The lab experiment aimed to examine how various celestial bodies appear and move with the aid of an altitude scale and the globe.
The first of part of the experiment involved labelling of different points, lines, and circles on the globe surface. The South and North Celestial poles were first labeled using the Celestial Coordinates System (CCS). With the aid of the video, other parts of the globe were labeled such as the Equator, circles of right ascension, declination, and the ecliptic.
After labeling the parts, the second exercise entailed identifying the right ascension and declination of the starts Vega and Sirius. The Celestial Coordinates System (CCS) and the Transparent Celestial Globe (TCG) were used to determine the right ascension and declination of the two stars. Since the Sirius star is south of the celestial equator, its inclination was at -15 degrees. Conversely, its right ascension was at 6 hours and 45 minutes according to the video. The Vega star lies north of the Celestial equator. As such, its declination was at +37 degrees. Regarding the right ascension of the Vega star, it was at 18 hours and 34 min. according to the video. The obtained results may not be 100% accurate due to the poor quality of video that I used. Therefore, they are an estimation of what was observed and can be used to develop other findings.
The last exercise was identification of the length of daylight for three different cities and the different dates. The provided dates were 20th of March, June, and December. To identify the length of daylight for the different places, subtraction was done for the different hours that is, the starting hour and the total hours the globe took to rotate. In New York City, which is at latitude 41 on March 20th the length of daylight was 9 hours, and the sun had a maximum altitude of 20 degrees. On June 20th it was summer in New York with the length of daylight being 12 hours with the sun’s maximum altitude being 50 degrees. On December 20th, the length of day was 6 hours with the sun’s maximum altitude being 23 degrees. Conversely, Quito, Ecuador had 12 hours of daylight on March 20th, 8 hours on June 20th, and 6 hours on December 20th while North Pole on March and December 20th had zero hours of daylight because the sun was below the horizon and 24 hours of daylight on June 20th because the sun was above the horizon. The red circles on the globe helped in the identification of the starting and ending hours after the rotations.
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