The Astronomy of Harry Potter
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The Summer Sky by Dr
The Summer Sky by Dr. Whitney Shane, MIRA’s Charles Hitchcock Adams Fellow Fixed Stars Some years ago this column had occasion to discuss planetary nebulae, using the Ring Nebula in Lyra, everyone’s favorite, as an example. The simple morphology of the Ring Nebula makes it ideal for this purpose. It can be explained as a slightly ellipsoidal expanding shell, where the asym- metry is due to a slight anisotropy in the initial expansion velocity. Very few planetary nebulae have the simple structure of the Ring Nebula. In fact, there is a baffling variety in the shapes of these objects. Most of them, however, show symmetry about a plane, which we might identify with the equator of the central star. The expansion seems to take place mainly in the direction of the poles. This could be caused by the presence of a massive ring of material around the equator, which would direct the expansion toward the poles. This ring might have been left over from the giant phase of the star. This agreeable situa- tion came to an abrupt end when Hubble Space Telescope images of planetary nebulae, starting with the Cat’s Eye Nebula (NGC 6543), showed far more com- plex structures than had been previously sus- pected. This complexity, particularly its fine detail, could not be ex- plained by the model of an equatorial ring direct- ing a general expansion toward the poles. Attempts to explain these structures seem to fall into two categories. The presence of a companion star would provide both the dy- namical perturbations and the symmetry plane (in this case the orbital plane) required by the observa- tions. -
Stereotypes and Prejudices in the Magical World of Harry Potter
Stereotypes and Prejudices in the Magical World of Harry Potter Gagulić, Jasmina Master's thesis / Diplomski rad 2016 Degree Grantor / Ustanova koja je dodijelila akademski / stručni stupanj: Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences / Sveučilište Josipa Jurja Strossmayera u Osijeku, Filozofski fakultet Permanent link / Trajna poveznica: https://urn.nsk.hr/urn:nbn:hr:142:137249 Rights / Prava: In copyright Download date / Datum preuzimanja: 2021-09-27 Repository / Repozitorij: FFOS-repository - Repository of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Osijek Sveučilište J. J. Strossmayera u Osijeku Filozofski fakultet Osijek Diplomski studij engleskog jezika i književnosti (nastavnički smjer) i pedagogije Jasmina Gagulić Stereotypes and Prejudices in the Magical World of Harry Potter Diplomski rad doc. dr. sc. Biljana Oklopčić Osijek, 2016 Sveučilište J. J. Strossmayera u Osijeku Filozofski fakultet Osijek Odsjek za engleski jezik i književnost Diplomski studij engleskog jezika i književnosti (nastavnički smjer) i pedagogije Jasmina Gagulić Stereotypes and Prejudices in the Magical World of Harry Potter Diplomski rad Humanističke znanosti, filologija, teorija i povijest književnosti doc. dr. sc. Biljana Oklopčić Osijek, 2016 2 Abstract This paper presents the analysis of stereotypes and prejudices in the Harry Potter series. The paper is divided into several parts, with the definition of stereotypes and the discussion about gender and house stereotypes in the first part of the paper and the definition and the discussion of prejudice, namely racial prejudice, in the second part. Stereotypes are challenged in the portrayal of many characters whose behavior calls into question traditional gender roles as well as the traits commonly associated with the four Hogwarts houses. -
THUBAN the Star Thuban in the Constellation Draco (The Dragon) Was the North Pole Star Some 5,000 Years Ago, When the Egyptians Were Building the Pyramids
STAR OF THE WEEK: THUBAN The star Thuban in the constellation Draco (the Dragon) was the North Pole Star some 5,000 years ago, when the Egyptians were building the pyramids. Thuban is not a particularly bright star. At magnitude 3.7 and known as alpha draconis it is not even the brightest star in its constellation. What is Thuban’s connection with the pyramids of Egypt? Among the many mysteries surrounding Egypt’s pyramids are the so-called “air shafts” in the Great Pyramid of Giza. These narrow passageways were once thought to serve for ventilation as the The Great Pyramid of Giza, an enduring monument of ancient pyramids were being built. In the 1960s, though, Egypt. Egyptologists believe that it was built as a tomb for fourth dynasty Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu around 2560 BC the air shafts were recognized as being aligned with stars or areas of sky as the sky appeared for the pyramids’ builders 5,000 years ago. To this day, the purpose of all these passageways inside the Great Pyramid isn’t clear, although some might have been connected to rituals associated with the king’s ascension to the heavens. Whatever their purpose, the Great Pyramid of Giza reveals that its builders knew the starry skies intimately. They surely knew Thuban was their Pole Star, the point around which the heavens appeared to turn. Various sources claim that Thuban almost exactly pinpointed the position of the north celestial pole in the This diagram shows the so-called air shafts in the Great year 2787 B.C. -
Winter Constellations
Winter Constellations *Orion *Canis Major *Monoceros *Canis Minor *Gemini *Auriga *Taurus *Eradinus *Lepus *Monoceros *Cancer *Lynx *Ursa Major *Ursa Minor *Draco *Camelopardalis *Cassiopeia *Cepheus *Andromeda *Perseus *Lacerta *Pegasus *Triangulum *Aries *Pisces *Cetus *Leo (rising) *Hydra (rising) *Canes Venatici (rising) Orion--Myth: Orion, the great hunter. In one myth, Orion boasted he would kill all the wild animals on the earth. But, the earth goddess Gaia, who was the protector of all animals, produced a gigantic scorpion, whose body was so heavily encased that Orion was unable to pierce through the armour, and was himself stung to death. His companion Artemis was greatly saddened and arranged for Orion to be immortalised among the stars. Scorpius, the scorpion, was placed on the opposite side of the sky so that Orion would never be hurt by it again. To this day, Orion is never seen in the sky at the same time as Scorpius. DSO’s ● ***M42 “Orion Nebula” (Neb) with Trapezium A stellar nursery where new stars are being born, perhaps a thousand stars. These are immense clouds of interstellar gas and dust collapse inward to form stars, mainly of ionized hydrogen which gives off the red glow so dominant, and also ionized greenish oxygen gas. The youngest stars may be less than 300,000 years old, even as young as 10,000 years old (compared to the Sun, 4.6 billion years old). 1300 ly. 1 ● *M43--(Neb) “De Marin’s Nebula” The star-forming “comma-shaped” region connected to the Orion Nebula. ● *M78--(Neb) Hard to see. A star-forming region connected to the Orion Nebula. -
Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy 33 I
The Law and Harry Potter Edited by Jeffrey E. Thomas Franklin G. Snyder CAROLINA ACADEMIC PRESS Durham. North Carolina Copyright © 20 I0 Jeffrey E. Thomas Franklin G. Snyder Contents All Rights Reserved Preface Vll Part I Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Legal Traditions and Institutions What Role Need Law Play in a Society with Magic? 3 The law and Harry Potter I [edited by] Jeffrey E. Thomas and Franklin G. John Gava & Jeannie Marie Paterson Snyder. Bats and Gemots: Anglo-Saxon Legal References in Harry Potter 19 p. em. Includes bibliographical references. Susan P. Liemer ISBN 978-1-59460-645-8 (alI<. paper) Harry Potter and the Half-Crazed Bureaucracy 33 I. Rowling, J. K.--Criticism and interpretation. 2. Rowling, J. K.--Charac Benjamin H. Barton ters--Harry Potter. 3. Potter, Harry (Fictitious character) 4. Law in literature. Moral Choice, Wizardry, Law and Liberty: A Classical Liberal 5. Magic in literature. 6. Wizards in literature. I. Thomas, Jeffrey E. II. Sny Reading of the Role of Law in the Harry Potter Series 49 der, Franklin G. III. Title. Andrew P Morriss Part II PR6068.093Z75652010 Crimes and Punishments 823'.914--dc22 Harry Potter and the Unforgivable Curses 67 2009041207 Aaron Schwabach Sirius Black: A Case Study in Actual Innocence 91 Geoffrey Christopher Rapp The Persecution of Tom Riddle: A Study in Human Rights Law 103 Carolina Academic Press Geoffrey R. Watson 700 Kent Street Durham, North Carolina 27701 Punishment in the Harry Potter Novels 119 Telephone (919) 489-7486 Joel Fishman Fax (919) 493-5668 Part III www.cap-press.com Harry Potter and Identity Hogwarts, the Family, and the State: Forging Identity and Virtue in Harry Potter 13t Printed in the United States ofAmerica Danaya C. -
Star Maps: Where Are the Black Holes?
BLACK HOLE FAQ’s 1. What is a black hole? A black hole is a region of space that has so much mass concentrated in it that there is no way for a nearby object to escape its gravitational pull. There are three kinds of black hole that we have strong evidence for: a. Stellar-mass black holes are the remaining cores of massive stars after they die in a supernova explosion. b. Mid-mass black hole in the centers of dense star clusters Credit : ESA, NASA, and F. Mirabel c. Supermassive black hole are found in the centers of many (and maybe all) galaxies. 2. Can a black hole appear anywhere? No, you need an amount of matter more than 3 times the mass of the Sun before it can collapse to create a black hole. 3. If a star dies, does it always turn into a black hole? No, smaller stars like our Sun end their lives as dense hot stars called white dwarfs. Much more massive stars end their lives in a supernova explosion. The remaining cores of only the most massive stars will form black holes. 4. Will black holes suck up all the matter in the universe? No. A black hole has a very small region around it from which you can't escape, called the “event horizon”. If you (or other matter) cross the horizon, you will be pulled in. But as long as you stay outside of the horizon, you can avoid getting pulled in if you are orbiting fast enough. 5. What happens when a spaceship you are riding in falls into a black hole? Your spaceship, along with you, would be squeezed and stretched until it was torn completely apart as it approached the center of the black hole. -
Naming the Extrasolar Planets
Naming the extrasolar planets W. Lyra Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, K¨onigstuhl 17, 69177, Heidelberg, Germany [email protected] Abstract and OGLE-TR-182 b, which does not help educators convey the message that these planets are quite similar to Jupiter. Extrasolar planets are not named and are referred to only In stark contrast, the sentence“planet Apollo is a gas giant by their assigned scientific designation. The reason given like Jupiter” is heavily - yet invisibly - coated with Coper- by the IAU to not name the planets is that it is consid- nicanism. ered impractical as planets are expected to be common. I One reason given by the IAU for not considering naming advance some reasons as to why this logic is flawed, and sug- the extrasolar planets is that it is a task deemed impractical. gest names for the 403 extrasolar planet candidates known One source is quoted as having said “if planets are found to as of Oct 2009. The names follow a scheme of association occur very frequently in the Universe, a system of individual with the constellation that the host star pertains to, and names for planets might well rapidly be found equally im- therefore are mostly drawn from Roman-Greek mythology. practicable as it is for stars, as planet discoveries progress.” Other mythologies may also be used given that a suitable 1. This leads to a second argument. It is indeed impractical association is established. to name all stars. But some stars are named nonetheless. In fact, all other classes of astronomical bodies are named. -
The Lore of the Stars, for Amateur Campfire Sages
obscure. Various claims have been made about Babylonian innovations and the similarity between the Greek zodiac and the stories, dating from the third millennium BCE, of Gilgamesh, a legendary Sumerian hero who encountered animals and characters similar to those of the zodiac. Some of the Babylonian constellations may have been popularized in the Greek world through the conquest of The Lore of the Stars, Alexander in the fourth century BCE. Alexander himself sent captured Babylonian texts back For Amateur Campfire Sages to Greece for his tutor Aristotle to interpret. Even earlier than this, Babylonian astronomy by Anders Hove would have been familiar to the Persians, who July 2002 occupied Greece several centuries before Alexander’s day. Although we may properly credit the Greeks with completing the Babylonian work, it is clear that the Babylonians did develop some of the symbols and constellations later adopted by the Greeks for their zodiac. Contrary to the story of the star-counter in Le Petit Prince, there aren’t unnumerable stars Cuneiform tablets using symbols similar to in the night sky, at least so far as we can see those used later for constellations may have with our own eyes. Only about a thousand are some relationship to astronomy, or they may visible. Almost all have names or Greek letter not. Far more tantalizing are the various designations as part of constellations that any- cuneiform tablets outlining astronomical one can learn to recognize. observations used by the Babylonians for Modern astronomers have divided the sky tracking the moon and developing a calendar. into 88 constellations, many of them fictitious— One of these is the MUL.APIN, which describes that is, they cover sky area, but contain no vis- the stars along the paths of the moon and ible stars. -
The Constellation Microscopium, the Microscope Microscopium Is A
The Constellation Microscopium, the Microscope Microscopium is a small constellation in the southern sky, defined in the 18th century by Nicolas Louis de Lacaille in 1751–52 . Its name is Latin for microscope; it was invented by Lacaille to commemorate the compound microscope, i.e. one that uses more than one lens. The first microscope was invented by the two brothers, Hans and Zacharius Jensen, Dutch spectacle makers of Holland in 1590, who were also involved in the invention of the telescope (see below). Lacaille first showed it on his map of 1756 under the name le Microscope but Latinized this to Microscopium on the second edition published in 1763. He described it as consisting of "a tube above a square box". It contains sixty-nine stars, varying in magnitude from 4.8 to 7, the lucida being Gamma Microscopii of apparent magnitude 4.68. Two star systems have been found to have planets, while another has a debris disk. The stars that now comprise Microscopium may formerly have belonged to the hind feet of Sagittarius. However, this is uncertain as, while its stars seem to be referred to by Al-Sufi as having been seen by Ptolemy, Al-Sufi does not specify their exact positions. Microscopium is bordered Capricornus to the north, Piscis Austrinus and Grus to the west, Sagittarius to the east, Indus to the south, and touching on Telescopium to the southeast. The recommended three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted Seen in the 1824 star chart set Urania's Mirror (lower left) by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is 'Mic'. -
The Sky Tonight
MARCH POUTŪ-TE-RANGI HIGHLIGHTS Conjunction of Saturn and the Moon A conjunction is when two astronomical objects appear close in the sky as seen THE- SKY TONIGHT- - from Earth. The planets, along with the TE AHUA O TE RAKI I TENEI PO Sun and the Moon, appear to travel across Brightest Stars our sky roughly following a path called the At this time of the year, we can see the ecliptic. Each body travels at its own speed, three brightest stars in the night sky. sometimes entering ‘retrograde’ where they The brightness of a star, as seen from seem to move backwards for a period of time Earth, is measured as its apparent (though the backwards motion is only from magnitude. Pictured on the cover is our vantage point, and in fact the planets Sirius, the brightest star in our night sky, are still orbiting the Sun normally). which is 8.6 light-years away. Sometimes these celestial bodies will cross With an apparent magnitude of −1.46, paths along the ecliptic line and occupy the this star can be found in the constellation same space in our sky, though they are still Canis Major, high in the northern sky. millions of kilometres away from each other. Sirius is actually a binary star system, consisting of Sirius A which is twice the On March 19, the Moon and Saturn will be size of the Sun, and a faint white dwarf in conjunction. While the unaided eye will companion named Sirius B. only see Saturn as a bright star-like object (Saturn is the eighth brightest object in our Sirius is almost twice as bright as the night sky), a telescope can offer a spectacular second brightest star in the night sky, view of the ringed planet close to our Moon. -
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
FADE IN EXT. - LITTLE WHINGING - NIGHT It is sunset. We drift through the clouds, approaching NUMBER FOUR, PRIVET DRIVE. We sail over the roof of NUMBER FOUR and continue on past it into the street. We drift down into an abandoned playground. A lone figure sits on the only unbroken swing.. It is HARRY POTTER. He appears deep in thought. Had he been watching more carefully, he would have seen the old MRS. FIGG watching him from her front porch. MRS. FIGG adjusts her porch chair in order to watch Harry better. The sound of harsh laughter reaches Harry's ears. He looks up. Dudley and his gang of followers are walking down the street, telling crude jokes and laughing. They ignore Harry and continue on out of sight. Harry gets to his feet and follows them. EXT. STREET - NIGHT Harry rounds the corner, only to find himself surrounded by Dudley's gang. DUDLEY Oh, it's you. GANG THUG #1 What should we do with him, Big D? Harry laughs. HARRY Big D? Cool name, but to me, you'll always be Ikkle Duddicums. DUDLEY Shut up! One of Dudley's gang steps in as if to punch Harry. Harry glares at him. The gang member pauses, then steps back again. DUDLEY Ooo, tough guy. Not so tough in your bed, are you? 2. HARRY What? MRS. FIGG stands up and goes to the edge of her porch. MRS. FIGG You boys go home now, or I'll be calling your parents! They pause and edge away from Harry. -
Stargazer Vice President: James Bielaga (425) 337-4384 Jamesbielaga at Aol.Com P.O
1 - Volume MMVII. No. 1 January 2007 President: Mark Folkerts (425) 486-9733 folkerts at seanet.com The Stargazer Vice President: James Bielaga (425) 337-4384 jamesbielaga at aol.com P.O. Box 12746 Librarian: Mike Locke (425) 259-5995 mlocke at lionmts.com Everett, WA 98206 Treasurer: Carol Gore (360) 856-5135 janeway7C at aol.com Newsletter co-editor: Bill O’Neil (774) 253-0747 wonastrn at seanet.com Web assistance: Cody Gibson (425) 348-1608 sircody01 at comcast.net See EAS website at: (change ‘at’ to @ to send email) http://members.tripod.com/everett_astronomy nearby Diablo Lake. And then at night, discover the night sky like EAS BUSINESS… you've never seen it before. We hope you'll join us for a great weekend. July 13-15, North Cascades Environmental Learning Center North Cascades National Park. More information NEXT EAS MEETING – SATURDAY JANUARY 27TH including pricing, detailed program, and reservation forms available shortly, so please check back at Pacific Science AT 3:00 PM AT THE EVERETT PUBLIC LIBRARY, IN Center's website. THE AUDITORIUM (DOWNSTAIRS) http://www.pacsci.org/travel/astronomy_weekend.html People should also join and send mail to the mail list THIS MONTH'S MEETING PROGRAM: [email protected] to coordinate spur-of-the- Toby Smith, lecturer from the University of Washington moment observing get-togethers, on nights when the sky Astronomy department, will give a talk featuring a clears. We try to hold informal close-in star parties each month visualization presentation he has prepared called during the spring, summer, and fall months on a weekend near “Solar System Cinema”.