Astronomy

Astronomy
Posted on August 27: Redirected and Edited

AStronomy sabbaticals....Hmm...Compare with Say it like it is in term 2...see which 1 better.

Of course Introduction to astronomy won without saying much. Because they had more. Haha....The first day, they talked about the speed of light, relativity and the history of astronomy. But on the second day, it became more interesting when they showed us lots of pictures on the planets and many other objects in the sky. They also showed us the pictures that features daily on this website...http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html. Those pictures are real great, especially getting better over the years. Next day, it is the powerpoints about stellar classification and the astrophysics. That day was quite bland. And I skipped the talk by a professor which was supposed to be in the english LRC. haha, What did I do, Media tech duty lah. I watched the match between NY and Le4 Qing1 Zhong1 Xue2 from china, and guess who won, Not Nanyang Girls high lah. They sux in talking and debating lor. 4th day, a little different, as the seniors...Ying Jie, Yam Hou, Ming Wei...Are talking about the constellations...What's great about constellations, I thought. but that completely changed my mind, when it was the last day. We had tests....blah blah blah. And we won...(of course, I will elaborate) and go to SCIENCE CENTER OBSERVATORY....

There, the photo is the position of Jupiter and the 4 moons I see. Namely, Io, Ganymede, Europa and Callisto. Lol, all my favourite moons.

Wednesday, 1B won 1A in soccer EOTA with a difference of 6 goals. I came 20 minutes late and could see the remaining 15 min...Sad :( But nevertheless, we won 8-2. Haha, proceeding to the Monday match versus 1D who won 1C 6-2. Hahaz...Hope still 1B win. but the debate competition, HCI won...OLE OLE OLE....Haha, 2 great news at 1 time.

Astro, on the first day was nothing. It is just planets and stars. Nothing much. Furthermore, I thought astro is 死板板, nothing really much. But that changed my mind really. Hey, now before I start, Let me introduce a song, "STARS are blind" by Paris Hilton.
Astrophysics, wah....Really lame. What gravitational slingshot, what Kepler's law, what Newton's 3 law of motion, history of astronomy, eccentricity blah blah. Which do you think a noob like me know about the relations of these subjects towards astronomy. I dont even understand a single crap that day. But, they are somehow fun, Now I know little about gravitational slingshot, little about the history of astro, little here and there.

2nd day was exceptionally fun. The pictures of planets, WOW. really excellent loh. That day was undescribable. And was damned fun.
3rd day, I mentioned some just now. But here are more.We learnt some astrophysics and the stellar classification. WOW, such terms? I go mad that day. But...heh heh, stellar classification is the classification about astronomy. One example is to classify stars by it's magnitude. This means the brightness of the star. Another is the binary stars, which I dont know anything about it. haha.I almost fell asleep that day.

4th day. Constellations. Stars. the shapes of the lines. Haha, at least I know. And I identified 2 constellations of the 6 they told us to search from the group of stars over the total of 88 constellations. And the 7 sisters too. Where I found 6 stars of them only.

5th day...Haha, early in the morning, really sianzzzzzzzzzzz. Must revise for the minor competition. Haha. Dont win competition also never mind 1 lah. Nothing much. But, winning competition gets free prizes and I do not want to leave this sabbatical empty handed even after paying $5. And This sabbatical really rocks. The group competition, which inculdes me, Eng Keat, Hu Yuan, another people Hu Yuan knows, and another 17 year old China sec 3 guy I dunno, haha. Guess what, we smuggled reference books into the room. Yam Hou and Ying Jie were out of the room. Ming Wei used the computer and did not really looked at us....Haiz. Luckily we got those books, if not we will really screw up. We still did not know the score for that.

After the recess, another individual test. OF COURSE. NO reference, all because of Eng Keat lah, he dont allow. But the seniors are not watching loh. They were busy marking all the worksheets and test papers. And these questions were just MCQ and were really tough questions. Those questions, furthermore, those questions are know then answer, dunno either leave blank or answer incorrectly. Answer correctly, 5 marks, leave blank, 2 marks, incorrect, 0 marks. Maximum you can get is 150 marks cause there is 30 questions. Die hard questions. Cham...! How? Xiao liao...I only know 2 questions. After those hard core physics and memory recollection, the 30min time's up and we all proceed to see how ying Jie marked those papers.

Heh heh, guess what. Group 1: 39 Group 2: 45 Group 3: 54 Group 4: 35.5 Group 5: 17 upon 60 marks. They said that the paper was too easy for us, that's why we can score many marks. But I thought, the paper was really really hard. What calculations, aiya, all crap. But lucky we get the 3rd group, at least there is still chance to go into the next round. But we still need to buck up in the individual paper, where scores will be added up, and averaged, added to the group score. The best 3 teams get to the next round of intense competition.

The astrobiology is the best topic ever since. This was because of stupid theorized ways of the possible number of planets that contained life on other suns. Tell you what, the last law, the 7th law is the craziest. It is the law where you are the ultimate and can create more and more universe, becoming god. And you know that's impossible, unless god gave us that superpowers. Lol

During the last presentation Ying Jie presented, Both yam hou and ming wei were busy marking those individual papers, and when Ying Jie ended his presenattion, both the other 2 trainers were still marking. About to complete. The 2 trainers added up the score, I got 84/150 and Eng Keat got 104/150. Hu yuan got 70 something and the other 2 I not sure. One even failed in my team, getting as low as 45/150. Might as well leave all blanks. Then can get 60 markah. Anyway, our groups average is 74.something. A little close to the next team. But still managed to dive into the next round at the 3rd place. So grp 2, mi group, 3 and 4 went to the next round.HAHA

I brought camera that day, that's y I kept snapping the co-trainers photos. And guess what, the round 2. It freaks us more. Those not qualified into the next round are to sit at the back and watch the audience. Those who were at the front like me, qualified for the next round. Of course, group 3 was leading, group 4 was the 2nd, and we were the third. Haiz....But one good thing was, score was pounded to '0'. This means that we have to start all over again.

The first round of the intense competiton was true false questions. I freaked it out, when I was supposed to answer the first question. Ehhh...50% 50% you know. And the difficulty ranges. You get wrong 0 marks, you get 10 marks if you got that question correct. And there were 30 questions. 1-30, you choose the questions, which they will not appear, and it is good luck. We tied. In order, group 2 3 4 got, 75 70 75 respectively. I managed to help out by answering one question, correctly choosing the number 6+7. the second round was picture identification. This means that boxes will appear 1 by 1 and you will have to guess the picture. In total, there are 9 boxes. And you have to guess correctly. No time limit to guess. Pictures can be of distorted colours, black and white and many other colours. And one more thing was, the scoring. The guess you made wrongly, -10 marks, one correct 20 marks. 2nd person to answer correctly, 10 marks only. If no one answers, question is null. And it is qiang3 da2 ti2, first come first serve questions. Hu Yuan answered most of the questions. Eng Keat answered the 2nd most. I screwed up. By not answering any. At the end, we got, in order, Group 2 3 4, 270 90 275 respectively, by 5 marks. Haha group 3, answered wrong questions. the last round was MCQ and Short structured questions. LOL. Questions are like the ones on the individual paper, quite difficult too. In the end, group 2 won, 375 195 340. Haha we won, thanks to Hu Yuan, he has vast knowledge about astro. Lol, we won group 3, when in the second round we lost them.

I requested for a group photo. Hahaz. And I wrote my name down for the intrerest of the possible future ambassodor of the astro club as probably my second EP3.

Astro at night was another thing. Because I got to seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee JUPITER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!with my own eyes. Of course. I just kept wondering how Pluto got demoted and why it got demoted after being demoted that night at 1am Singapore time. And at the observatory at science center(MUST GO THERE HOR, open only on Friday nights), it was Ming Wei's first time who looked through a telescope, and identifying constellations. I can;t see any constellation. Neither could Ming Wei, but Yam Hou saw many. I bet yam hou was lying. Aiya, look at the Jupiter I saw and the 4 moons I saw, all of the Jupiter is very nice. Pluto's demotion is all because of all the scientists that stinks. The astronomers that made Mickey mouse or the earth sad. Becasue it is no longer one of earth's neighbours and is called a DWARF planet. Not a nice name, duh. I was wondering, pluto, pluto where are you? And I tell you what, Jupiter and other planets are very very nice. Especially you can see the 4/16 layers of Jupiter. hahaz. From at home, you see it only occuring at a small dot. But at the observatory, it is dammed cool. Jupiter rocks like pluto. the 4 distinct moons you can see, unbeliavble. Io, Cassilto, Ganynede, Europa, my spelling sux. They rock like Jupiter. haha....

Ming Wei was so enthusiatic is finding the constellations, but he cant see the stars, mostly blame it on the lights in Singapore. The second picture I see was M6, a cluster of stars. Just some stars here and there, unvisible to naked eye. Nothing much actually. But it really was really cool too. First time seeing through a cassini telescope cool man.

Actually there can be 12 planets,
Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, CERES, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, CHARON, and 2003 UB313(known as Xena).

But in the end, the astronomers degraded Pluto too, calling CERES, PLUTO, CHARON and 2003UB313 a dwarf planet. haiz.
BB to pluto. My last day to spend with you didnt make long. The last day to spend before Pluto died was 24/08/2006 according to GMT +00 00.haiz. I just love Pluto, and media tech that day broke out loud when Mr Lee also exclaimed, "OH NO!"

hmmmmmm.................................................................................My beloved pluto.....die already. :'(