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Sproul Observatory
Sproul Observatory was an astronomical observatory owned and operated by Swarthmore College. It was located in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, United States, and named after William Cameron Sproul, the 27th Governor of Pennsylvania, who graduated from Swarthmore in 1891. The 24" telescope was moved from Sproul Observatory to Bentonville, Arkansas in July 2017 History In 1907, William Cameron Sproul communicated to the Board of Managers of Swarthmore College his desire to donate funds for the purchase of equipment for an astronomical observatory. Sproul was a successful businessman who graduated from Swarthmore in 1891 and a trustee to the college. At the time of the gift, he was serving as Pennsylvania State Senator for the 9th District and went on to become the 27th Governor of Pennsylvania. The telescope was built in 1911 by the John A. Brashear Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When the telescope was installed at the observatory in 1913, it was the largest on the East C ...
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Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeducational colleges in the United States. It was established as a college "under the care of Quakers, Friends, [and] at which an education may be obtained equal to that of the best institutions of learning in our country." By 1906, Swarthmore had dropped its religious affiliation and officially became non-sectarian. Swarthmore is a member of the Tri-College Consortium, a cooperative academic arrangement with Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr and Haverford College. Swarthmore also is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania through the Quaker Consortium, which allows for students to cross-register for classes at all four institutions. Swarthmore offers over 600 courses per year in more than 40 areas of study, including an ABET-accredited engin ...
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Magdalena, New Mexico
Magdalena is a village in Socorro County, New Mexico, United States. The population was 938 at the 2010 census. "The Lady on the Mountain" is a rock formation on Magdalena Peak overlooking Magdalena. Spanish soldiers saw the profile of a woman on the west face of the peak. A priest with them was reminded of a similar peak in Spain called "La Sierra de Maria Magdalena", so he called the New Mexico one " La Sierra de Magdalena". The pass to the south of the peak became known as Magdalena Gap, and when a town grew up it received the same name. Magdalena continues to be a ranching community while strengthening its art, astronomy and geology venues. The reopening of the Magdalena Hall Hotel (circa 1917) and the renovation of other historical buildings allow visitors to connect to the past. The Magdalena Public Library and Boxcar Museum are housed in the old railroad depot. Several rock and mineral shops have been around since the mining boom days. The ghost town of Kelly and two festi ...
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Astronomical Observatories In Pennsylvania
Astronomy () is a natural science that studies astronomical object, celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and chronology of the Universe, evolution. Objects of interest include planets, natural satellite, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxy, galaxies, and comets. Relevant phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, quasars, blazars, pulsars, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, astronomy studies everything that originates beyond atmosphere of Earth, Earth's atmosphere. Cosmology is a branch of astronomy that studies the universe as a whole. Astronomy is one of the oldest natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history made methodical observations of the night sky. These include the Babylonian astronomy, Babylonians, Greek astronomy, Greeks, Indian astronomy, Indians, Egyptian astronomy, Egyptians, Chinese astronomy, Chinese, Maya civilization, Maya, and many anc ...
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List Of Largest Optical Refracting Telescopes
Refracting telescopes use a lens to focus light. The largest refracting telescope in the world is the Yerkes Observatory 40 inch (102 cm) refractor, used for astronomical and scientific observation for over a century. The Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope, which has an actual lens diameter of 43 inches, is technically then larger than the lens of the Yerkes, but only 39 inches are clear for the aperture, and is used today for solar observations .The next largest refractor telescopes are the James Lick telescope, and the Meudon Great Refractor. Most are classical great refractors, which used achromatic doublets on an equatorial mount. However, other large refractors include a 21st-century solar telescope which is not directly comparable because it uses a single element non-achromatic lens, and the short-lived Great Paris Exhibition Telescope of 1900. It used a 78-inch (200 cm) Focault siderostat for aiming light into the Image-forming optical system part of the telescope, ...
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Barnard's Star
Barnard's Star is a red dwarf about six light-years from Earth in the constellation of Ophiuchus. It is the fourth-nearest-known individual star to the Sun after the three components of the Alpha Centauri system, and the closest star in the northern celestial hemisphere. Its stellar mass is about 14% of the Sun's. Despite its proximity, the star has a dim apparent magnitude of +9.5 and is invisible to the unaided eye; it is much brighter in the infrared than in visible light. The star is named after E. E. Barnard, an American astronomer who in 1916 measured its proper motion as 10.3 arcseconds per year relative to the Sun, the highest known for any star. The star had previously appeared on Harvard University photographic plates in 1888 and 1890. Barnard's Star is among the most studied red dwarfs because of its proximity and favorable location for observation near the celestial equator. Historically, research on Barnard's Star has focused on measuring its stellar characte ...
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List Of Astronomical Observatories
This is a list of astronomical observatories ordered by name, along with initial dates of operation (where an accurate date is available) and location. The list also includes a final year of operation for many observatories that are no longer in operation. While other sciences, such as volcanology and meteorology, also use facilities called observatories for research and observations, this list is limited to observatories that are used to observe celestial objects. Astronomical observatories are mainly divided into four categories: space-based, airborne, ground-based, and underground-based. Many modern telescopes and observatories are located in space to observe astronomical objects in wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that cannot penetrate the Earth's atmosphere (such as ultraviolet radiation, X-rays, and gamma rays) and are thus impossible to observe using ground-based telescopes. Being above the atmosphere, these space observatories can also avoid the effects of atmo ...
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Planetary System
A planetary system is a set of gravitationally In physics, gravity () is a fundamental interaction which causes mutual attraction between all things with mass or energy. Gravity is, by far, the weakest of the four fundamental interactions, approximately 1038 times weaker than the stron ... bound non-Star, stellar objects in or out of orbit around a star or star system. Generally speaking, systems with one or more planets constitute a planetary system, although such systems may also consist of bodies such as dwarf planets, asteroids, natural satellites, meteoroids, comets, planetesimals and circumstellar disks. The Sun together with the planetary system revolving around it, including Earth, forms the Solar System. The term exoplanetary system is sometimes used in reference to other planetary systems. Debris disks are also known to be common, though other objects are more difficult to observe. Of particular interest to astrobiology is the habitable zone of planetary sy ...
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Systematic Error
Observational error (or measurement error) is the difference between a measured value of a quantity and its true value.Dodge, Y. (2003) ''The Oxford Dictionary of Statistical Terms'', OUP. In statistics, an error is not necessarily a " mistake". Variability is an inherent part of the results of measurements and of the measurement process. Measurement errors can be divided into two components: ''random'' and ''systematic''. Random errors are errors in measurement that lead to measurable values being inconsistent when repeated measurements of a constant attribute or quantity are taken. Systematic errors are errors that are not determined by chance but are introduced by repeatable processes inherent to the system. Systematic error may also refer to an error with a non-zero mean, the effect of which is not reduced when observations are averaged. Measurement errors can be summarized in terms of accuracy and precision. Measurement error should not be confused with measurement ...
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Photographic Plates
Photographic plates preceded photographic film as a capture medium in photography, and were still used in some communities up until the late 20th century. The light-sensitive emulsion of silver salts was coated on a glass plate, typically thinner than common window glass. History Glass plates were far superior to film for research-quality imaging because they were stable and less likely to bend or distort, especially in large-format frames for wide-field imaging. Early plates used the wet collodion process. The wet plate process was replaced late in the 19th century by gelatin dry plates. A view camera nicknamed "The Mammoth" weighing was built by George R. Lawrence in 1899, specifically to photograph "The Alton Limited" train owned by the Chicago & Alton Railway. It took photographs on glass plates measuring × . Glass plate photographic material largely faded from the consumer market in the early years of the 20th century, as more convenient and less fragile films w ...
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Astrometry
Astrometry is a branch of astronomy that involves precise measurements of the positions and movements of stars and other celestial bodies. It provides the kinematics and physical origin of the Solar System and this galaxy, the Milky Way. History The history of astrometry is linked to the history of star catalogues, which gave astronomers reference points for objects in the sky so they could track their movements. This can be dated back to Hipparchus, who around 190 BC used the catalogue of his predecessors Timocharis and Aristillus to discover Earth's precession. In doing so, he also developed the brightness scale still in use today. Hipparchus compiled a catalogue with at least 850 stars and their positions. Hipparchus's successor, Ptolemy, included a catalogue of 1,022 stars in his work the '' Almagest'', giving their location, coordinates, and brightness. In the 10th century, Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi carried out observations on the stars and described their positions, ma ...
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Planetary Systems
A planetary system is a set of gravitationally bound non- stellar objects in or out of orbit around a star or star system. Generally speaking, systems with one or more planets constitute a planetary system, although such systems may also consist of bodies such as dwarf planets, asteroids, natural satellites, meteoroids, comets, planetesimals and circumstellar disks. The Sun together with the planetary system revolving around it, including Earth, forms the Solar System. The term exoplanetary system is sometimes used in reference to other planetary systems. Debris disks are also known to be common, though other objects are more difficult to observe. Of particular interest to astrobiology is the habitable zone of planetary systems where planets could have surface liquid water, and thus the capacity to support Earth-like life. History Heliocentrism Historically, heliocentrism (the doctrine that the Sun is at the centre of the universe) was opposed to geocentrism (placing Ea ...
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Sarah L
Sarah (born Sarai) is a biblical matriarch and prophetess, a major figure in Abrahamic religions. While different Abrahamic faiths portray her differently, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all depict her character similarly, as that of a pious woman, renowned for her hospitality and beauty, the wife and half-sister of Abraham, and the mother of Isaac. Sarah has her feast day on 1 September in the Catholic Church, 19 August in the Coptic Orthodox Church, 20 January in the LCMS, and 12 and 20 December in the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the Hebrew Bible Family According to Book of Genesis 20:12, in conversation with the Philistine king Abimelech of Gerar, Abraham reveals Sarah to be both his wife and his half-sister, stating that the two share a father but not a mother. Such unions were later explicitly banned in the Book of Leviticus (). This would make Sarah the daughter of Terah and the half-sister of not only Abraham but Haran and Nahor. She would also have been the aun ...
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