
Then shrivels up and stays a tiny black dwarf.
Supernovas that were once huge stars,
Minimize to almost nothing and become neutron stars.
Supernovas of a giant star completely disappear,
Leaving a massive black hole in its place.

My passion and how it relates to the work of Annie Cannon

My passion is accounting. I am currently taking an accounting class and I put every effort into it-sometimes too much. Accounting is fairly easy, but if you make one mistake it can take hours to find it and correct it. I have done this countless times and it frustrates me to the point where I begin to think about changing my major. When I get to this point I want to give up and do something easier, but I’ve been told things in life don’t come easy. This is also true for the theorist Annie Jump Cannon. She was very intelligent for a woman of her time, but because she was a woman, she was not treated fairly and people continued to discriminate against her. She continued to take classes and study astronomy to help her gain knowledge and respect from her well known peers. Though it took her years to get a worthy job, she never gave up. All her hard work eventually paid off; in 1896 she was hired as Edward C. Pickering’s assistant at the Harvard observatory. By 1907 she had received an M.A. from Wellesley. Through all her hardships and difficult times, Annie never gave up and continued to do what she loved, not because she wanted to be recognized for it, but because she had such a passion for it that she knew someday people would appreciate her work. It may seem that accountants sit at their desk all day and play around with numbers, but there is much more work to it than that. I am only beginning to realize how much effort I am going to have to put into the beginning stage of my career, but thankfully I can look to my godfather for advice and guidance later in life.

Observations of moon, stars, and light pollution over 2 week period.

The weather has been rainy for many nights in the past two weeks. When it is raining at night or has just recently rained, it is hard to see the moon or stars because the sky is cloudy. When the sky is cloudy there is a thicker atmosphere. With a thick atmosphere, not much light from the moon can get through. There was not much light pollution at all. The sky is still fairly dark this time of year, which is all the better for stargazing. The stars were not twinkling or shining nearly as bright as they do in the summer. The moon was also not at its brightest on these nights either. One night I thought I saw a ring in the form of a light around the moon. It appeared almost as a halo, but maybe I was just seeing things. I think it would be amazing to stargaze while looking through a telescope. It would really put things in perspective, plus it would look like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

Likelihood of world ending in 2012.

The Mayan calendar ends on December 21, 2012, but this date is just the end of the Mayan period. As any other calendar, another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar on January 1. A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. The continents slowly move, but that has nothing to do with claims of pole reversal; therefore, magnetic pole reversal is unlikely and would not cause any harm to life on Earth. Solar activity peaks every 11 years. Around the end of 11 years, solar flares can interfere with satellite communications, but some electronic devices have been produced to avoid major conflict against most solar storms. The next solar maximum will not occur in 2012 anyway and is predicted to be no different than previous cycles. The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids since the beginning of time, but impacts big enough to do tremendous damage are unlikely. As we all know, the last big impact that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs over 65 million years ago. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs so we are in no real danger. As far as we know, the world will go on as it usually does. The only way we can find out is to wait for December 21, 2012 to come and go and see if were alive on December 22, 2012.

Tycho Brahe's Lifelong Commitment to Astronomy

When the ancient Greek texts were recovered and translated into Western languages after the fall of Granada, it was presumed that the heavens were immutable and unchanging. Early on the evening of November 11, 1572, Tycho saw a radiant star he had never noticed before in the constellation of Cassiopeia. Tycho began a series of observations and came to the conclusion that the star must have been a supernova. His extensive observations were published in 1574 and proved that it really happened and wasn’t just another unknown star. For Tycho, this accomplishment came after many time consuming studies. He started with observing how the position of the Moon changes during its path across the sky. Tycho then did calculations of the Moon's motion around the Earth, and figured out its resulting direction in the sky and among the stars. Tycho did make tremendous efforts to observe changes in the position of that star as it moved across the sky and rose and set during the several months that it was still visible to the naked eye, but he never observed it to have any parallax due to our motion across the face of the Earth. This proved that the new star could not be just some unimportant incident because it lies out in space far beyond the orbit of the moon and therefore the heavens are not immutable. This also meant that the Ptolemaic belief of unchanging and immutable nature of the stellar sky was wrong. Astronomers began to wonder that if one part of Ptolemy's astronomy was wrong, what other parts might also be wrong?

A few years later Tycho confirmed that another one of the fundamental bases of Ptolemaic astronomy was wrong. Tycho determined celestial spheres were fake when he observed the great comet in 1577, now known as Tycho’s Comet. His previous study of our daily motion around the Earth allowed him to conclude this comet had no parallax and that we lied far beyond the orbit of the moon. Tycho knew the celestial spheres were fake because comets and planets passed through the sky without interference.

After proving Ptolemy wrong twice, Tycho then had his own problems. Because he believed in geocentrism he was unable to accept the legality of the Copernican cosmos. Tycho’s observations were very accurate, but realistically the parallaxes that were less that 1/30th of a degree would have been too small to notice, even with a telescope. The only way he could have detected stellar parallaxes is if the stars were less than 2000-3000 AU away. Even 250 years after he died, no astronomer was able to measure the parallax of any star because the distances were just too great. Though Tycho failed to observe the stellar parallax, he did make many other great achievements and significantly helped the study of astronomy during his lifetime. His commitment to his studies and beliefs show just how much he cherished astronomy.

What is the rationale for keeping science and religion separate and what happens when they overlap?

Religion is based on faith and different types of revelation. Science is based on the observations of repeated tests and experiments. When science and religion overlap, they create pseudoscience which explains how science and religion can be separate, but coequal. There are certain things that fall under each category for specific reasons.
Under the religion category: creationism is the religious belief that all creation was made by the supernatural because evolution cannot account for the diversion and complexity of all things on earth. In the early 1600-1750's the Roman Catholic Church did not believe in heliocentrism. Heliocentricism was considered a philosophical problem, not a faith-based problem. Worldviews are also found under religion. A worldviews is the structure of ideas and beliefs through which someone understands the world and works within it.
Under the science category: currently, there are several theories of evolution, but in the main case of evolution people believe animals and plants have their starting point in earlier forms and the noticeable differences are due to changes in succeeding generations. In the middle ages, people believed the earth was flat. With the help of Christopher Columbus and the use of science we have proved that the earth is in fact not flat and we will not fall off the face of the earth. Scientific skepticism is a practical, theory of knowledge in which one questions the accuracy of studies which appear to be beyond mainstream science. However, its research obtains its data by direct observation or experiment.
Sometimes there is no definite line between religion and science; this is where pseudoscience comes in. We have been commanded to develop and fill the creation done by the work of God. Science plays a role as a part of our calling to care for and open up God's good creation and to develop culture. The rise of early modern science came about by developments in Christian thought, mostly to certain aspects of Protestantism. In this case science and religion continually build off each other, helping both to reach their full potential.