Category Archives: Astronomy

All about astronomy: What it is, how the Solar System works, famous astronomers and more

What is an occultation?

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An occultation is whenever one object in the sky passes in front of another and temporarily obscures our view of that second object.  As enormous as space is, different objects do still sometimes line up and when this happens we say that the nearer object has “occulted” the further one.  Most occultations are caused by the Moon – it’s quite large and moves quite fast against the stellar background, so it occults any number of stars every day.  Less often, … Continue reading →

What is antimatter?

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Antimatter is just like normal matter, except that the particles that make it up are the opposite versions of the particles which make up regular matter. As you should know, everything physical in the universe is made up of atoms, and those atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons.  These particles have a number of properties (mass, spin, etc) including charge.  An electron has negative charge, and the amount of charge is exactly the same for every electron in … Continue reading →

The Mayan Calendar

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The foundation of all the doomsday prophecies slated for December 21, 2012 (or December 23, depending on which calculations you use) are based on the assumption that the ancient mayans knew when the world was going to end, and structured their calendar accordingly.  The final day of their calendar corresponds to 21 December (or 23rd) by the Gregorian calendar which we use in the modern western world. The Gregorian calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII on 24 February, 1582, … Continue reading →

Is it really going to happen on 21st December 2012?

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Editors note: Back in 2012, this was easily the most popular section of Urban Astronomer.  Now, two years later, hardly anybody seems to even remember what all the fuss was about.  Still, since these sorts of doomsday prophecies tend to recur (the prophets have book sales to sustain, after all!), I’m keeping it all up as a reference.  If you stumbled upon this page looking for information on some other doomsday story, foretold by the ancients, then please stay and … Continue reading →

2012: My official position

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About two years ago, I was quite passionate about the next predicted apocalypse. There were a lot of people talking very loudly about ways in which the world was expected to end come 21 December 2012, and I (along with much of the online scientific community) devoted many pages to refuting some of these claims. I suspect however that the only reason so many people took the issue seriously in the first place was that Michael Bay made one of … Continue reading →