Astronomy Minute

A brief description of how the motion of the Moon around the Earth, the Earth around the Sun, the Sun around the center of our galaxy, and the motion of the galaxy itself are like clockwork.

A brief description of Johannes Kepler's main contributions to astronomy. 

A brief description of Tycho Brahe's contributions to astronomy.

A brief description of the basic contributions Nicolaus Copernicus made to the science of astronomy.

A brief description of the techniques we use to detect the presence of planets orbiting around other stars besides the Sun. These techniques are known as Transit Photometry and Doppler Spectroscopy.

A brief description of the definition of a Bell Curve - also known as a Normal Distribution and a Gaussian Distribution; it is very important in the fields of statistics and probability.

A brief description of Right Ascension and Declination and how they are used to locate objects in the sky.

A brief description of what causes the phases of the Earth's Moon. An animation/movie linked off of the web page helps to explain the podcast.

A brief description of what doesn't cause the seasons and what we actually believe does cause them. There is also a graphic linked off the web page that helps explain this episode.

A brief description of the difference between precision and accuracy in astronomy.

A brief description of what we mean when we say that two numbers differ by an order to magnitude. This includes a summary of what a Logarithmic is.

A brief description of why we expect the Sun to have been formed in a multiple star system and how we are searching for the other stars formed with it.

A brief description of the difference between random errors and systematic errors in science.

A brief description of the magnitude system in astronomy including the difference between apparent magnitude and absolute magnitude.

A brief description of the Kelvin temperature scale as compared with Fahrenheit and Celsius.

A brief description of what comets are and how they are responsible for meteor showers on the Earth.

A brief description of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) also known as the Primordial Background Radiation.

A brief description of how we classify stars based on their surface temperatures.

A brief description of the concept of hierarchical clustering in astronomy.

A brief description of the main components of the interstellar medium, which is the stuff in space between the stars.