Astronomy C

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Re: Astronomy C

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Rossyspsce wrote:getting thrown on this event for next year(2019-2020 season), because our astro people will all be graduating. What should I do to study for this event/where should I start?
I would get familiar with HR Diagrams, Stellar evolution, and binary stars to start with. I listed some of the necessary calculations in a post earlier in this thread (I might have shared the link with you already, I don't entirely recall). After you get familiar with stellar evolution, I would try learning about supernovae (in general, and then specifically about the individual types. Type Ia SN are super important.) After that, I would just reserach topics in general, take tests to see what topics get tested often, and repeat.

For DSOs, which you can't really do anything about until rules come out, I would first try to gather images and basic info from Wikipedia, Chandra, APOD, and other similar sources and make profiles for each DSO. Then, what we did was we went and read a bunch of abstracts from academic papers on each of the DSOs. (I'm convinced that this is what made us such a strong team for astro last year at state -- unfortunately, this year's test had a much, much smaller focus on DSOs :( It is what it is, I guess...).Really if you can ID images, and have some info to ctrl+f through, you should be able to get at least 70% of DSO questions no problem.

I can provide more specific advice if you have certain topics you need help with specifically, as can others on this forum, I'm sure.
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Re: Astronomy C

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Rossyspsce wrote:getting thrown on this event for next year(2019-2020 season), because our astro people will all be graduating. What should I do to study for this event/where should I start?
Not sure if this is the best way but here's how I learned astro.

I started off with the math stuff- you don't really need new rules for that. There's a formula sheet on the wiki page, it's a good start, but make your own math sheet (as well as everything else). Take tests- they can even be old tests because math stuff doesn't change much, and make sure you understand the equations you do have, while finding more equations that are useful. Once you get a good basis of math and a little bit of practice, it becomes pretty easy to do, very rarely are there extremely obscure equations used, you should have all the information needed to solve any problem in your sheet. The only really hard thing I find about math is usually when some graph is involved (lol I literally can't read graphs).

Make your notes for the general knowledge stuff covered in the rules. I would dedicate at least a page of information to each specified topic they have in the rules, and research them in depth, and out anything relevant or interesting in your notes. I find that I don't use these notes very much in competition, but the background knowledge gained from doing this is extremely valuable. Understanding concepts of astro allows you to quickly answer questions, while if you don't understand the concept you waste time trying to find it in your notes, with the possibility it might not even be in your notes. It also allows you to make a educated guess for questions you may be unsure of.

Finally, the DSOs. Because my partner usually takes the math portion, these notes are by far my most used in competition (once I almost exclusively just used this document alone at one comp) so you wanna make these good. Make detailed notes for each, include as many pictures as you can. Make sure you can ID them basically to 100% accuracy. As a general guideline for researching these, I entire first page of google results after searching the DSOs and sift through those. I also compiled the websites together by saving them as a PDF and combining them, which is useful if you finish the test early and you're missing one very specific detail about a DSO or something. (I also did this for some general topics, tbh it's not that useful unless the writer just copied everything from wikipedia). I never found the need to study for DSOs specifically (I personally feel reading papers and such is a bit overkill), the priority should be just understanding and digging deeper into the general concepts, which carries over into your understanding of DSOs.

Take a few practice tests to see what your missing, and improve on that. Also practice tests are extremely useful for the math portion, although not as much so for everything else.
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Re: Astronomy C

Post by OrigamiPlanet »

This problem set from this particular PA finals is really confusing me, problems 80-83. Could someone help me understand what formula or formulas I need to be using for this?

Test link:
https://scioly.org/wiki/images/7/73/Pen ... stions.pdf

Key link:
https://scioly.org/wiki/images/1/12/Ans ... states.pdf

Thanks!
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Re: Astronomy C

Post by flembo17 »

Rossyspsce wrote:getting thrown on this event for next year(2019-2020 season), because our astro people will all be graduating. What should I do to study for this event/where should I start?
I do the DSOs and concepts sections. For DSOs, be sure to start working on collecting information once they get released, especially if your school goes to invitationals early in the year as it can take a good chunk of time even if split between you and your partner. Be sure to go through wikipedia, NASA, Chandra, research papers, etc for each one. It is very crucial to have as much information as possible for each one because the DSO sections can range from very basic to very in depth. My partner and I find it helpful to keep all the DSO notes we take on one document, and I would definitely recommend that. Definitely be able to identify all of them with ease. I would also suggest keeping a separate document just for every picture you can find of each DSO (different wavelengths, their constellations, etc) and add to it as you take practice tests.

For the concepts, don't be afraid to start from the very basics- it is best to work yourself up. Start with HR diagram and stellar evolution and make sure to know it very well. Skipping to more complex topics without having a strong foundation can really hurt you on tests that are heavier on the conceptual stuff. A big part of stellar evolution is to be able to locate regions and pathways on the HR diagram and to be able to explain the life of different mass stars in detail. Once you are solid on these topics, begin to explore the more niche stuff and take tests to find information you are weaker on. Also, don't be afraid to download a million wikipedia documents. Although a wikipedia document will never be able to replace you knowing something solid from hours of studying, it can be very helpful on occasion.

I don't do math but just know most tests go beyond the equations and formulas on the rules. Take old math sections and build your own formula document. One thing to watch out for on the math is units- those can get tricky.
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Re: Astronomy C

Post by syo_astro »

flembo17 wrote: For the concepts, don't be afraid to start from the very basics- it is best to work yourself up. Start with HR diagram and stellar evolution and make sure to know it very well. Skipping to more complex topics without having a strong foundation can really hurt you ...
All fair advice (though, see earlier for Name's opinion on papers too I guess). I'll add that HR diagrams and stellar evo. aren't even only basics. There's a lot of complicated bits you can stumble upon while reading. Even ignoring that, stellar evolution contains a tremendous amount of material. Lots of people lose plenty of points on these questions too. The main thing is to not get intimidated and to ask questions!

I think learning style can vary some, and I personally liked to move between lots of topics and get a rough view on things with examples. Then I'd come back and refine this knowledge. That way I would get good at mixing my DSO ID / info. studies with my stellar evo. studies (and it was fun pretty pictures then!). Obviously harder to do without the upcoming DSOs, but you can just use past ones to get the same idea. Probably everyone agrees, though, that the basic "tools" of astronomy like HR diagrams, imaging, and spectra, are essential to master regardless of the year's focus.
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Re: Astronomy C

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OrigamiPlanet wrote:This problem set from this particular PA finals is really confusing me, problems 80-83. Could someone help me understand what formula or formulas I need to be using for this?

Test link:
https://scioly.org/wiki/images/7/73/Pen ... stions.pdf

Key link:
https://scioly.org/wiki/images/1/12/Ans ... states.pdf

Thanks!
It's kinda weird. I can't figure out how they got the answer to number 80, I tried alotta different weird things, nothing worked. But when I calculated escape velo of the B0 star, it is greater then the original speed, making me think the answer should be never? They probably did something along the line of accelerating the gas (by a factor of 278) due to the gravitational acceleration of the neutron star, I don't know what.
81 assuming you have the answer to 80, set 2.48E16=1/2mv^2, solve for v, and divide by c to get 74%
82, also assuming you have the answer to 80, find rest energy with e=mc^2 and divide 2.48E16 by 9E16 to get 28%
83 I did that your given the energy is 8.5E29 and find mass with e=mc^2 and divide 8.5E29/9E16 to get 9.4E12, but this disagrees with the key that says 3.4E13.

Either the key on this test is wrong on some parts, or I'm being very stupid right now.
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Re: Astronomy C

Post by syo_astro »

Name wrote: It's kinda weird. I can't figure out how they got the answer to number 80, I tried alotta different weird things, nothing worked. But when I calculated escape velo of the B0 star...They probably did something along the line of accelerating the gas (by a factor of 278) due to the gravitational acceleration of the neutron star, I don't know what...Either the key on this test is wrong on some parts, or I'm being very stupid right now.
Upfront, I find the key is right.

Yeah, this is overcomplicating, but good ideas when you're unsure. Off the top of my head it might not be trivial to show how the gas is accelerated, which I guess one might figure as follows: (work by gravity) = F * dist = mg * dist. Like I said, might require harder math to do that in practice since that value of g there would change with distance. It would be nice to do with plain kinetic energy (1/2 m v^2)...if you knew the velocity of the gas on impact...that would be hard because accelerations and kinematics of swirling things will be hard (though, technically a valid approach). Even then, you'd still have to account for gravitational potential energy. In a way, you intuited this with the gravitational acceleration pulling stuff off the B0 star even though gas may not be able to exceed the escape velocity of the star by itself. Maybe there's an equation for these ideas, but there's other ways to do this.

This might be a bit tricky to those that don't have more solid physics backgrounds. Still doable, of course! You definitely don't want to deal with acceleration, which often makes problems involving energy harder (this is sort of the point of defining energy). I'll hint for now you have to think about conservation of energy, KE, and GPE, but even then you might mess up what you're using for mass and radius (conventions are a pain but useful!).
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Re: Astronomy C

Post by antoine_ego »

Name wrote:
OrigamiPlanet wrote:This problem set from this particular PA finals is really confusing me, problems 80-83. Could someone help me understand what formula or formulas I need to be using for this?

Test link:
https://scioly.org/wiki/images/7/73/Pen ... stions.pdf

Key link:
https://scioly.org/wiki/images/1/12/Ans ... states.pdf

Thanks!
It's kinda weird. I can't figure out how they got the answer to number 80, I tried alotta different weird things, nothing worked. But when I calculated escape velo of the B0 star, it is greater then the original speed, making me think the answer should be never? They probably did something along the line of accelerating the gas (by a factor of 278) due to the gravitational acceleration of the neutron star, I don't know what.
81 assuming you have the answer to 80, set 2.48E16=1/2mv^2, solve for v, and divide by c to get 74%
82, also assuming you have the answer to 80, find rest energy with e=mc^2 and divide 2.48E16 by 9E16 to get 28%
83 I did that your given the energy is 8.5E29 and find mass with e=mc^2 and divide 8.5E29/9E16 to get 9.4E12, but this disagrees with the key that says 3.4E13.

Either the key on this test is wrong on some parts, or I'm being very stupid right now.
Their answer is correct by my math.

By Conservation of Energy, we know that K_1 + U_1 = K_2 + U_2 where K and U are the kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy respectively. Thus,



note that v_1 = 800,000 m/s, r_1 = 0.227 AU = 4e10 m, m=1kg, M=1.88Msol = 3.7e30kg, so K2 = 2.49e16 J.

A faster way of doing this is recognizing that since we're near the bottom of a potential well, the initial energies are essentially zero, since U_2 has such great magnitude, so K_2=U_2. This yield the same answer.
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Re: Astronomy C

Post by diplodocus »

I'm being thrown into this event with 5 days until states (counting today). We have bad notes (but we have notes at least...) How do you suggest I prepare for this event?
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Re: Astronomy C

Post by TheMysteriousMapMan »

diplodocus wrote:I'm being thrown into this event with 5 days until states (counting today). We have bad notes (but we have notes at least...) How do you suggest I prepare for this event?
Hi, Diplodocus!

Math is what really makes the difference for doing well in astronomy. Try and look over the math notes that you have (if you have them). If you don't have them, a good general reference sheet may be found on the wiki here. Especially look at the math that pertains to section C) of the topics on the rule sheet.

Also, make sure you have enough of the of the DSOs (preferably IR, UV, visible) that you can identify them–you can't answer questions if you don't know what it is.
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