ASTR 1230 (O'Connell) Lecture Notes

Ten Things to Forget About Astronomy

Here is a list of ten common misconceptions about the sky that you should do your best to forget:

Polaris is the brightest star

Polaris is located due North and will always be there

You can see nearly all the stars there are

The stars aren't there in the daytime

The Sun and Moon are stationary with respect to the stars

A constellation is a physical group of stars all near each other in space

The brightest constellations are along the Zodiac

The shape of a constellation has physical or metaphysical significance

The patterns of the constellations are unchanging

Meteors are falling stars

The point here is not that many people are ignorant about what really goes on in the sky. Instead, it's that to start making sense out of nature, you have to carefully study it. Some of these misconceptions can be dispelled with just a little thoughtful examination of the sky.

You will quickly learn that there is a big difference between a casual look and a patient, careful, systematic inspection. Our "intuition" about nature is shaped by our everday experience of things on only a human scale and is often wrong.

We will explain why these beliefs are incorrect in the course of the next few lectures.

Back to Lecture 1

Lecture Index

Last modified November 2020 by rwo

Copyright © 2006-2020 Robert W. O'Connell. All rights reserved. These notes are intended for the private, noncommercial use of students enrolled in Astronomy 1230 at the University of Virginia.