Astronomist - not!
August 21st 2008 08:51
It’s ten days since I last wrote in here. I knew it was a while, but time flies by when you having fun doing other things beside blogging (yes, there is a life outside the blog world, for those who’ve forgotten).
I was just looking up the Wikipedia entry for elliptical galaxy, and note that at the top it says: This article needs additional citations for verification.
Personally I think it needs a dictionary running alongside the text, since I keep running into words which are obviously plain as day to people in the astronomical world/universe, but which mean next to nothing to me. Certainly the writer doesn’t stint when it comes to job jargon, and kowtows to no one of a lesser brain.
Elliptical is okay, roughly, but ellipsoid? Globular clusters? Low-mass stars? Old stellar populations?
The list goes on. I haven’t even mentioned the following yet (because my quota for the week of question marks has run out). It’s a paragraph in the middle of the article:
The Hubble classification of elliptical galaxies ranges from E0 for those that are most spherical, to E7, which are long and thin in profile. It is now recognized that the vast majority of ellipticals are of middling thinness, and that the Hubble classifications are a result of the angle with which the galaxy is observed. The classification is typically determined by the ratio of the major (a) to the minor (b) axes of the galaxy's elliptical profile as follows:
Thus for a spherical galaxy with a equal to b, the number is 0. The limit is about 7, which may indicate a physical process that prevents further flattening.
Time to get a local astronomer to give me a helping hand, I suspect.
When I was a kid, I fancied being an astronomer. It seemed a cool thing to be, and I had a little star chart of the Southern skies. Well, the enthusiasm lasted for a short season, flickered, and, like a star on its last legs, eventually died. Occasionally since then I’ve picked up the interest, but life has too many other things to check out, and I’m afraid astronomy has gone the way of a few other hobbies.
I was just looking up the Wikipedia entry for elliptical galaxy, and note that at the top it says: This article needs additional citations for verification.
Personally I think it needs a dictionary running alongside the text, since I keep running into words which are obviously plain as day to people in the astronomical world/universe, but which mean next to nothing to me. Certainly the writer doesn’t stint when it comes to job jargon, and kowtows to no one of a lesser brain.
Elliptical is okay, roughly, but ellipsoid? Globular clusters? Low-mass stars? Old stellar populations?
The list goes on. I haven’t even mentioned the following yet (because my quota for the week of question marks has run out). It’s a paragraph in the middle of the article:
The Hubble classification of elliptical galaxies ranges from E0 for those that are most spherical, to E7, which are long and thin in profile. It is now recognized that the vast majority of ellipticals are of middling thinness, and that the Hubble classifications are a result of the angle with which the galaxy is observed. The classification is typically determined by the ratio of the major (a) to the minor (b) axes of the galaxy's elliptical profile as follows:
Thus for a spherical galaxy with a equal to b, the number is 0. The limit is about 7, which may indicate a physical process that prevents further flattening.
Time to get a local astronomer to give me a helping hand, I suspect.
When I was a kid, I fancied being an astronomer. It seemed a cool thing to be, and I had a little star chart of the Southern skies. Well, the enthusiasm lasted for a short season, flickered, and, like a star on its last legs, eventually died. Occasionally since then I’ve picked up the interest, but life has too many other things to check out, and I’m afraid astronomy has gone the way of a few other hobbies.
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