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Exploring our Mind-Blowing Universe | BBC Earth Science

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With each of these upgrades your knowledge and the depth and scope of what you will be able to see will improve geometrically. For many amateur astronomers, we sometimes cannot get enough of what we can see on this our closest space object. To take it to a natural next level, you may want to take advantage of partnerships with other astronomers or by visiting one of the truly great telescopes that have been set up by professionals who have invested in better techniques for eliminating atmospheric interference to see the moon even better. The composition of a comet is a mixture of nebulous, gasses, ice, dust and space debris. One scientist called the composition of a comet as similar to a dirty snowball because the composition is so diverse and changeable. The center or nucleus of a comet is usually quiet solid but the snowball materials often create a cloud around that nucleus that can become quite large and that extends at great lengths behind the comet as it moves through space. Without the moon s stabilizing influence, this shape would shift dramatically so the tilt of the axis, that is the polar caps would shift dramatically with each seasonal rotation producing climacteric, changes much more violent and drastic than we are used to. It is possible that life as we know it could not have developed here had the moon not been there to keep the Earth in line and continue to stabilize the orbital position of the Earth so our climate could remain stable and mild. In fact, when Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and discovered America, he could not have done it without astronomy and the help of navigation of the cosmos, much of which is made possible because of the important constellations. When learning to find the great constellations in the sky, we use the find one, you found them all system. But we carry that wow moment with us for the rest of our lives and begin looking for ways to look deeper and learn more about the spectacular universe we see in the millions of stars above us each night. To get started in learning how to observe the stars much better, there are some basic things we might need to look deeper, beyond just what we can see with the naked eye and begin to study the stars as well as enjoy them. Light, obviously, is the physical phenomenon that empowers our ability to use our visual confirmation system, e.g. our eyes to appreciate something, in this case the stars. So when we look up at the heavens, we can see the light emitting from a star or reflecting from a planet or moon. In many cases, if we see a far away star, we are actually seeing it hundreds or thousands of years ago because that is how long it takes for that light to cross the universe and be visible in our sky. 

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