Mayan Astronomy — Historical past.com Video

Many recent books and the foremost Hollywood movie, 2012 , purvey alleged Mayan predictions that the world will end on the 2012 winter solstice, December 21, 2012. These claims intertwine the Mayan calendar with some rather doubtful astronomy. The top of some of the Mayan calendars was believed to mark when the solar moved into a new home. There’s proof that entire Mayan cities moved into new homes on these dates, abandoning or burning their old properties as they left. Based upon these simple details, ancient skywatchers in Mesoamerica have been apparently conscious of a delicate celestial process, the precession of the equinoxes.

One World, One Sky: Huge Chook’s Journey” at 1 p.m. Youngsters can follow Elmo and Massive Hen as they discover the evening sky with Hu Hu Zhu, a Muppet from China. This show is a private favourite of Alex Mak, associate director of Ritter Planetarium. Earth’s rotational axis tilts about 23.5 levels. The December winter solstice happens when Earth is at the level in its orbit where the southern hemisphere most immediately factors in direction of the Solar. The Solar is then immediately overhead as seen from Earth at 23.5 degrees south latitude, the Tropic of Capricorn. The Solar can not appear further south within the sky.

Icy rocks just like the newfound objects are known as trans-Neptunian objects because they typically reside outdoors Neptune’s orbit. These objects include the former planet Pluto, now classified as a dwarf planet, in addition to comets just like the famed Halley’s comet. Astronomy was also essential because the Mayans used it to foretell issues like famines and floods. With this information, they’d know when to plant and when to retailer up meals. Relate varied locations on the analemma with the seasons in our local. What season is it when the sun is beneath the equator? Above the equator?

In his e-book The Living Maya: Ancient Knowledge in the Era of 2012 , Robert Sitler, PhD, traces the historical past of the 2012 phenomenon back to 1951, explaining how the 2012 prophesies took root, and how they grew over the following 6 decades to capture in style creativeness—inspiring the whole lot from 2012 merchandise to multimillion dollar Hollywood blockbusters. This week in our 2012 Countdown we take a look at his properly-researched historical past. Remember to read throughout, or on the very least scroll to the underside for our weekly e-book giveaway! You may as well take a look at our previous countdown posts here and right here

The constellation we all know as Orion has the truth is been identified as this sort of for 1000s of years again once more once the Greeks initial bestowed the title upon it. In Historical Greece Orion was one among their heroes hovering in the evening sky for eternity. The Egyptians noticed this equivalent constellation and saw a figure as effectively. In Egyptian astronomy this was certainly one of their gods Osiris. This was their god from the afterlife. NASA has decided that the 2 near earth asteroids 2010 RX30 and 2010 RF12 on Wednesday will fly fairly close to Earth.