#normalize astronomy

[eclipse89]

thought a little about how phones could be if we normalized astronomy more and there are so many cool options

imagine if you could open up your lock screen and it automatically was able to show the phase and position of the moon

imagine if every phone had a built-in full scale sky simulator (i imagine this would be by far the best sky simulator created, if it had the backing of a huge company like apple or samsung)

imagine if you could point your camera at a star or planet and the camera would automatically identify (this shouldn’t be too hard, if the phone has location and positional data) that star or planet and then give pictures and information about it

imagine if when you open your camera app and point the phone at the sky, the phone (at night) automatically showed that sky simulator overlayed on the sky in real-time with the full sky simulator controls (changing time, seeing how the sky looked previously and how it will look)

imagine if you could put your phone on a telescope adapter and set the camera on a telescope mode where it optimizes the camera for astrophotography (planetary, lunar, basic deep space, the works)

imagine if when you pointed your camera at the moon instead of overlaying a fake texture it just gave info about the rise and set times, current phase, distance from earth, etc- all with visual aids overlayed right on the live camera!

there’s an insane amount of potential here for Really Cool Sci-fi Stuff that we just. collectively decided not to explore?

this is probably true for literally any specific topic, if you know about any and have ideas feel free to reblog them or comment them or tag them or whatever you’re supposed to do here

[celpii]

Binary star: a system of two gravitationally bound stars that orbit a common center of mass

Loop/flipped version under the cut

[mochablogger]

Lazy Planet X doobles before the episode today go brrr

Live love laugh Planet X 🙏🙏🙏

[niinnyu]

Astrolabe- Star Taker

[youkaigakkou-tl]

G-Fantasy August 2024 cover + cleaned

WAAAAGHHHHHH ITS SO PRETTY 😭😭😭😭😭

[zehl0w]

"And when the time comes you get the chance to really test the cut of your sails, and show 'em what you're made of, Well…. I hope I'm there. catchin' some of the light comin' off you that day"

Happy 20th birthday to my absolute favorite move of all time!!!!! My only regret in life is that I wasn’t born early enough to see Treasure Planet in theaters I can’t imagine how much of a changed woman I would be if I experienced it on the big screen. This movie is so very important to me and has consistently been in my number one spot since childhood it never fails to make me cry my eyes out no matter how many times I’ve watched it. I think as a fatherless child this movie is what sparked my complete love and adoration for found family troupes and child care animes LMAOO

If u haven’t seen treasure planet wtf is wrong with you!!!!!!! Go watch it rn!!!!!!!!! Genuine perfect fiction the whole movie is astounding (except Ben fuck you ben I hate you)

[escapeluminary]

from where I am, there’s just sun and rain flowers have bloomed without the softness of spring— nor did they feel the magic of fall; the changing of leaves does not have its own prose.

here, I don’t miss Cherry Blossoms in winter for Bougainvilleas parade and color the streets and when August comes, raindrops play like a song on repeat the warmth of summer lasts—until it doesn’t. from where I am, I see where I’m not the clouds in the sky hang like dream catchers; here, I sit by and wonder when I'll wander; here, the dust has not settled yet.

—K.M.K.

[kosss369]

erm HUSBAND AND WIVES!!! last one is my newest art idk who it is🔥🔥(edited: this is not my newest art)

anyway this is my (old)pinned hi hi hi

hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi‼️‼️‼️❤️❤️‍🔥❤️❤️‍🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

i’m on tumblr sometimes i just might not interact with anything cause i like watching in general(it’s mostly cause i feel like a millennial on tumblr) (i have no idea how to operate this app)

uhhh yea you can talk to me/ show me anything since i’m not triggered by anything specific

i don’t like pedophiles or any of that stuff(kinda obvious)

my art/words can be mostly suggestive/bloody so uh if you cant stomach a little blood/nakedness i’m not for you💔

ask me anything uhh

might not respond quick since i don’t know if i get uhhh notifs often i’m most active on the weekends,, )school)

call me kos for short

i like my frieendsss,,,

i also talk veryuhhhhh weirdly like i’ll most likely flirt with you in our first conversation lmao

pleeeaase follow @ton-618-ton-618 BECAUSE HOYLEHANSIAAJAGAGAGAVJEEVJWASTORJOMYNSHAASTOTNOTM

astronomy i’m so normal i’m so normal

oh and FOLLOW MY BABYGIRL @stupidscav because i’m gonna bite you if you don’t

if you ever hurt thrm….i’m gonna hunt you

AALALLALA

yea that’s it‼️

[gl1tched-g0th]

forget about touching grass, I need to touch THE STARS I NEED TO GO TO SPACE I NEED TO FLOAT IN THE VASTNESS!!!!!!!!

_________________________________

I NEED TO GO IN THERE ⬇⬇⬇‼‼‼

[oflgtfol]

uhm. We’re dating now

[eclipse89]

hypotheses on astrology

long post

from the beginning of our history, humanity has been fascinated with the unknown. with things operating beyond the basic physicality of our reality. we used to call it gods, or magic, which were in fact large parts of real life back then.

and then slowly, we started explaining them. we got smarter, more curious, more persistent. not all of the explanations were right of course, but they got less and less wrong over time.

what used to be magic, became explained by primitive science. unknowns became known- more than that, they became grounded aspects of physical reality. no longer were the huge unexplainable voids that popped up whenever something different or new happened, we simply rationalized what was happening and fit it nicely into whatever current model of reality or physics we had like a missing puzzle piece.

enter religion.

i think it’s inherent to the human experience, to crave some form of escapism. to delude ourselves into thinking that this basic, physical reality can't be all there is. because if it was, we'd know everything. curiousity would be obsolete. obviously this is far from the case currently, i'll get to why that is later.

but for a time, religion filled that void well. it gave us a common story to believe in, a community, plus a nice bit of escapism in the stories of heaven and hell, angels and demons, (or their relative equivalents in other religions), etc. and science of course, kept tracking on alongside it- albeit, while contradicting and attacking eachother once in a while, but still doing it’s job and explaining those last straggler unknowns that always seemed to pop up.

the thing about science though, to do experiments and to figure out those unknowns, you have to be able to y’know. experiment on them. naturally, the most physically accessible and common stuff is what got figured out first (plants, animals, rocks, you get the idea) while things like weather phenomena took a while to understand due to their transient and unpredictable nature.

astronomy has always been in an odd spot in that, because without some technology (telescopes, say) there are a very limited number of things you can figure out scientifically. it’s nearly impossible to actually understand and totally make sense of what you’re seeing, beyond very surface-level observations (admittedly, very useful observations in terms of navigating and such) without it.

astrology started as simply a way to make sense of, and give meaning to, what astronomy was seeing. which made a lot of sense back then, considering that science and logic was not enough to figure out what was happening up there.

until the advent of the telescope, and of modern astronomy, space was one of the largest remaining unknowns of the human world.

astrology, was sort of a way to explain that unknown- but not really. it explained it in the same way that saying ‘’zeus is angry’’ explains a thunderstorm. which for some people, or most people, was a sufficient explanation.

in 1543, Copernicus proposed heliocentrism.

in 1609, Galileo first built his telescope.

in 1687, Newton stated the three laws of motion.

by the 1700‘s, space had been explained. the void had been filled (or so we thought, at least). astrology had become a relic, it had become mostly obsolete.

yet somehow,

‘’A 2005 Gallup poll and a 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center reported that 25% of US adults believe in astrology, while a 2018 Pew survey found a figure of 29%.’’

 and

‘’Indian politics have also been influenced by astrology. In 2001, Indian scientists and politicians debated and critiqued a proposal to use state money to fund research into astrology’‘

and

‘’In Japan, strong belief in astrology has led to dramatic changes in the fertility rate and the number of abortions in the years of Fire Horse.‘‘

think about it. if i asked you what your horoscope is, the majority of you would know which month/period corresponds to which sign. in fact, according to a YouGov poll, 90% of Americans select a sign when asked.

so, what happened?

how did something that was essentially dead, become insanely prevalent in cultures all across the globe? debatably, you could even say equally or close to as prevalent as the actual science that killed it.

my hypothesis, is that is was caused by two things. one moreso than the other, but both contribute to it i believe. 

the first, lesser thing, would be this: increasingly throughout the past few decades or more, religion has been becoming less popular than ever. not just in america, but across most of the world, religion is on the decline. check any study, all the data points are there.

as i said earlier, religion was the greatest provider of a good unknown, of divine escapism- of a controlling force, a reason for the things that happen.

religion is declining, but we haven’t lost that primal desire for something beyond us. and to a degree, astrology does provide this. not quite as much as religion of course, but for the right people it also does the trick. if you believe that something not under our control- something beyond humanity, controls or at least influences us and our decisions and our personalities and everything that happens in our lives, doesn’t that sound familiar?

i can’t conclusively prove that there’s a link here. maybe someone else did, somewhere- i wouldn’t be surprised if so, but i can’t. all i can prove is that it’s possible, which it very much is.

my second possibility is to do with astronomy:

know how earlier, i said that we had unknowns? voids, where we had no information or data about a phenomenon and had to either leave it as an unknown or just come up with the most logical explanation we can think of (and with no data, this goes exactly as you’d expect)

these voids don’t exist universally. there are experts on obscure topics, in their minds the void is small, while for the rest of us the void is incomprehensible. we trust in experts on things like this, we know there are people out there getting rid of these voids even though we personally still perceive them. 

astronomy was, in ancient times, something done by almost everyone. it was, firstly, beautiful- in many cases, one and the same with a religious experience. and secondly, it was necessary. navigation by stars was something almost everyone could directly benefit from knowing how to do.

throughout time the practice was alienated (pun unintended) from the public by multiple different things. the oldest things would probably settling, agriculture, etc, that made it less beneficial to learn to navigate by the stars.

another large one would be religion, as i said previously science and religion of course conflicted at many times and religion often won. religion also had closer ties to the ruling powers in most cases, giving it greater sway than individual scientists.

at this point capital s Science still continued; astronomy still did continue formally, but by the times where the large discoveries occurred and we figured out that ‘’space’’ knowledge void, the general public largely did not have any knowledge regarding astronomy. by the time the real technological innovation hit in the past couple centuries, astronomy has been relegated to the experts.

the reason i would consider this a bad thing, and the reason it ties into astrology, is because astronomy isn’t some very obscure topic that only a couple experts should even be considering.

by and large, for the general public and apart from those few experts, we’ve reversed the filling of a knowledge void.

a person from ancient times, would most likely know more about astronomy than the average person today- or at the very least, would definitely have more experience with it.

and now that there’s this huge unknown again, the alternatives that can explain it in a satisfying way are looking all the more appealing.

i propose mainly, that this knowledge loss in astronomy, has led to a high in the popularity and prevalence of astrology with the general public in the last few decades.

astrology isn’t based on any science whatsoever. we know this. even people that believe in astrology, know this. because that isn’t the point of it. science is what explains the unexplainable; of course something that’s trying to hold on to that last little thread of an unknown in our world, isn’t going to be remotely related to its antithesis.

to refute astrology using logic or science is absolute folly, because it isn’t even attempting to say that it adheres to the rules of either of those.

refute astrology by learning astronomy.

refute astrology by teaching others astronomy.

refute astrology by, little by little, filling that knowledge void we created. a fire dies without oxygen. 

[elliethefroggy]

The Messenger space probe that was destined for Mercury launched in August 2004 and took 7 years to get into Mercury’s orbit. 7 years before it could finally, truly start its work.

Messenger was slingshot from inner planet to inner planet. Going from Earth to Venus, then back to Venus again, before completing three flybys of Mercury, only catching glimpses of its final destination. Until, finally, after 6 years, 7 months and 16 days, it slowed down enough thanks to those planetary flybys to safely enter orbit.

It travelled 7,9 billion km to get to Mercury, a planet that, at its closest, is only 77 million km away from Earth (you can't take a direct route because the sun's gravity will speed up the spacecraft too much).

Messenger then spent the next four years around that planet, from 2011 to 2015. And then, after those 4 years, after all the propellant was used up and it could no longer correct its orbit, it crashed down to the planet’s thin rocky surface. The one it had spent all those years observing.

All that time and distance travelled, only to spend 4 years around Mercury. 1505 days.

And it was all worth it.

Thanks to Messenger, we know so much about Mercury, the tiny crater-riddled planet at the heart of our solar system.

We know that in its polar regions, there is ice located in shadowy craters that the sunlight can never touch. We learned that, due to its cooling core, Mercury has contracted about 7 km in radius. We’ve learnt about its composition, its magnetic field, its past volcanic activity, and so much more.

Messenger went through 2 mission extensions, traveled about 14 billion km in total, took over 290,000 images, and mapped the whole of the planet for the first time.

We have thousands of detailed images of a planet so hard to get to, humanity is unlikely to see with its own eyes in my lifetime. And those images are all so beautiful.

(all images are credited to: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington)

[ID: 8 images of the planet Mercury taken from various angles at various distances]

[blueskingdom]

am i going to be thinking abt how charles’ birth moon is a full moon and how if max was born just one day later his birth moon would’ve been a new moon and the two of them would’ve just, oh i don’t know, completed each other fully?

the answer is yes.

[ctntduoarchive]

sorry but when people say earth has the goldilocks conditions they mean It’s literally such a small margin. it’s like

that could’ve been us. that could’ve been us so easily

[w1tchcr4ftt]

Making a statement because my linguistics and science loving idiot self is going insane

People are confusing astroNOMY and astroLOGY

Astrology is a usually spiritual based belief in star signs and zodiac symbols

Astronomy is the study of stars and outer space

THEY ARE NOT THE SAME AND ARENT INTERCHANGEABLE

[bonestrouslingbones]

my classes were supposed to start back up again today but completely asynchronously so i get to essentially return to my really super healthy covid lockdown mindset which yayyy for me but the actual bad part is that the first assignment i have to do is one that is not particularly suited to not having school or anything resembling a schedule for a full month