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foreverphysics wrote:Who here watched the Quadrantids Meteor Shower the other night? Wasn't it awesome?

I only saw the last of it...

drifter601 wrote:

foreverphysics wrote:Who here watched the Quadrantids Meteor Shower the other night? Wasn't it awesome?

I only saw the last of it...

I saw most of it with my sister...she wanted to see it too, so I pulled her up at 2 am to go watch it. It was really, really beautiful; I saw the Big Dipper in all of its obviousness.
Did I mention that this was the day before (or should I say, the day of) school was slated to start?

I came in 3rd at regionals for RFTS but I don't know how further in the topics are going to go at state. I am good at constellations and can identify where its stars and deep sky objects are. What type of information about stars and galaxies would they ask at state finals? The hardest part of the regionals test was the stellar evolution because I did not have matching notes and I find that different sources show the stellar evolution differently.

patriots44 wrote:I came in 3rd at regionals for RFTS but I don't know how further in the topics are going to go at state. I am good at constellations and can identify where its stars and deep sky objects are. What type of information about stars and galaxies would they ask at state finals? The hardest part of the regionals test was the stellar evolution because I did not have matching notes and I find that different sources show the stellar evolution differently.

A great place to start would be to study galatic structures and clusters. The information you should study is ages, types of stars in them, how they're formed, etc. A good start to find this information is on the RFTS Wiki. Also you should be knowledgeable about the mass of stars and how their mass affects their placement in stellar evolution, such as stars between 0.8 and 8 solar masses become main sequence low mass stars and star beyond 8 solar masses become high mass stars.
Hoped this helped!

Oh thanks! I will probably put most of this information on the 2 pages. Anyways the test I received at NJ regionals was the same exact test found in the test exchange on this website!

patriots44 wrote:Oh thanks! I will probably put most of this information on the 2 pages. Anyways the test I received at NJ regionals was the same exact test found in the test exchange on this website!

Out of curiosity, which test was it specifically? There are quite a few RFTS tests up on the test exchange right now.

It was the "RFS NC State Test with Answer Key" bulleted test in the test exchange. I was surprised that it says state test but it was used at a regionals.

Huh... almost a perfect set up for cheating.
Anyway, what do you need the red filter flashlight for?

If you're at a competition where they have access to a planetarium (inflatable or otherwise), they might ask you to ID constellations and answer questions while in the planetarium. So the red-filtered flashlight allows you to have light to read your starcharts/notes/sommat like that, without completely ruining your night vision.

Word of advice: do not look into the flashlight - even though it's filtered, it can still ruin your night vision for the next several minutes (personal experience).

Do state finals usually have planetariums? My regionals county college place didn't have one and we just got a test. Can you see constellations and stars if you shine a red filtered flashlight on them?