Stellarium Astrology Lab PDF

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Stellarium: Astrology

Astrology is very different from astronomy. Astronomy is a science, whereas astrology attempts to connect human events and personality types to various astronomical phenomena. According to astrology, your personality type is determined by what constellation, or "sign", the Sun was in on the date of your birth. Even though astrology has no scientific basis, we will explore one aspect of it here. II. Your Zodiac Sign Aries In some ways, astrology may seem scientific. It uses scientific knowledge about heavenly bodies, as well as scientific sounding tools, like star charts. Some people use astrology to generate expectations about future events and people's personalities, much as scientific ideas generate expectations. And some claim that astrology is supported by evidence — the experiences of people who feel that astrology has worked for them. Here we will explore an important aspect of astrology,horoscopes. Horoscopes are a forecast of a person's future, typically including a delineation of character and circumstances, based on the relative positions of the stars and planets at the time of that person's birth. List 3 highlights of your day and your overall mood today: 1. Went to the gym 2. Got coffee with friends 3. Made art/drawing Mood: Relaxed Go to horoscope.com (or whatever website/app you like) and look at all horoscopes for today. Which one agrees with how your day has been so far? Write the zodiac sign and summarize the reading below: Pisces SEP 18, 2020: Find something about yourself that you want to improve and get started fixing it! A positive change is well within your grasp. All it takes is a little bit more time than you were hoping it would take. I’ve been struggling with college and keeping myself organized, on track and away from peer pressure. As of this week I’ve been trying to pull myself together, make a routine and get work done. Astrologers determine star signs from the date of birth. Use the table below to determine your astrological sign. If you were born between: Your zodiac sign is: December 22nd - January 19th Capricorn

January 20th - February 18th Aquarius February 19th - March 20 Pisces March 21st - April 19th Aries April 20th - May 20th Taurus May 21st - June 21st Gemini June 22nd - July 22nd Cancer July 23rd - August 22nd Leo August 23rd - September 22nd Virgo September 23rd - October 23rd Libra October 24th - November 21st Scorpio November 22nd - December 21st Sagittarius What is your zodiac sign? Aries Go to horoscope.com (or whatever website/app you like) and look at your horoscope for today. Click on Horoscope for your zodiac sign above. Summarize your daily horoscope: “You could be quite busy today as friends from far away call for long-overdue conversations, Aries. You'll probably spend as much time as you can catching up on the latest news” Do you agree with your horoscope? Why or why not and what would you change or keep the same: I talk to friends and family often because they live so far away but I facetimed one of my friends this morning and she told me about what has been going on in my hometown. Find someone with the same zodiac sign as you. Are both of your days similar? Can you see how their day may line up with the horoscope, why or why not? I facetimed one of my friends who also has an aries zodiac sign and she caught up with a love interest today that she has not talked to in a couple weeks. He does not live far from her but they spent time catching up with each other. 1. Now, open Stellarium and turn on the ecliptic line and the constellation lines. The ecliptic line can be turned on by going to the left menu and clicking the Sky and Viewing Windows Option or just click F4. Then select the Markings Tab at the top and check the box with Ecliptic (of Date). For the Constellation lines, go to the bottom menu and select the first two options on the left (you can also include the art if you want). This can be done by hitting C,R, and V as well. The Zodiac Constellations are the constellations that lie along the ecliptic, allowing the Sun and planets to pass through them throughout the year. To make it easier to determine which constellation the Sun is in, in the Sky and Viewing window, go to Starlore and check the box in the lower right called Show Boundaries. 2. Next set Stellarium to the place of your birth (or at least near it). Do this by going to the left menu again and selecting the Location window and pick the city closest to where you were born.

3. Set the date (and time, if you know it) to the day you were born by clicking the Date and Time window on the left menu and entering in the date. 4. In Stellarium, scroll around to locate the Sun (it will be near the green line depicting the ecliptic). In what constellation is the Sun on the day of your birth? ___Pisces_____ Now go back to horoscope.com (or whatever website/app you like) and look at your horoscope for today according the zodiac sign above. Summarize your daily horoscope: You are vulnerable at the moment. Don’t be too hard on yourself and don’t let others force you into anything that doesn’t feel right. You need a defense mechanism that will keep you safe. Do you agree with this horoscope? Why or why not and what would you change or keep the same: No, I’ve felt safe on campus and haven’t felt forced into anything I was uncomfortable with. 1. Set the time to your birth date 2000 years ago (sometime around 0 B.C.). To change the date to B.C., put a negative in front of the year. 2. Locate the Sun. In which constellation does the Sun appear on the day of your birth (2,000 years ago)? Virgo 3. Once again go back to horoscope.com (or whatever website/app you like) and look at your horoscope for today according the zodiac sign. Summarize your daily horoscope: Action is required when it comes to a serious project. But you will still have fun with it. There is a lot of joy around you now, although it might feel difficult for you to tap into it. Eventually you'll break through and start getting in on the good times. The definition of the Astrological sign depends on the time period the person is alive. The current horoscope is roughly 3,000 years old and is getting more and more obsolete as time goes on. It is getting so obsolete that there should actually be a 13th zodiac now, Ophiuchus. Of course,astrologers may not agree with this and argue constellations are not the same as zodiac signs, that the backdrop of stars don’t matter. But since many of the personality characteristics associated with each sign are based on what the constellations (star patterns) looked like to the ancients — a fish in water or a bird in the air, for example — this misalignment certainly calls the whole system of astrology into question. And reveals the arbitrariness of the labels. III. Confirmation Basis Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. Astrology vagueness allows for most horoscope to apply to everybody, this effect is known as the Barnum effect, and applies for fortune cookies, personality quizzes, aura readings, and fortune telling. Confirmation basis allows for us to keep our prior beliefs the same even when presented with new knowledge. Without reading the paragraphs below, what do you initially believe about the following sentence, circle true or false for each statement: (True or False) The moon always appears at night.

(True or False) Water swirling down a drain spins clockwise in the northern hemisphere and counterclockwise in the southern. (True or False) Crime rates increase during full moons. (True or False) The length of a human’s menstrual cycle is linked to the lunar cycle. Selective memory happens often in our daily life. Take astrology for example. There is no scientific evidence for categorizing people according to the astrological signs. Yet, many people strongly believe in it, citing anecdotes where astrology works. While it does “work” occasionally, they choose to forget situations where astrology totally fails. Why fortune tellers are so good at predicting your behavior is not because they know the mystic rules that govern who you are, but because they have collected such a large sample of data that they can infer a lot of information based on your features. (To be honest, fortune tellers could be very good data scientists because they know the power of statistics!) Here’s how these common “science” myths take advantage of our bases. Statement #1: One may believe that the moon always appears at night, but during the day the Sun far outshines the Moon, so the probability of seeing the Moon during the evening is much higher than that of seeing it during the day. Eventually people form the expectation of seeing the Moon in the evening and you remember evenings when you see the Moon, but NOT those when you don’t see it, or days when you see it. Statement #2: The rotation of the earth gives rise to an effect that tends to accelerate draining water in a clockwise direction in the Northern hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern. Here's the catch, though. Coriolis forces are best observed at a large scale; toilet water,in so many ways, is small-scale. Many people travel to the equator to see this phenomena, but a slight jiggle can cause it to start spinning in the direction you wish. And selective memory can make one forgot when the drain didn’t spiral as expected. Statement #3: When the moon is full, the bright light of an inviting moon could also explain upticks in crime (though there's no strong evidence that this actually occurs). There has been no studies that has proved that the moon’s gravity affects our behavior, but well-lit night might help some folks end up in the wrong place at the wrong time. There may be a correlation, but that doesn’t mean one caused the other. Statement #4: Of the sample of 312 women, 244 had cycles that were longer than 29 days or shorter than 27, and only 70 per cent of the rest actually started their period within two weeks of the full Moon. In fact, possums have a menstrual cycle closest to the length of a lunar cycle, but that’s just a correlation with no causal link. These examples of selective reasoning and confirmation basis can lead people to take correlations as causations and as facts. The main difference between astronomy and astrology is that astronomy is a science. The proposition, statement, theory or hypothesis are falsifiable, meaning they can be proven wrong. Looking back at your horoscope, rewrite it to make if falsifiable? What needs to happen to see whether your horoscope is correct or wrong?

My horoscope that a friend would call and we would catch up was correct. It was an overdue conversation because I have not talked to her over the phone since coming to Purdue. We talked about college and it was a very emotional conversation, adding this to the horoscope would have made it more falsifiable. Now, go to tylervigen.com/discover, this website will allow us to find the correlation between two things. Pick two variables and write down the correlations. Variable 1:Marriage rate in California Variable 2: Amount of coffee consumed by the average american How correlated are these two things? More coffee = higher marriage rate These are, of course, spurious correlations, but if you wanted to test to see if there is any causation between the two events, how would you make a falsifiable test? Test how much coffee married couples in california drink compared to single individuals. Did engaged/married couples go out for coffee together often? Coffee dates. IV. Precession Today the Earth's axis points almost directly towards Polaris, however this was not always the case. The Earth's axis "precesses", or wiggles, much like a spinning top. This means our axis is not always pointed at Polaris. In this lab we will use a gyroscope to better understand this concept. A gyroscope is a spinning wheel or disc in which the axis of rotation is free to assume any orientation by itself. Play with a gyroscope and answer the following questions. Figure 1: A gyroscope Describe the movements of the gyroscope. Which has a longer period the gyroscope’s precession or the gyroscope’s rotation? If the top is placed near the surface of Earth on a flat surface and is not spinning, the gyroscope will fall over because the force of gravity will produce a twisting force that tends to cause rotation acting on its center of mass. The association between constellations and birth dates was established thousands of years ago. Since then the Earth has precessed enough for the Sun to appear to have moved into neighboring constellations. Therefore, to get the "correct" correspondence (according to astrology), you need to find the location of the Sun on your birth date 3,000 years ago. We will now calculate the how long it takes for the Earth to complete a full precession. 1. Go to the Location window on the left menu. For the Latitude, put in 90. This will place you at the North Pole. Click on the azimuthal grid option in the bottom menu, or press Z. Which star is at your zenith? Polaris 2. Record the Equatorial Longitude and Latitude on (date) by clicking on the star at your zenith. Equatorial Longitude: 124°07’19.5 Equatorial Latitude: 52° 04’05

3. Now go forward to the year 3118 by bringing up the Date and Time window from the left menu and typing in 3118 for the year. Isthat star still at your zenith? Polaris is no longer completely centered but it is the closest so I believe it is still my zenith 4. Now try and find the year in the future in which the star returns to approximately the same Equatorial Longitude and Latitude as recorded above. What is that year? 2019 5. Subtract that year from your starting year. How long does it take for the Earth to do a full precession? 25,772 years Currently the Earth's axis points towards Polaris. 3,000 years ago it pointed somewhere between Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, and in another 2,000 years it will point towards the constellation Cepheus. With every change in the orientation of the Earth's axis, the correspondence between the constellation in which the Sun is located on the day of your birth and the constellation in which the Sun appeared during the time of the ancient Greeks is altered. Someone born two thousand years from now "under Sagittarius" will have been born "under Libra," according to the Greeks. V. Proper Motion Going two thousand years from now will not only change which horoscope you would have, but also the shape of the constellations. Although stellar motion is imperceptible over short periods of time, the effect over thousands of years can be quite drastic. In fact, the first indication that the location of the stars in the night sky was not permanent was observed by Edmund Halley in the 18th century. He noticed that the stars in his charts did not perfectly match up with those recorded by the Greeks millennia earlier, and were actually displaced. The velocity of a star relative to the Sun is called space velocity. This velocity can be resolved into two components: one component directed along the line of sight called the radial velocity, and a component perpendicular to the line of sight called the tangential velocity (left, right, up, down). The radial velocity is simply the component of the star's velocity coming towards or away from the observer and does not affect where the star appears in the observer's night sky. The tangential velocity, however, is the component of the star's velocity that does affect where the star appears in the observer's sky. These are explained in the figure below. Stars in our local neighborhood on average have a space velocity of ~25 km/sec (relative to the Sun). By using the Doppler shift (as studied in the Doppler Effect exercise) we can measure a star's radial velocity, 𝑣𝑟𝑎𝑑. The tangential velocity, 𝑣𝑡𝑎𝑛, is found by measuring how the star moves across the sky as an angle per unit time. Once these two velocities are known, the space velocity, 𝑣𝑠𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑒, can be calculated via: 𝑣𝑠𝑝𝑎𝑐𝑒 = √𝑣𝑡𝑎𝑛 2 + 𝑣𝑟𝑎𝑑 2 2 In this exercise you will see how, over many years, a star's tangential velocity affects the

appearance of the constellations in the nighttime sky. We will examine how the constellations Ursa Minor and Boötes appear today versus what they will look like thousands of years into the future. 1. Set the time and date back to today’s date. 2. Find Ursa Minor. In the left-hand box below draw how Ursa Minor appears today. Then set the time to 99,999 AD. Sketch how Ursa Minor appears on this date in the right-hand Box.

Today

In 99,999 A.D.

3. Just past the handle of the Big Dipper is the constellation Boötes. Locate Arcturus and click on it and then click the spacebar to center it. If you don’t have the constellation boundaries showing, please reapply it. In the left box below, sketch how Boötes appears today and write down which constellation boundary Arcturus is located in. Then bring the time to 99,999 AD again and redraw Boötes. Write down also which constellation boundary Arcturus is in.

Today In 99,999 A.D. Arcturus is in Bootes constellation boundary. Arcturus is also located near virgo, corona borealis and coma berenices today. In 99,999 A.D Arcturus was located on top of Virgo, near coma berenices and canes venatici. The appearance of the constellations will not change by any appreciable amount in your lifetime, but future generations of humankind may have a very different looking set of constellations to learn in their astronomy class!...