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Authors: Old Farmer's Almanac
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Samos. This bearded genius was ignored for 18 centuries.
11
On a scale model in which Earth is a dust mote , the Sun would be one inch away and the size of the period at the end of this sentence. The nearest star would be another period 4¼ miles distant.
12
The most common object in the universe (possessing mass) is the neutrino. These tiny particles are more numerous than anything else by far. A trillion neutrinos fly through each of your fingernails every second.
13
The universe is expanding, but no one knows how far. It has no outside or edge. The extent of the known universe is 38 to 47 billion light-years in every direction.
14
When observed in desert skies far from any city, there seem to be millions of stars visible to the naked eye. (The naked eye limit is about magnitude 5.8.) However, the actual number is about 2,600. You could count every star in 20 minutes at a leisurely rate of about two per second.
15
Then uclear fusion that produces the Sun’s heat and light occurs in its innermost quarter, a tiny “sun within the Sun.” The surface we see is merely where the energy escapes.
16
The largest storm in the known universe is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot , a hurricane that is three times the width of Earth and floats 5 miles above Jupiter’s surface.
17
Galileo was the first person to see Saturn’s rings , but his telescopes were so poor that he believed to his dying day that the rings were attached handles, like those on a teacup.
18
In addition to white, stars are colored red, orange, blue, violet, yellow, brown, even black. The single missing hue is green.
19
The fastest twirling objects in the universe are pulsars (tiny stars). Since 1982, some 200 have been discovered. The fastest-spinning of these turns 716 times per second. (The second fastest spins 641 times per second.) From a pulsar’s surface, other stars would appear not as dots but as white lines in the sky.
20
The first of a new type of celestial object— asteroids —was discovered on January 1, 1801.
21
Neptune has the strongest winds in the solar system. Its air howls at 1,300 miles per hour, four times faster than Earth’s fiercest tornadoes.
22
The universe’s second most abundant element, helium, is the only one that never freezes solid.
23
Half of the Moon is composed of a single element, the same one that makes up two-thirds of your body weight: oxygen .
24
After the Moon is struck by a meteoroid or falling spacecraft, it vibrates for hours.
Bob Berman
is the director of Overlook Observatory in Woodstock and Storm King Observatory in Cornwall, both in New York.
Calendar: Three-Year Calendar
How to Use This Almanac
The Calendar [>] pages are the heart of The Old Farmer’s Almanac. They present sky sightings and astronomical data for the entire year and are what make this book a true almanac, a “calendar of the heavens.” In essence, these pages are unchanged since 1792, when Robert B. Thomas published his first edition. The long columns of numbers and symbols reveal all of nature’s precision, rhythm, and glory, providing an astronomical look at the year 2015.
Why We Have Seasons
The seasons occur because as Earth revolves around the Sun, its axis remains tilted at 23.5 degrees from the perpendicular. This tilt causes different latitudes on Earth to receive varying amounts of sunlight throughout the year.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the summer solstice marks the; beginning (if summer and occurs when the North Pole is tilted toward the Sun. The winter solstice marks the beginning of winter and occurs when the North Pole is tilted away from the Sun.
The equinoxes occur when the hemispheres equally face the Sun. At this time, the Sun rises due east and sets due west. The vernal equinox marks the beginning of spring; the autumnal equinox marks the beginning of autumn.
In the
11
On a scale model in which Earth is a dust mote , the Sun would be one inch away and the size of the period at the end of this sentence. The nearest star would be another period 4¼ miles distant.
12
The most common object in the universe (possessing mass) is the neutrino. These tiny particles are more numerous than anything else by far. A trillion neutrinos fly through each of your fingernails every second.
13
The universe is expanding, but no one knows how far. It has no outside or edge. The extent of the known universe is 38 to 47 billion light-years in every direction.
14
When observed in desert skies far from any city, there seem to be millions of stars visible to the naked eye. (The naked eye limit is about magnitude 5.8.) However, the actual number is about 2,600. You could count every star in 20 minutes at a leisurely rate of about two per second.
15
Then uclear fusion that produces the Sun’s heat and light occurs in its innermost quarter, a tiny “sun within the Sun.” The surface we see is merely where the energy escapes.
16
The largest storm in the known universe is Jupiter’s Great Red Spot , a hurricane that is three times the width of Earth and floats 5 miles above Jupiter’s surface.
17
Galileo was the first person to see Saturn’s rings , but his telescopes were so poor that he believed to his dying day that the rings were attached handles, like those on a teacup.
18
In addition to white, stars are colored red, orange, blue, violet, yellow, brown, even black. The single missing hue is green.
19
The fastest twirling objects in the universe are pulsars (tiny stars). Since 1982, some 200 have been discovered. The fastest-spinning of these turns 716 times per second. (The second fastest spins 641 times per second.) From a pulsar’s surface, other stars would appear not as dots but as white lines in the sky.
20
The first of a new type of celestial object— asteroids —was discovered on January 1, 1801.
21
Neptune has the strongest winds in the solar system. Its air howls at 1,300 miles per hour, four times faster than Earth’s fiercest tornadoes.
22
The universe’s second most abundant element, helium, is the only one that never freezes solid.
23
Half of the Moon is composed of a single element, the same one that makes up two-thirds of your body weight: oxygen .
24
After the Moon is struck by a meteoroid or falling spacecraft, it vibrates for hours.
Bob Berman
is the director of Overlook Observatory in Woodstock and Storm King Observatory in Cornwall, both in New York.
Calendar: Three-Year Calendar
How to Use This Almanac
The Calendar [>] pages are the heart of The Old Farmer’s Almanac. They present sky sightings and astronomical data for the entire year and are what make this book a true almanac, a “calendar of the heavens.” In essence, these pages are unchanged since 1792, when Robert B. Thomas published his first edition. The long columns of numbers and symbols reveal all of nature’s precision, rhythm, and glory, providing an astronomical look at the year 2015.
Why We Have Seasons
The seasons occur because as Earth revolves around the Sun, its axis remains tilted at 23.5 degrees from the perpendicular. This tilt causes different latitudes on Earth to receive varying amounts of sunlight throughout the year.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the summer solstice marks the; beginning (if summer and occurs when the North Pole is tilted toward the Sun. The winter solstice marks the beginning of winter and occurs when the North Pole is tilted away from the Sun.
The equinoxes occur when the hemispheres equally face the Sun. At this time, the Sun rises due east and sets due west. The vernal equinox marks the beginning of spring; the autumnal equinox marks the beginning of autumn.
In the
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