a few simple questions...

[stevoggo]

Hi all,
Firstly thanks to everyone for their help so far i am loving this hobby of 3 months...
i have few questions/myths... like a good astronomer should I am having some friends around (mainly kids) next weekend as they saw my telescope and wanted a look through.
I'd like some easy to understand figures and facts that they could grasp to amaze them with.

i know its a big ask.

Things like...
What is the nearest star (except the sun ! Ha Ha), how far away is it....light speed will mean nothing to kids so if I drove in my car at 100kms an hour...how long will I be driving...(Actually if you give me the distance I could probably work it out.)

i once heard there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches in the world...is this true? because it sounds good...

Also most of the stars we are looking at in the night sky are from our own galaxy right?....and ours is just one of thousands, millions...trillions in the universe.

Finally if anyone has some cool "easy to grasp examples" of space cool stuff that would also be good....

thanks dudes
Steve

[erick]

Have a search around in Wikipedia, Stephen. See what you find. Eg:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri

[erick]

Every star you see by eye (and even in our amateur scopes) is from the Milky Way unless a star in a distant galaxy goes KABOOM (as in supernova), then we might see it for a few days.

Now, to be pedantic, I'm not quite right above - I think we can make out individual stars in the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds with bigger amateur scopes, but they are companion galaxies of the Milky Way so not very far away (yeah, it's all relative - I wouldn't want to have to drive there!).

[[1ponders]]

Grains of sand
http://childrencomefirst.com/starcount.shtml

[[1ponders]]

A few more grains to get kicked about.
http://www.google.com.au/search?q=number+of+stars+grains+of+ sand&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

[erick]

Check NASA's sites for children's education material?

[mental4astro]

Hi Steve,

You're right about wanting to have "easy to grasp" stuff.

Most people, let-lone kids, have trouble coming to terms with just how big this place is and the forces it can generate.

Here are some things I say to the uninitiated to "come to terms":

*speed of light = 300,000km/h (Yeah, I know it's a little less, but really!!) (oops, that should read 300,000km/sec!)

*this equals the distance from the earth to the moon (see above), ie, light takes one second to travel this distance.

*eight minutes from the sun to us on earth.

*4.3 years to Alpha Centuri

*300,000 years to span the diameter of our galaxy, the Milky Way

Most people cease after these numbers.

As to the forces around us:

*nuclear fusion powers the sun, simple physics with e=m*c(square), and the sun's power is an application of this equation. The potential energy in a grain of sand if converted to energy would vaporise Sydney. Take it from there.

This hobby is wonderful, where it allows you to take it to the level that you want. Enjoy it. Enjoy it with others, :thumbsup:.

[stevoggo]

Hi All,
thanks for those replies and links they are great.
i realised i could have googled all this stuff but i thought you guys would have your own easy facts that you like to use. Like Mental4astro's last post.
Thanks Erik as always and the CCF starcount and grains of sand was good too.
cheers
Steve

[acropolite]

To some perspective on distance, driving your car at 100km/hour on the hyperspace bypass (preferably with Arthur Dent and or Zaphod Beeblebrox for company), it would take around 45.3 million years to get to the nearest star (Proxima Centauri 4.2 light years).:whistle:

I hope my arithmetic is correct; I'm sure I can hear the scratching of pencil on paper.........:P

[GrahamL]

I use a little from burhams to give others some perspective .

Our galaxy scaled down to fit neatly over the land mass of australia
is still several kilometres thick.. To find where we are come out 3/4 of the way from alice springs and 3 kilometres up and look close ..real close theres our sun the size of a marble or so .. you cant see the planets as there to small .. alpha cent is about 800 m away.. yet as fast as we can send something towards it its still 10 000 years to get there and thats the closest other star to us .. fill in the rest of the country with similar scale and you have it .. a little closer together around the centre and a little further away around the edges.. and thats just one galaxy .. to add some scale to that .. find a bit of sky where between the stars you can look through and behond our galaxy .. as deep as you can see .. what do you see?.. every faint point of light you can see is more galaxys .. makes you feel a little humbled to be such a small yet intricate part of it all. :)

[DENMONKEY]

Hi Stevoggo :) ,

I'm still new to this game so no real facts and figures to sprout but figured you will be more likely to keep the kids entertained if they're doing something visual as apposed to using math. Albeit these facts are extremely interesting.

Here's a video that might perk their interest and be informative at the same time.


Why is pluto no longer referred to as a planet ( don't stone me)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqX2YdnwtRc&feature=related

Well I liked it :)