The brilliant minds over at the Brookings Institute Center for Astrophysical Awareness have made a scale so we can aptly title and identify various classifications of what scientists are now dubbing ginger sugarsnaps .

The sillyness of the name may seem comical at first, but ginger sugarsnaps are no laughing matter. The scale ranges from 1-1400.

A ginger sugarsnap measuring 1 would be roughly equivalent to breaking up matter the size of a basketball. While a ginger sugarsnap measuring in the 200 range would be more apt to describe a snap scheme related to a mass of a town of 100,000. A ginger sugarsnap incidence of 1300 or greater would indicate a mass of planetary significance has been collapsed by a black hole. What is the relevance of measuring ginger sugarsnaps?

Using space-time regression analysis, a well versed astronomer could use a high powered telescope with an affixed long range audiometer to grasp the size of ginger sugarsnaps occurring in deep space in order to better estimate not only the existence of other planets outside our own solar system but also the date of collapse of the entity and perhaps even lend insight into the formation of the black hole that was likely to have collapsed it.

Ginger sugarsnaps analysis could very well be the turn-key to increased safety in deep space exploration. Using the ginger sugarsnap scale to isolate and identify major astrophysical events throughout the space time continuum, scientists and astronomers will be more apt to safely plan and route deep space excursions. The last thing a space battalion commander wants is for one of their deep space exploration vessels to become nothing more than a ginger sugarsnap in space because they drifted into a black hole.

Is it ironic coincidence that just when the Obama administration decided to massively deconstruct our space shuttle program, a very promising discovery and corresponding measurement scale are created that could open up the gateway to deep space exploration? Well, you will just have to decide for yourself. I am no conspiracy theorist, just an astronomy geek who is interested in ginger sugarsnaps!

Click to learn more about Ginger Sugarsnaps !

We will start by taking a look at a small section of astronomy: “the brightest stars seen from the Earth”. That is excepting the Sun which is roughly 250,000 times nearer than the next nearest star. In fact, it is so bright that when the sky is viewed from the Earth, it blinds out all the other stars in the sky during a phenomenon called daytime.

Remember that according to the scale for the magnitudes given, lower numbers are brighter. Our Sun would be about -26.73, while the full moon is -12.6. So, with that in mind, here are the top 5:

#5 is Vega, which means “falling eagle” in Arabic is in Lyra. It’s roughly 25 light years away and has a magnitude of 0.04.

NB: when thinking about this astronomical information, please just bear in mind that the ‘brightest from the Earth’ doesn’t mean ‘largest’ or ‘brightest’. The Sun is not the largest or brightest star in the universe or even the galaxy by any means, but it seems to be so bright to us because we are near to it compared to the other stars.

#4 Rigel Centaurus – a very bright, bluish-white supergiant star in the constellation Orion. It is a binary star, with an average apparent magnitude of 0.12. It’s scientific name is Beta Orionis. ‘Rigel Centaurus’ is Arabic for ‘the foot of the centaur’. It’s about four light years from Earth.

#3 is Arcturus. The name is Latin/Greek and means ‘guardian of the bear’. This star is roughly 37 light years away. It is in the constellation of Bootes, behind The Great Bear. It has a magnitude of 0.00

#2 Canopus. Of these top five, Canopus, the Greek name for the pilot of the vessel Argo made famous in the stories about Jason and the Argonauts, is the brightest. But it’s 313 light years from Earth, so it’s just second on this list as seen from Earth. It has a magnitude of -.62 as seen from this planet.

#1 is Sirius, which means ’scorching’ in Greek. It’s also called the ‘Dog Star’ because it is the brightest star in the constellation of Canis Major, which means ‘The Big Dog’ in Latin. It is only 9 light years from Earth, which makes it the second closest of these top five. From Earth it has a magnitude of -1.44, which makes it quite easily the brightest star as seen in the night sky.

These facts don’t even scratch the surface on the subject of astronomy but it’s something to think about anyway the next time you look up into the sky at night.

Are you fascinated by Astronomy for Beginners? If you are then, please visait our website at http://astronomy.the-real-way.com

NASA of course is a primary source for an astronomy picture of the day. This site NASA.gov shows a new image each and every day. There’s also another section that shows video footage. This could be used to create your own image site. Saturn’s moon Enceladus was featured on November 5, 2008.

This picture was taken by a passing spacecraft. It can reproduce details the size of a bus. The ice on this moon reflects as glare, nearly 100% of all the sun light that strikes it. So you would need to wear sunglasses! This moon is so fascinating that Cassini will continue to fly by for more images later on in its mission.

NASA keeps an archive of all the astronomy photo of the day dating all the way back to June 16 of 1995. It was a ‘what if’ photo of the Earth posing as a neutron star. The photo is a computer generation. The most interesting feature is that the constellation of Orion is visible twice. Even light from behind a neutron star is visible because the dense star bends the light around it. This causes some objects to be seen twice.

September 8, 1995 was an amazing image of the central part of the Milky Way galaxy taken by NASA’s COBE satellite. This area is generally invisible because of the dust masking it. But COBE scans in infrared, so produced that fantastic image of our very symmetrical galaxy.

The astronomy picture of the day was identical on January 1st, 2000 and January 1st, 2001, the reason being because both dates shared this photo is that the majority of people considered the year 2000 as the first year of the third millennium.

However, the third millennium actually began on January 1st, 2001. NASA reasoned it was just easier to just go with the flow and do it on both dates. apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap010101.html displays mankind’s view of the solar system as it progressed from mere objects circling the Earth, all the way to the ‘Big Bang’ creating the universe as we see it today.

NASA has many more days with their very own unique astronomy picture of the day. Visit their web site, NASA.gov to view them.

Astronomy: pictures of the day are fascinating to vast numbers of people. If you are interested in astronomy, visit our website at: http://astronomy.the-real-way.com

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