Astronomy C

[AkshayB]

Which of planck's equations are we supposed to know? Are we supposed to know the one relating to the energy of a photon or the one relating to blackbody radiation? If it is the blackbody radiation one, could someone send that equation because I'm a hard time finding a consistent one.

Thanks in advance,

Akshay.

[LittleMissNyan]

Which of planck's equations are we supposed to know? Are we supposed to know the one relating to the energy of a photon or the one relating to blackbody radiation? If it is the blackbody radiation one, could someone send that equation because I'm a hard time finding a consistent one.

Thanks in advance,

Akshay.

Knowledge of all will never hurt.

[RiverWalker88]

Which of planck's equations are we supposed to know? Are we supposed to know the one relating to the energy of a photon or the one relating to blackbody radiation? If it is the blackbody radiation one, could someone send that equation because I'm a hard time finding a consistent one.

Thanks in advance,

Akshay.

I've never seen either used in an exam (which is not to say that they'll never be used), but I assume that knowing both can't hurt you.

Planck's blackbody law (which describes the shape of the blackbody curve of a star, to clarify), seems rather complicated and I don't suspect a lot of exams will cover it, but this page seems pretty consistent with what I've seen. It wouldn't hurt to get some background on the law first, though, it can be moderately... confusing (it took me ~2 years to finally figure most of these laws out to a reasonable extent).

Best of luck!

Disclaimer: I'm not actually 100% certain that everything I put above is correct. I did some research to try to figure it out, but I haven't field-tested any of this.

[EKT26]

How do people sort all of their information?

Last year finding information wasn't too much of a problem considering I didn't have much information to begin with. This will be my second year of the event, and I'm having difficulty finding everything during (practice) tests. My current general information doc is 21 pages of relatively basic and then randomly specific information (without images). I've been aiming to try to separate the general doc into multiple smaller docs based on larger topics (stars, galaxies, AGNs, etc.), but I have found that this only really works well when I know what I'm looking for. ctrl + f is my best friend when looking for stuff that I don't know but have on saved web pages, yet that sometimes fails because of just how in depth some topics go and the way library prioritizes search results. (is there a way to prioritize/filter .html files when searching in library or a way to separate .html in one folder and their corresponding information into another w/o breaking them)

Formulas and DSOs have their own docs. DSO images and general charts have their own powerpoints.

I know a lot of information should just be known/memorized. Since I study best when making resources, I thought I might as well make ones that were useful.

[RiverWalker88]

How do people sort all of their information?

Last year finding information wasn't too much of a problem considering I didn't have much information to begin with. This will be my second year of the event, and I'm having difficulty finding everything during (practice) tests. My current general information doc is 21 pages of relatively basic and then randomly specific information (without images). I've been aiming to try to separate the general doc into multiple smaller docs based on larger topics (stars, galaxies, AGNs, etc.), but I have found that this only really works well when I know what I'm looking for. ctrl + f is my best friend when looking for stuff that I don't know but have on saved web pages, yet that sometimes fails because of just how in depth some topics go and the way library prioritizes search results. (is there a way to prioritize/filter .html files when searching in library or a way to separate .html in one folder and their corresponding information into another w/o breaking them)

Formulas and DSOs have their own docs. DSO images and general charts have their own powerpoints.

I know a lot of information should just be known/memorized. Since I study best when making resources, I thought I might as well make ones that were useful.

I'm definitely of the resource minority here, we still use a binder and a laptop.

Generally, I put all of my quick access info in my binder. This is the basis of everything on the rules, and is for quick reference for when a test writer asks a basic question and I blank on the answer, or they want a specific term related to the subject. I find that I can flip through a binder much faster than I can ctrl+f, and I can skim pages better. I originally organized my binder into the three different parts of the rules, with DSO stuff in the first section, general/topic-specific stuff in one section, and astrophysics stuff in another section. Then at the end I had all the relevant notes from previous years (this binder has been going for a while). The DSOs had an image sheet at the start that had quick-reference images, as well as the page number where more info could be found about them. Topic-specific was sectioned out in the topics on the rules. Astrophysics mostly had a lot of related astrophysics stuff and examples.

The laptop consisted of everything I could download relevant to astronomy (yes, even irrelevant to the year's topic). This was meant more for the random trivia we may be given, and we would ctrl+f every relevant document on there for the answer.

I've found this organization system to be effective for us, at least. But binders are starting to become obselete, so this may not be the most efficient way for someone else to complete this, I really don't know.

Best of luck this season!

[EKT26]

Last year we used a binder and a laptop. My laptop was used mostly for DSO notes and all the other wikipedia pages I downloaded. My partner's binder had more general astronomy notes.

[EKT26]

How do people sort all of their information?

Last year finding information wasn't too much of a problem considering I didn't have much information to begin with. This will be my second year of the event, and I'm having difficulty finding everything during (practice) tests. My current general information doc is 21 pages of relatively basic and then randomly specific information (without images). I've been aiming to try to separate the general doc into multiple smaller docs based on larger topics (stars, galaxies, AGNs, etc.), but I have found that this only really works well when I know what I'm looking for. ctrl + f is my best friend when looking for stuff that I don't know but have on saved web pages, yet that sometimes fails because of just how in depth some topics go and the way library prioritizes search results. (is there a way to prioritize/filter .html files when searching in library or a way to separate .html in one folder and their corresponding information into another w/o breaking them)

Formulas and DSOs have their own docs. DSO images and general charts have their own powerpoints.

I know a lot of information should just be known/memorized. Since I study best when making resources, I thought I might as well make ones that were useful.

I'm definitely of the resource minority here, we still use a binder and a laptop.

Generally, I put all of my quick access info in my binder. This is the basis of everything on the rules, and is for quick reference for when a test writer asks a basic question and I blank on the answer, or they want a specific term related to the subject. I find that I can flip through a binder much faster than I can ctrl+f, and I can skim pages better. I originally organized my binder into the three different parts of the rules, with DSO stuff in the first section, general/topic-specific stuff in one section, and astrophysics stuff in another section. Then at the end I had all the relevant notes from previous years (this binder has been going for a while). The DSOs had an image sheet at the start that had quick-reference images, as well as the page number where more info could be found about them. Topic-specific was sectioned out in the topics on the rules. Astrophysics mostly had a lot of related astrophysics stuff and examples.

The laptop consisted of everything I could download relevant to astronomy (yes, even irrelevant to the year's topic). This was meant more for the random trivia we may be given, and we would ctrl+f every relevant document on there for the answer.

I've found this organization system to be effective for us, at least. But binders are starting to become obselete, so this may not be the most efficient way for someone else to complete this, I really don't know.

Best of luck this season!

Thank you for sharing. I've also been trying to replicate the sort of quick reference and more info style with links on my general doc to websites. Last year we ran two laptops like most people (I made the poor decision of getting a 17 inch one that never fit on the desks), but this year my new partner is running with an iPad for whatever in person competitions there are and probably some PC for online NY regionals and states.

Good luck to you too

[AkshayB]

Could someone post an example question using Kepler's 3rd Law?

Thanks in advance,

Akshay.

[PM2017]

Could someone post an example question using Kepler's 3rd Law?

Thanks in advance,

Akshay.

Try #31 on the 2018 UT Regional Astronomy test, written by dkarkada (link). The last part of the question uses Kepler's Third Law.

[astronomybuff]

Hi, I'm kinda new, and I've been studying for this event during summer. I am struggling to find information about "Ha."(Its supposed to be alpha). Ive seen it on tests quite a bit, but i can't find how it is used. Can someone please help by explaining or sending a link to a good website?