Astronomy vs Astrology

Today we were looking at astronomy vs astrology

We have been interested in the stars and planets for years and have visited observatories and planateriums.  I recently got a telescope and we used it to view the full lunar eclipse.  I also have this star center that has a bulb and daily settings for projecting the stars onto the ceiling at night.

having moved from the Southern Hemisphere to the Northern Hemisphere a few years ago - all the stars are different and the ones we knew cant be viewed here, so its a thing we all have to learn.  My favourite stars are Orions Belt.

I was broadening my vocab. and definintions of galactic terms ;)  There is a cool book I have called Night Skies thats quite interesting.

Eliptical orbits of comets is interesting and I found these sites:

http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~bds2/ltsn/ljm/JAVA/COMETORB/COMET.HTM - good diagram showing the path of a comet vs a planet.
http://www.windows2universe.org/physical_science/physics/mechanics/orbit/ellipse.html - National Earth Science Teachers Association
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~bds2/ltsn/ljm/JAVA/COMETORB/COMET.HTM
http://www.astro-tom.com/technical_data/elliptical_orbits.htm
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-an-elliptical-orbit.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_orbit
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/comet/
http://www.windows2universe.org/comets/comet_model_interactive.html
http://cse.ssl.berkeley.edu/segwayed/lessons/cometstale/com3_a.html
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/orbits/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_astronomy

A few sites mentioned Babylonian astronomers which also took us to side track to a bit of ancient history on the Tower of Babel and all the associated religious stories.  We looked at the site on Google Earth as well as looking at the details of bitumen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitumen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel

The interest in astrology has started because of the articles that have appeared in the media on changes to the starsigns.

http://uk.lifestyle.yahoo.com/home/why-your-Zodiac-sign-might-be-wrong-blog-13-vanessa-green.html



The Minnesota Planetarium Society has revealed the following list as where the real Zodiac signs fall.


Capricorn: Jan. 20-Feb. 16

Aquarius: Feb. 16-March 11
Pisces: March 11-April 18
Aries: April 18-May 13
Taurus: May 13-June 21
Gemini: June 21-July 20
Cancer: July 20-Aug. 10
Leo: Aug. 10-Sept. 16
Virgo: Sept. 16-Oct. 30
Libra: Oct. 30-Nov. 23
Scorpio: Nov. 23-29
Ophiuchus: Nov. 29-Dec. 17
Sagittarius: Dec. 17-Jan. 20