Chapter three provides insight into the history of our galaxy, the Milky Way, and the ways to detect the spectra of stars located inside of our galactic home. Hawking describes the Doppler effect, also. He states that it is a relationship between wavelengths and speed, resulting in changes in spectrum depending on where a mass is traveling. For instance, if a star moves closer to the observer, the star's spectra will be blue-shifted. If the star is traveling away from the observer, it will have a red-shifted spectra. Hawking also explains the works of Hubble and many others. Their experiments and studies led to or understanding of the universe as a whole, and our small galaxy in comparison.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Chapter Three - The Expanding Universe
The star with the closest proximity to us is affectionately named Proxima Centauri and is comfortably situated a mere twenty-three million million miles away from us. It is one of the trillions of stars located in our galaxy, which we now understand due to Sir William Heschel. He tortuously cataloged the positions and distances of thousands of stars so we could accurately say our galaxy was a spiral.
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I love that your book is talking about wavelengths and speed and stuff like that, like did! The universe is a scary thing! Hope your enjoying your book!
ReplyDeleteIt's almost scary to think about how small we are in comparison to the rest of the universe.
ReplyDeleteIt is very hard to imagine how big space is if our closest star is that far away. Just thinking about the size of our solar system, and then being reminded that there are possibly millions more solar systems and galaxies. It really fascinates me. The Doppler effect seems interesting, but I don't quite understand the terms "blue" and "red" shifted. I think we briefly discussed it in class once. Astronomy and the universe as a whole are hiding many discoveries.
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