FAQ

Can I tour the department?

Requests for tours of the department are considered on a case-by-case basis. To make a request, please email info@astro.berkeley.edu. To learn more about the UC Berkeley campus, we recommend signing up for a campus tour through Visitor Services. We also suggest checking our Department Events page, as we regularly list public events and opportunities to...

Telescopes

How would you choose a telescope? Lets say – if you want to see the surface of the moon very closely.

If you want to look at details on the surface of the moon, any binoculars or telescope will give you stunning views. You will also be able to see the four Galilean moons of Jupiter and the rings of Saturn through just about any binoculars or telescope. However, if you are interested in looking at fainter objects, such as galaxies and nebulae, you will want to invest in a higher quality telescope or giant astronomical binoculars.

There are a few criteria that distinguish really...

Supernova

TBD

Stars

Can you tell me if Betelgeuse will move all over the sky or will it move in it’s immediate area?

It isn’t entirely clear what you mean. Betelgeuse will appear to move across the sky over the course of a night due to the Earth’s rotation, as will all stars, but it will remain fixed relative to other stars.

I would like to know if you can tell me if this is Capella. Looking through binoculars, it changes shapes. It looked like a flower with bright red on the end, yellowish in the middle and green on the end.

Changes in the color and shape of an astronomical object are optical effects...

Planets

I wonder if there is anyone on your staff, or anyone you can refer me to get the facts on the story about a rogue planet that has an orbit perpendicular to the elliptical plain of the other planets and which is Gmail Planet X and the year 2012 supposed to hit the Earth in 2012? As a former Astronomy student I know it’s a bunch of junk, but I’d like to get some more detail if possible. The issue I’m dealing with is my town has an end of the world cult preparing for the collision and we would like to get the real story out.

I have heard similar ideas about the Earth/Solar System/Universe...

Orbit

We’ve all seen the posters in school telling us the order of the eight planets and they’re all neatly put in a straight line; that seriously cannot be how the planets orbit the sun in a straight line some must be off in a tilt. So I went and tried to do some research and most sources do put all the planets in a somewhat near line not really varying from a straight rotation around the sun… Is that image correct do all the planets tend to rotate around the sun on an even plane if so then our solar system must be extremely flat with huge vast spaces closely above and below planetary rotations...

Molecules

Everything is made of molecules, and we see our world in color. Does that mean that molecules have a color? If not, where does the color come from?

Interesting question! Molecules do have “color” in a certain sense, but first I should say that not everything is made of molecules. Rocks and metals, for instance, are made of atoms that haven’t formed molecules. There’s also a lot of stuff in space that’s not made of molecules, including the Sun and other stars, as well as stuff called “dark matter” that doesn’t seem to be made of anything we see here on Earth!

Other than dark matter,...

General Resources

Do you have any recommendations or sources that might help me get ready for the Astronomy section of my Science Olympiad?

How nice to meet you!

1.) You should read an introductory astronomy textbook. I used this one, which you can get pretty cheaply online.

2.) Start following Astronomy Picture of the Day. If...

Exoplanets

Occasionally there is some coverage in the media about the continuing discovery of planets around other star systems in the Milky Way, through the work of the Kepler telescope, and other initiatives. Is there a place on the web I can go to, to check what the latest thinking on all of this work is? I’m thinking of an up to date record of things like numbers of candidate habitable planets discovered, where they are, stuff like that.

I am glad you are enthusiastic about keeping up with exoplanet discoveries!

You can check the Kepler website for tables of the Kepler Mission’s...

Earth Axis

I have thought recently that the quality of bright day light appeared to be different to how I have always perceived it, but I dismissed it. However I’ve noticed that at midday shadows were very long, at that time shouldn’t they be almost zero or tiny; I then realised that the Sun wasn’t overhead but at a lower declination that I thought it should be – ie not over head. I then thought how much cooler it had been this year, and that if what I was seeing was correct that the Earth would have tilted, and in a way that meant we (the UK) were further North. I’ve tried to disabuse myself of this...