Vladimir Bereznyakovsky - Astronomy in your pocket

© Vladimir Vladimirovich Bereznyakovsky, 2020

ISBN 978-5-0051-0524-0

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

For many people, astronomy has either remained on the covers of textbooks, or is a distant part of physics that is reluctantly studied in high schools and institutes. For modern man, surrounded by all sorts of irritants and living at a furious pace of the metropolis, every day it becomes more difficult to find time for himself, for questions to himself.

From early childhood to old age, we always have only one driving force-the desire to learn the unknown. The form of knowledge changes with age, but the brain’s thirst for new information remains the same. In childhood, we learn the world in all possible ways, and any information is new and interesting, but as we grow up, we find it difficult to find quality food for our brain, despite the fact that the requests remain the same.

Many philosophers and thinkers called the science of the cosmos the science of the universe, which thousands of great minds have tried and will try to understand. Rulers and generals linked significant dates of events to a certain arrangement of stars and planets in space, perfectly understanding the meaning and consequences of their actions. And the study of such a science as astronomy has always been a rare opportunity, because knowledge about the cosmos and its structure has almost never been publicly available.

Like any science, astronomy has its discoverers, its main objects of study, and its controversial topics. But every science has its own boundaries, and the main difference between the science of astronomy and others is that these boundaries are the boundaries of the Universe, the widest in all senses of the word. Everything that has ever been and will be created by man is enclosed within the boundaries of our planet, Solar system, and Universe. No one can break and go beyond these boundaries, but to study their properties and features is the main task of astronomy. That is why many of the great minds of mankind were obsessed with the idea of understanding the primordial laws of the Universe.

The name “Astronomy in your pocket” was chosen for a reason, because this book is a collection of the most important information about the cosmos, stars, planets and their discoverers.

In Ancient Egypt, there was a complex mythology with many gods, and the astronomical ideas of the Egyptians were closely related to it. The Egyptian priests were the wisest astronomers of the time. Even then, the so-called schematic calendar was introduced, in which the year was divided into 12 months and contained 365 days, but the Egyptians knew that the true year is 6 hours longer. Egyptian priests had to perform night services to the God RA, so in order to determine the time not only during the day, but also at night, around 1500 BC, so-called star clocks were created based on the position of the stars in the night sky.

Of course, we can not say about the pyramid of Cheops, whose faces were oriented exactly to the cardinal directions, and the four corners of the pyramid pointed to the four signs of the zodiac: Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. The brightest stars in these constellations – Aldebaran, Regulus, Antares, and Fomalhaut – maintain the same distance from each other and are even now used as stable landmarks. It should be noted that the Egyptian astronomers could measure with great accuracy the distance between the stars and their position in space, because the location of the pyramids of Cheops, Chephren and mycerinus in the Giza pyramid complex coincides in all respects with the location of the stars Alnitak, Alnilam and mintaka in the constellation of Orion. The ancient Egyptians divided the sky into constellations, used the gnomon*, measured the height of the Sun above the horizon, knew six planets, and were even able to divide them into groups. It would seem that the Egyptians, a settled people, did not need astronomy, because the terms of agricultural work showed them the river Nile, yet it was on the Egyptian land in Alexandria that later worked Aristarchus of Samos, Eratosthenes, Timocharis, using the works of the priests, and the schematic calendar of the Egyptians used in their calculations Ptolemy and even Copernicus. We should also remember that one hour equal to 1/24 of the length of the day was offered to the world by the ancient Egyptians.

*Gnomon – the oldest astronomical instrument, which is a vertical object (obelisk, pole), allowing the length of its shadow to determine the angular height of the Sun. The gnomon is also called the part of a sundial, the shadow of which is determined by time.

The oldest megalithic monument in Europe associated with astronomy is considered to be Newgrange in Ireland, near Dublin. The Newgrange dates from about 3000 BC and is a mound 13.5 meters high and 85 meters in diameter. A 19-meter tunnel leads to the burial chamber, which is based on vertically placed stone monoliths weighing from 20 to 40 tons. The walls of Newgrange are painted with strange different circles and spirals, symbolizing the rings of time. The tunnel is oriented to the Southeast-exactly where the sun rises on the day of the winter solstice. Unlike the much later Stonehenge (about 1750 BC), which is 82 megaliths weighing 5 tons each, 30 stone blocks (25 tons each) and 5 huge trilithons weighing 50 tons, the functions of Newgrange included only one astronomical operation: determining the beginning of the year, which its builders associated with December 21; while Stonehenge was an ancient astronomical Observatory, in which observations of the Sun, Moon and other planets were made. However, archaeologists and astronomers still have many questions about the technology of construction of such structures and their functionality.

The Newgrange

On the plains of North America, a huge number of archaeological sites have been found in the form of stone circles on the tops of hills. The oldest is the circle at Mahorville in Canada, which was built around 2500 BC.

Big horn, one of the most important astronomical monuments, is located in the state of Wyoming, USA. big horn is a large group of stones, from which come “rays” about 12 meters long, at the ends of which a stone circle is drawn. At the ends of each of the six rays are heaped stone piles, and the direction of the southwest pile of stones coincides with the direction of sunrise on the day of the summer solstice. On the big horn, it was also possible to observe and study the sunrises of Sirius, Rigel, and Aldebaran.

The “star” pyramids of Ecuador are also a part of history that is very interesting for both archaeologists and astronomers. Not far from the capital of Ecuador, Quito, there is a complex of 15 truncated pyramids of various heights and squares. The estimated date of construction is 700—1200 ad, but interestingly, all ramps approach the pyramids from the northeast and are inclined at an angle of 10°, and the largest reaches 300 meters in length. It was in this direction that you could see the rising of the star Alcayde, which is located at the end of the constellation URSA Major. This star rises last of the seven stars of the constellation, but the interest of the Injuns was really connected with the harvest, because, since Algina appears at an altitude of 10°, and its sunrise falls at the end of October, for the Injuns this event meant the onset of the rainy season and the beginning of the agricultural year. This season in the tropical zone comes suddenly, threatening to catch landowners by surprise, which is why the inhabitants of Ecuador were so important astronomical methods of warning the elements.