Physical Geography @ AS of radio waves, Because they are so distant, Light from then has taken a long time to reach us, When we look at a quasas, we are ooking at a Galaxy in a very early stage ofits evolution. 1 trotates around is centie and the intakes 228 mtion years tocomplete one crcut. Mitte 100,000ightyarsin toretor The canal bulges 10,000 bgt yrs across ad 20,000 ligt years nck, tcontans ony old sors, The diss formed by tha spiral arm is 9,000 ight years thick. (The sun ties 90,000 Fight years from the contre of the Galaxy n te Orion Arr Wi The centre of the Galaxy is Sagittarius A-a 6 wert rao waves that cout be ablackhioks ‘Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is partof'a poor cluster of about three dozen galaxies called ‘the Local Group’.The largest ‘member of the Local Group is the Andromeda galaxy, and the Milky Way is the second largest galaxy in this group: most of ‘other galaxies in our Local Group are small, The most distant ‘objects inthe Local Group are M31, the Andromeda galaxy and M33, all of them being more than 2 million light years away from our Galaxy. 1.4 Our Solar System Earth is one of the eight planets of our solar system, which also contains 156 moons revolving around the planets, scores ‘of comets (composed of frozen gases that hold together small pieces of rock and metallic minerals), more than $0,000 asteroids (objects made of rocks and/or metals that are mostly ‘very small, bt with few as large as several hundred kilometers in diameter), and millions of meteors (most of them the size of sand grains). The medium-sized star we call our Sun is the central body of the solar system and makes up more than 199% of its total mass, The solar system is part of the Milky ‘Way Galaxy, which consists of perhaps 100,000,000,000 stars ‘arranged in a dark-shaped cloud that is 100,000 light years (one Tight year is about a trillion kilometers) in diameter and 10,000 Fight years thick atthe centre, The Milky Way Galaxy is only ‘onc of at least «billion galaxies inthe Universe 1.5 Constellation Group of stars which ancient observers saw as being placed in pictorial configurations, usually representing mythical heroes and beasts, ‘There are 88 different constellations. Many of them named by the Greeks and Romans, or later by Arabs: but in 17th and 18th century the astronomers added others, ineluding those in the Southern Hemisphere which could not be seen by carly astronomers of Meditteranean lands. Some major stars and theie respective constellations are: SIRIUS, (Canis Major): CANOPUS (Carina); ARCTURUS (Bostes); RIGIL KENTAURUS (Orion); VEGA (Lyra); CAPELLA, (Aurige); RIGIL (Orion); PROCYON (Canis Minor); BETELGEUSE (Orion). ALMA (Atacama Large Millimetre Array) ALMA is the British Astronomy facility, being developed at (Chajaantor, $000 m up in one ofthe mostinhospitable parts ofthe Atacama Dessert of northern Chile. The aim of this £300 million facility isto detect radiations at millimetre and sub wavelengths, studying galaxies and planets that form in cold, dusty regions that cannot easily be studied in other wavebands, ALMA will be the largest ground based astronomy project ever, twill have a network of 64, 12-metre radio telescopes. The project is expected to be complete by the year 201 1.6 Hubble's Classification of Galaxies Edwin Hubble, the American astronomer who was the first to study galaxies in detail, classified them into three shapes: lliptical, spiral and barred spiral, A few galaxies are irregular and do not fit into this scheme. Hubble thought that galaxies, might evolve from elliptical into spiral formas they age; but astronomers today do not believe this to be true. Galaxies range in size from small dwarf elliptical ones, with perhaps 1 million stars, to spiral glaxies containing 300 billion stars, to gaint elliptical galaxies that may be home to more than 10 trillion stars. The diameters of the galaxies range from 3,000 light years in dwarf elliptical galaxies to over 50,000 light years in giant elliptical galaxies. ‘Stars Closest to Earth Star «Distance sun 149,600,000 km Proxima Centauri 4.24 Tight years Alpha Centauri A as Alpha Centausi B 4M Bamard’s Str 597 Wolf 359 18 Lalaxde 21185 819 UV Cent A a5 UV Cen B 838 Sicius A 68 =) Astrology and Astronomy Thera is more than one way 19 view the coames and ite procesees-astronomy is one end astrolegy is another ‘Astrology is ballet system that beaan in ancient times and hhaa eurived nay unchanged. Astrology today hola that the postion of Earth in ts ort around the aun at the time Of birth, combined wth relative positions of the planet, has sorte influence over one's persons! fle. The stars-and planets ere said to affect such persona! things as one's Character, marriage, friendship, wealth and dlaath. Stil ‘Astrology ls not a science. fort dows not change with new, Infarmation as science does, nor as its predictons Dome ‘out by tect. For instance, the planet ‘pluto’ ena longer 8 ful planet as in astronomy Dut Astology stil revolves ‘around rina planets. So, astrology moans cifrnt things: to diferent pecple, but in any 6350, its fr outside the: reali olscionce;