Astronomy 210L, spring semester 2011
Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA
If you have the chance to stay up at night outside long enough, say, during camping or a star party (or a camping star party!), you'll start to notice how the constellations seem to change their positions in the night sky. Keep watching the night sky long enough, often enough, and you'll definitely start noticing certain things happening.
So don't dismiss astrology out of hand--the early astrologers were in some sense the first scientists, recording data and looking for patterns. How their interpretation of this data holds up today is an entirely different, and for some people, a personal matter, but let's consider a particular pattern these astrologers noticed about the positions and motions of the sun and the constellations.
(This is the fourth Astronomy 210L laboratory at Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, CA. This course is a one-semester, optional adjunct laboratory to the Astronomy 210 introductory astronomy lecture, taken primarily by students to satisfy their general education science transfer requirement.)
Consider the zodiac, which are the (modern) constellations that lie along the ecliptic--the path of the sun (and for the most part, planets as well) across the celestial sphere.
This is a time-lapse of the sun at noon, over the course of a year. You can't see the stars during the day, much less the lines connecting them, unless you've been smoking something--or are very good at astronomy. But if you could, you'd notice that the sun will align with certain zodiac constellations at different times of the year. For astrologers, which zodiac constellation the sun happened to be in the day you were born is a big deal--for that constellation is your "sun-sign." (Also which zodiac constellations each of the planets were in when you were born, and where they are today would also be significant, too.)
If you were born at this time of the year, then
presumably you'd be a Virgo.
And if you were born during this time of the year, where the sun is in Ophiuchus (nearly rhymes with "coffee mucus"--what's up with that?), then apparently you'd be an Ophiuchan--just like
Taylor Swift (although many astrologers do not consider Ophiuchus a "proper" zodiac constellation).
After your group has finished exploring patterns of sun and star motion using the Heavens-above.com website, then as in
last week's laboratory, formulate a specific, answerable research question, and answer it using Heavens-above.com.
Get your research question on your group's whiteboard approved by your instructor first--so you don't wind up doing unproductive work on inappropriate research questions--before starting on the procedure, data, and conclusion.
Starting this week, each of your groups will begin getting into the practice of presenting your completed whiteboard research posters.
Due to the collaborative nature of your research question, this should be done together as a group.
Divide up the presentation into four parts (research question, procedure, data, conclusion)--at least one for each student in your group, who should also be "experts" on their section in order to answer questions and make clarifications as needed. And don't sweat it, this week your presentation will only in front of the instructor; next week's laboratory you will formulate new research questions and make presentations in front of the entire class.
So while astrology is where your destiny is determined by the positions and motions of the sun and planets with respect to the stars...
Hopefully after last week's and this week's laboratory, you'll at least understand these motions, and in a way become masters of your destinies.
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