Astronomy Final Project
Reflection
When it came time to deciding on which project I would do I flip flopped a lot. I had a hard time deciding, first I chose the Astrophysic Journal which consisted of reading an actual astrophyic research article and then turing that into plain english and my thought on it. At first I thought that sounded easy enough, then I started reading a couple of the articles and my head started hurting. It was so hard understanding half of the terms being used. It was like looking at Egyptian hieroglyphics and trying to decipher them without learning the language. I am sure that if I were on the same level as the people who wrote the articles I would have an easier time. Unfortunately I am not on the level and I did not want to deall with a headache the whole time so I looked over the remaining options and decided to go with the counting the stars project. I chose it first because I found it interesting that with a toilet paper roll you can calculate the amount of visible stars in an area, and I thought it would be a great way to not only see stars but to also see the effects of light pollution. Going into this I had very little knowledge of light pollution other than I knew it masked stars at night. When doing some research into light pollution I was surprised to find out that light pollution can effect human health among a list of other things.
To me one of the hardest things about this project would have to be finding a good night to look at stars. In the instructions it says that in order to get a good sample I would have to go on a night that had minimal to no stars. Unfortunately for me I decided to star on the worst time possible. When I was trying to go look at stars almost every night was cloudy or snowing. I had to monitor the weather forecast almost religously in order to find a good time to go. Eventually I found one day out of two weeks of searching that was a clear night sky. Another difficulty was actually finding a spot that has very little light pollution that wasn't too far from my home. I researched online and found that the closest place to me that had little light pollution was Antelope Island. Even when I was out there you could see in the distance the actual light pollution from Clearfield and Salt Lake City. It was crazy to see just how bright it actually was. It just really proves the point that light pollution is every where and that it is really hard to escape it.
I had a fun time with this project. It gave me some good knowlege as well as an excuse to go look at stars. While the actual project was not that hard I would say that it can be hard to find good locations to go as well as getting the weather to cooperate. All in all I was able to gain knowledge in the fact that light pollution is a problem that not many people know about. It can harm our health, harm the health of the ecosystem and the animals in it, and it can also harm our bank accounts. Learning about this information will help me make life choices to help eliminate light pollution as much as possible as well as informing ohters about what I have learned.
To me one of the hardest things about this project would have to be finding a good night to look at stars. In the instructions it says that in order to get a good sample I would have to go on a night that had minimal to no stars. Unfortunately for me I decided to star on the worst time possible. When I was trying to go look at stars almost every night was cloudy or snowing. I had to monitor the weather forecast almost religously in order to find a good time to go. Eventually I found one day out of two weeks of searching that was a clear night sky. Another difficulty was actually finding a spot that has very little light pollution that wasn't too far from my home. I researched online and found that the closest place to me that had little light pollution was Antelope Island. Even when I was out there you could see in the distance the actual light pollution from Clearfield and Salt Lake City. It was crazy to see just how bright it actually was. It just really proves the point that light pollution is every where and that it is really hard to escape it.
I had a fun time with this project. It gave me some good knowlege as well as an excuse to go look at stars. While the actual project was not that hard I would say that it can be hard to find good locations to go as well as getting the weather to cooperate. All in all I was able to gain knowledge in the fact that light pollution is a problem that not many people know about. It can harm our health, harm the health of the ecosystem and the animals in it, and it can also harm our bank accounts. Learning about this information will help me make life choices to help eliminate light pollution as much as possible as well as informing ohters about what I have learned.