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Sky Brightness
Sky brightness refers to the visual perception of the sky and how it scatters and diffuses light. The fact that the sky is not completely dark at night is easily visible. If light sources (e.g. the Moon and light pollution) were removed from the night sky, only direct starlight would be visible. The sky's brightness varies greatly over the day, and the primary cause differs as well. During daytime, when the Sun is above the horizon, the direct scattering of sunlight is the overwhelmingly dominant source of light. During twilight (the duration after sunset or before sunrise until or since, respectively, the full darkness of night), the situation is more complicated, and a further differentiation is required. Twilight (both dusk and dawn) is divided into three 6° segments that mark the Sun's position below the horizon. At civil twilight, the center of the Sun's disk appears to be between 1/4° and 6° below the horizon. At nautical twilight, the Sun's altitude is between †... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Night Sky
The night sky is the nighttime appearance of celestial objects like stars, planets, and the Moon, which are visible in a clear sky between sunset and sunrise, when the Sun is below the horizon. Natural light sources in a night sky include moonlight, starlight, and airglow, depending on location and timing. Aurorae light up the skies above the polar circles. Occasionally, a large coronal mass ejection from the Sun or simply high levels of solar wind may extend the phenomenon toward the Equator. The night sky and studies of it have a historical place in both ancient and modern cultures. In the past, for instance, farmers have used the status of the night sky as a calendar to determine when to plant crops. Many cultures have drawn constellations between stars in the sky, using them in association with legends and mythology about their deities. The anciently developed belief of astrology is generally based on the belief that relationships between heavenly bodies infl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Civil Twilight
Twilight is light produced by sunlight scattering in the upper atmosphere, when the Sun is below the horizon, which illuminates the lower atmosphere and the Earth's surface. The word twilight can also refer to the periods of time when this illumination occurs. The lower the Sun is beneath the horizon, the dimmer the twilight (other factors such as atmospheric conditions being equal). When the Sun reaches 18° below the horizon, the twilight's brightness is nearly zero, and evening twilight becomes nighttime. When the Sun again reaches 18° below the horizon, nighttime becomes morning twilight. Owing to its distinctive quality, primarily the absence of shadows and the appearance of objects silhouetted against the lit sky, twilight has long been popular with photographers and painters, who often refer to it as the blue hour, after the French expression ''l'heure bleue''. By analogy with evening twilight, the word ''twilight'' is also sometimes used metaphorically, to imply t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ionosphere
The ionosphere () is the ionized part of the upper atmosphere of Earth, from about to above sea level, a region that includes the thermosphere and parts of the mesosphere and exosphere. The ionosphere is ionized by solar radiation. It plays an important role in atmospheric electricity and forms the inner edge of the magnetosphere. It has practical importance because, among other functions, it influences radio propagation to distant places on Earth. History of discovery As early as 1839, the German mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss postulated that an electrically conducting region of the atmosphere could account for observed variations of Earth's magnetic field. Sixty years later, Guglielmo Marconi received the first trans-Atlantic radio signal on December 12, 1901, in St. John's, Newfoundland (now in Canada) using a kite-supported antenna for reception. The transmitting station in Poldhu, Cornwall, used a spark-gap transmitter to produce a signal with a freq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesopause
The mesopause is the point of minimum temperature at the boundary between the mesosphere and the thermosphere atmospheric regions. Due to the lack of solar heating and very strong radiative cooling from carbon dioxide, the mesosphere is the coldest region on Earth with temperatures as low as -100 °C (-148 °F or 173 K). The altitude of the mesopause for many years was assumed to be at around 85 km (53 mi), but observations to higher altitudes and modeling studies in the last 10 years have shown that in fact the mesopause consists of two minima - one at about 85 km and a stronger minimum at about 100 km (62 mi). Another feature is that the summer mesopause is cooler than the winter (sometimes referred to as the ''mesopause anomaly''). It is due to a summer-to-winter circulation giving rise to upwelling at the summer pole and downwelling at the winter pole. Air rising will expand and cool resulting in a cold summer mesopause and conversely downw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sodium Layer
The sodium layer is a layer of neutral atoms of sodium within Earth's mesosphere. This layer usually lies within an altitude range of above sea level and has a depth of about . The sodium comes from the ablation of meteors. Atmospheric sodium below this layer is normally chemically bound in compounds such as sodium oxide, while the sodium atoms above the layer tend to be ionized. The density varies with season; the average column density (the number of atoms per unit area above any point on the earth's surface) is roughly 4 billion sodium atoms/cm2. For a typical thickness of 5 km this corresponds to volume density of roughly 8000 sodium atoms/cm3. Atoms of sodium in this layer can become excited due to sunlight, solar wind, or other causes. Once excited, these atoms radiate very efficiently around 589 nm, which is in the yellow portion of the spectrum. These radiation bands are known as the '' sodium D lines''. The resulting radiation is one of the sources of air ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ultraviolet
Ultraviolet (UV) is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelength from 10 nanometer, nm (with a corresponding frequency around 30 Hertz, PHz) to 400 nm (750 Hertz, THz), shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays. UV radiation is present in sunlight, and constitutes about 10% of the total electromagnetic radiation output from the Sun. It is also produced by electric arcs and specialized lights, such as mercury-vapor lamps, tanning lamps, and black lights. Although long-wavelength ultraviolet is not considered an ionizing radiation because its photons lack the energy to ionization, ionize atoms, it can cause chemical reactions and causes many substances to glow or fluorescence, fluoresce. Consequently, the chemical and biological effects of UV are greater than simple heating effects, and many practical applications of UV radiation derive from its interactions with organic molecules. Short-wave ultraviolet light damages DNA and sterilizes surf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Emission Line
A spectral line is a dark or bright line in an otherwise uniform and continuous spectrum, resulting from emission or absorption of light in a narrow frequency range, compared with the nearby frequencies. Spectral lines are often used to identify atoms and molecules. These "fingerprints" can be compared to the previously collected ones of atoms and molecules, and are thus used to identify the atomic and molecular components of stars and planets, which would otherwise be impossible. Types of line spectra Spectral lines are the result of interaction between a quantum system (usually atoms, but sometimes molecules or atomic nucleus, atomic nuclei) and a single photon. When a photon has about the right amount of photon energy, energy (which is connected to its frequency) to allow a change in the energy state of the system (in the case of an atom this is usually an electron changing Electron configuration, orbitals), the photon is absorbed. Then the energy will be spontaneously ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aurora Borealis
An aurora (plural: auroras or aurorae), also commonly known as the polar lights, is a natural light display in Earth's sky, predominantly seen in high-latitude regions (around the Arctic and Antarctic). Auroras display dynamic patterns of brilliant lights that appear as curtains, rays, spirals, or dynamic flickers covering the entire sky. Auroras are the result of disturbances in the magnetosphere caused by the solar wind. Major disturbances result from enhancements in the speed of the solar wind from coronal holes and coronal mass ejections. These disturbances alter the trajectories of charged particles in the magnetospheric plasma. These particles, mainly electrons and protons, precipitate into the upper atmosphere (thermosphere/ exosphere). The resulting ionization and excitation of atmospheric constituents emit light of varying colour and complexity. The form of the aurora, occurring within bands around both polar regions, is also dependent on the amount of accelerati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anders Ångström
Anders is a male name in Scandinavian languages and Fering North Frisian, an equivalent of the Greek Andreas ("manly") and the English Andrew. It originated from Andres via metathesis. In Sweden, Anders has been one of the most common names for many centuries, earliest attested in 1378. It was common for priests and farmers during medieval times. According to Statistics Sweden, as of 31 December 2002 it ranks 4th among the male names. The great frequency of this name at the point in time (around 1900) when patronymics were converted into family names is the reason why 1 out of every 30 Swedes today is called Andersson. The name day of Anders in the Scandinavian calendar is 30 November, and in the old peasant superstition that day was important for determining what the Christmas weather would be. If it was very cold on 30 November there would be much sleet on Christmas (and vice versa). In Denmark Donald Duck's name is ''Anders And''. The Fering name Anders may have been bor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
European Southern Observatory
The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, commonly referred to as the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental research organisation made up of 16 member states for ground-based astronomy. Created in 1962, ESO has provided astronomers with state-of-the-art research facilities and access to the southern sky. The organisation employs about 730 staff members and receives annual member state contributions of approximately €162 million. Its observatories are located in northern Chile. ESO has built and operated some of the largest and most technologically advanced telescopes. These include the 3.6 m New Technology Telescope, an early pioneer in the use of active optics, and the Very Large Telescope (VLT), which consists of four individual 8.2 m telescopes and four smaller auxiliary telescopes which can all work together or separately. The Atacama Large Millimeter Array observes the un ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skyglow
Skyglow (or sky glow) is the diffuse luminance of the night sky, apart from discrete light sources such as the Moon and visible individual stars. It is a commonly noticed aspect of light pollution. While usually referring to luminance arising from artificial lighting, skyglow may also involve any scattered light seen at night, including natural ones like starlight, zodiacal light, and airglow. In the context of light pollution, skyglow arises from the use of artificial light sources, including electrical (or rarely gas) lighting used for illumination and advertisement and from gas flares. Light propagating into the atmosphere directly from upward-directed or incompletely shielded sources, or after reflection from the ground or other surfaces, is partially scattered back toward the ground, producing a diffuse glow that is visible from great distances. Skyglow from artificial lights is most often noticed as a glowing dome of light over cities and towns, yet is pervasive through ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Airglow
Airglow (also called nightglow) is a faint emission of light by a planetary atmosphere. In the case of Earth's atmosphere, this optical phenomenon causes the night sky never to be completely dark, even after the effects of starlight and diffused sunlight from the far side are removed. This phenomenon originates with self-illuminated gases and has no relationship with Earth's magnetism or sunspot activity. History The airglow phenomenon was first identified in 1868 by Swedish physicist Anders Ångström. Since then, it has been studied in the laboratory, and various chemical reactions have been observed to emit electromagnetic energy as part of the process. Scientists have identified some of those processes that would be present in Earth's atmosphere, and astronomers have verified that such emissions are present. Simon Newcomb was the first person to scientifically study and describe airglow, in 1901 Airglow existed in pre-industrial society and was known to the ancient G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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