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Unit 7: Astrophysics Page 55
that is not a meteorite. To tell the prograde motion, meaning that
difference, scratch a line from both they all move across the sky in the
rocks onto an unglazed tile (or the same direction.
bottom of a coffee mug or the
underside of the toilet tank). However, at
Magnetite will leave a mark certain times of
whereas the real meteorite will not. the orbit,
certain planets
If you find a meteorite, head to move in
your nearest geology department 'retrograde
at a local university or college and motion', the
let them know what you’ve found. opposite way. Mars, Venus, and
In the USA, if you find a meteorite, Mercury all have retrograde motion
you get to keep it… but you might that have been recorded for as
want to let the experts in the long as we've had something to
geology department have a thin write with. While most of the time,
slice of it to see what they can they spend their time in the
figure out about your particular 'prograde' direction, you'll find that
specimen. sometimes they stop, go
backwards, stop, then go forward
Here’s an option for meteorite again, all over the course of
hunters: place a sheet of white several days to weeks.
paper outside on the ground. After
a few hours, your paper starts to Experiment: Satellite Crash
show signs of “dust”. Carefully
place a magnet underneath the The Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
paper, and see if any of the zooms around the Earth once every
particles move as you wiggle the 90 minutes (about 5 miles per
magnet. If so, you’ve got yourself second), and in August 2008,
a few bits of space dust! Hubble completed 100,000 orbits!
Although the HST was not the first
Experiment: Retrograde space telescope, is the one of the
Motion largest and most publicized
scientific instrument around.
If you watch the moon, you'd Hubble is a collaboration project
notice that it rises in the east and between NASA and the ESA
sets in the west. This direction is (European Space Agency), and is
called 'prograde motion'. The stars, one of NASA’s “Great
sun, and moon all follow the same Observatories” (others include
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