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Boy Scout Troop 50
(State College, Pennsylvania)
 
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Star Gazing



Astronomy, the study of stars, is the formal name for a practice that is literally thousands of years old.
Probably the best known star story is that of the Star of Bethlehem. But the study of the heavens is much older than even that!
Here you will find some pretty cool stuff about what's in our skies, both natural and man-made.


Clicking the links below will take you away from this website. Please report broken links using the "Contact Our Troop" link at the top of the page.
For further detail, please see our Disclaimer page.

Section last updated/reviewed 23 Jul 11.

Please note that the images and logos here, as on all our pages, are © (copyright) their respective owners and used by gracious permission. See our Special Thanks! page for details and links.

Luna



There are many interesting facts about the moon and trivia that may or may not be important to you. Some interesting facts include:
  • We all know there was a man on the moon, but did you know that there is one who stayed there? Dr. Eugene Shoemaker, a Geological Surveyor, who educated the Apollo mission astronauts about craters, never made it into space himself, but it had always been one of his dreams. He was rejected as an astronaut because of medical problems. After he died, his ashes were placed on board the Lunar Prospector spacecraft on January 6, 1999, which was crashed into a crater on the moon on July 31, 1999. The mission was to discover if there was water on the moon at the time, but it also served to fulfill Dr Shoemaker's last wish.

  • When Neil Armstrong took that historical step of "one small step for man one giant step for mankind" it would not have occurred to anyone that the step he took in the dust of the moon was there to stay. It will be there for at least 10 million years.

  • When Alan Sheppard was on the moon, he hit a golf ball and drove it 2,400 feet, nearly one half a mile.

  • In a survey conducted in 1988, 13% of those surveyed believed that the moon is made of cheese.

  • The multi layer space suits worn by the astronauts to the moon weighed 180 pounds on earth, but thirty pounds on the moon due to the lower gravity.

  • How close can you get without completely running out of gas? Apollo 11 had only 20 seconds of fuel left when they landed on the moon.

  • Apollo 15 was the first mission to use a lunar rover. The top speed that was ever recorded in this 4-wheeled land vehicle was 10.56 miles per hour.

  • It is possible to have a month without a full moon. This occurs in February, but either January or March will have two moons.

  • In China, the dark shadows that are on the moon are called "the toad in the moon".

  • The Apollo missions brought back 2196 rock samples weighing 382 kg in total

  • The word "lunatic" comes from the Latin word for the moon: Luna. It was believed that mental illnesses were influenced by the phases of the moon.
Facts About the Moon
  • The moon is not a planet, but a satellite of the Earth.

  • The surface area of the moon is 14,658,000 square miles or 9.4 billion acres

  • Only 59% of the moon's surface is visible from earth.

  • The moon rotates at 10 miles per hour compared to the earth's rotation of 1000 miles per hour.

  • When a month has two full moons, the second full moon is called a blue moon. Another definition of a blue moon is the third full moon in any season (quarter of year) containing 4 total full moons.

  • From Earth, we always see the same side of the moon; the other side is always hidden.

  • The dark spots we see on the moon that create the image of the man in the moon are actually craters filled with basalt, which is a very dense material.

  • The moon is the only extraterrestrial body that has ever been visited by humans. It is also the only body that has had samples taken from it.

  • The first space craft to send back pictures from the moon was Luna 3 (built by the Soviet Union) in October 1959.

  • The moon has no global magnetic field.

  • The moon is about 1/4 the size of the Earth.

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Section last updated/reviewed 23 Jul 11.
Please note that the images and logos here, as on all our pages, are © (copyright) their respective owners and used by gracious permission. See our Special Thanks! page for details and links.

Star Stories



All of our understanding of constellations come from early sailors, who imagined different pictures in clusters of stars. These images, or constellations, provided consistent points of reference for navigation.

Most of us are familiar with the Big Dipper, pictured here. Not everyone is familiar with the fact that it is considered to be a part of the constellation Ursa Major, or the Big Bear. The Bear is the image the ancients saw.


African American slaves referred to the Dipping Gourd. In Hindu lore, they are the Seven Sages. They are The Ladle in Malaysia, and the Plough in Ireland and Great Britain, although some parts of Northern Britain they are referred to as the Butcher's Cleaver.

Scandinavians call these stars Charles' Wagon. Russians (& most other Slavic speakers) call them the Great Cart. And the Dutch frequently call them the Saucepan. Many Native Americans saw the "bowl" of the ladle as a bear with the three stars in the handles as her cubs. Other tribes thought the three handle stars were hunters chasing the bear.

The Bible refers to it as "the seven stars" (Amos 5:8).

Book XVIII of Homer's Iliad mentions it as "the Bear, which men also call the Wain."

In Tolkien's Middle-earth mythos, it is called the Valacirca (Sickle of the Valar), the sign of Hope signifying doom for Evil, while in T.A. Barron's Great Tree of Avalon series, it is called the Wizard's Staff, symbolizing Merlin's staff.

Other constellations have similar swarms of stories that change with culture and time, like this example.

One major "exception" to this rule of thumb are the Aborigines of Austrailia--their skies were so jammed packed with stars that their constellation/navigation markers were based on the blank spaces!

Much of this information was found neatly collected in the Wikipedia entry on the Big Dipper. Many thanks to them!

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Section last updated/reviewed 19 Jul 11.
Please note that the images and logos here, as on all our pages, are © (copyright) their respective owners and used by gracious permission. See our Special Thanks! page for details and links.

Space Junk...ah, Man Made Objects


under construction
Since the launch of Sputnik I on 4 October 1957, mankind has put a great deal of...uh, stuff, into orbit around the Earth.

Most Scouts are probably aware of the International Space Station (the photo for this section), but may not be aware of the history of space exploration and, much more importantly, it's future.

ISS statistics as of 9 December 2009

From: Wikipedia article: Space Station

Although the American Shuttle program has officially ended, space exploration has not. The focus in the US is moving to the private sector. What an exciting time in which to live! You might be able to vacation in space in your lifetime!

Here are a number of links to historical, current, and future plans in humanity's push into The Final Frontier.

Spaceflight     ISS     Salyut I     Genesis I     Genesis II     BA330     USA Satellites     Kosmos Satellites
Sputnik I        Explorer I            Mercury       Gemini         Apollo     Shuttle   
           

Clicking these links will take you away from this website. Please report broken links using the "Contact Our Troop" link at the top of the page. For further detail, please see our Disclaimer page.

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Section last updated/reviewed 23 Jul 11.
Please note that the images and logos here, as on all our pages, are © (copyright) their respective owners and used by gracious permission. See our Special Thanks! page for details and links.