5 Most Popular Astronomy Myths People Spread | Science

Astronomy, by its very nature, depends on a lot of mathematics and physics, which may seem cold and difficult to many people, making it a complex science, thus opening the door to many errors and myths that contradict science.

In what follows, we review 5 major myths that have been spread about celestial bodies:

1- The stars twinkle

Many people think that stars twinkle naturally in the sky, but they really don’t. The brightness of the stars has nothing to do with the stars themselves, but rather with the nature of the Earth’s atmosphere. Thus its brightness and color changes with the change in atmospheric conditions.

The effects of luminescence are always more pronounced when the star is near the horizon, because the light rays from it pass through a dense layer and have a long path through the atmosphere before reaching the observer.

This condition is called “Celestial Luminosity” (astronomical scintillation), and astronomers are interested in studying it because it affects the measurements of telescopes, so astronomical organizations such as the US Space Agency (NASA) and the European Space Agency want to send telescopes into space to reduce the negative. Effect of scintillation on astronomical images.

2- North star is the brightest star

As much as some may think it is the brightest star in the sky, the most famous star in the sky is undoubtedly the North Star. But this is far from the truth, because the brightest star in the sky is Sirius, which is found in the constellation Canis Major and is 20 times brighter than the North Star.

However, this does not mean that the light of the North Star is faint, but rather that you can easily see it with the naked eye in a semi-dark area (a village, for example, not a brightly lit city center).

The reason for the popularity of the North Star is not its brightness, but – as its name suggests – It always points to the North PoleIf you’re lost in the desert and don’t know the four directions, the North Star always points north.

3- There are 12 constellations in the sky

You probably won’t believe it, but the number of constellations that represent the constellations in the sky is 13, not 12, because the zodiac circle (the imaginary line through which the Sun crosses the sky) consists of 13 constellations that have names. Known constellations in addition to a region Constellation “Oprah”.

But because the Sun spends only 18 days in the constellation Ophiuchus, the constellations thousands of years ago removed Ophiuchus from the list.

In fact, the claim about the relationship between the stars in the sky and the people on the earth is a pure myth, which has been refuted by many experiments, the most famous of which An experiment by physicist Sean Carlson 1985 at the Lawrence Barclay Physics Laboratory.

Carlson gathered 28 interested astrologers, provided them with psychological ratings of several individuals and their dates of birth, and asked the astrologers to correlate psychological traits with their date of birth. Ultimately, astrologers are unable to reconcile individual test profiles with dates of birth.

4- Telescope images are as colorful as internet images

Celestial bodies – galaxies and nebulae – appear in binoculars In black and whiteAnd not in color like the pictures circulating online.

Because these objects are so far away that their light does not reach us, our eyes track them with a type of cell called “cone cells,” which are used in the case of objects that emit little light, but they do. They do not show their colors, instead they appear to us in black and white.

For example, when you see something moving in a very dark room, you notice its movement, but not its colors.

Camera sensors for astrophotography are similar to our eyes in their mechanism of capturing images, but with one difference, which is that our eyes capture images one tenth of a second and then load the images, creating one by one what we see in front of us. moment. As for the camera’s sensor, it can take one picture every hour, two, 10 or more, during which it collects more light, which then shows the celestial bodies in color.

5- In the case of “Giant Moon” the Moon appears very large.

A “supermoon” is an event that occurs every year or two in which the phase of the lunar full moon is associated with the presence of the moon at its closest point to Earth, making the moon appear brighter or larger. It’s usually a more pleasant event than usual during a normal full moon, especially since people don’t see much of the moon anyway.

But in the case of a giant moon the brightness and size of the moon is not as great as some people think, but only increases the size of the moon in the sky by about 10%.

The reason for the spread of this myth may be due to the images circulating on the Internet in which the Moon is large and clear compared to objects on Earth, but those images capture With special techniques When the photographer moves between the moon and the object to be photographed (for example, an ancient building), then moves far away from the building and takes the picture using a telephoto lens, it tricks the eye so that the moon appears larger compared to the building.