I've started a new blog that I hope to share the strange and weird universe we live in. I hope to convey my love of how the universe is beautiful yet wacky at the same time.
Before we begin, I'd like to give a few definitions of some terms that I will be using on this blog.
sidereal period: the period of time (rotational period, orbital period) where a spot on an object takes to either rotate to get the same star in the sky or where an alignment between two objects is identical to a background star.
synodic period: the period of time for an object when the Sun is at the same location in the sky.
Here is a link explaning it a little better.
Astronomical Unit: the average distance from the Earth to the Sun. It is 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers. Astronomers generally use metric to describe quantities whether it is distance or mass.
Year: the length of time that a planet takes to orbit the Sun once. In this blog, I'll be using the term Earth year when describing years for other planets.
Day: the length of time it takes a planet or satellite to rotate once. The sidereal day and the synodic day, however, are not the same. See above.
Moon and satellites: natural bodies orbiting around planets or minor planets. They generally are used interchangeably.
If other terms come up, I will try to explain them as they arise.
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