Eduardo Lojas

Myths of Astronomy
Dr. Tomas Target
May 11, 2023

Summary

Dr. Tomas Target was the speaker for this Stem presentation and he really made it come

alive with his enthusiasm. Some of the things he talked about were that the sun isn't really

yellow, it's a grayish-white color and if the sun were yellow everything would also be yellow.

Also, another thing he talked about was that stars don't twinkle; they are actually a steady beam

of light but the “twinkle” is actually caused by a distortion effect. Finally, asteroid belts aren't that

dangerous in reality each asteroid in the Mars belt is around 400,000 cubic miles apart and the

actual odds are 1:1,000,000,000 against getting hit.

Reflection

Dr. Tomas Target was an amazing presenter. He taught me many myths about

astronomy and overall I enjoyed his presentation. I learned a lot of different things like asteroid

fields aren't dangerous, the sun isn't yellow, stars don't twinkle, meteorites aren't hot, the great

face of Mars is a pile of rocks, there can't be any explosions in space, and the Hollywood cares

only about entertainment first so not everything is true. Basically in the end I overall really

enjoyed the amazing presentation by Dr. Tomas Target and I would definitely recommend

watching it to people.

Article
 In the article I read titled “Star identities, star births and more revealed with Milky Way

Portrait” I learned that the new galactic portrait is made up of about 2.5 million infrared images

collected by NASA’s orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope over the last decade and that the infrared

images that make up the new portrait provide revelations about the Milky Way’s Content and

structure. They add more than 200 million new stars to the catalog of the Milky Way. Also, I

learned that Scientists can now clearly examine the structure of the Milky Way like how many

spirals it has, where they are, and how far out they extend, said astronomer Edward Churchwell,

who was involved in compiling the new picture.