Searching the Heavens (Advance Class) on Elective Hall

Professor Jackson

July 09, 2010 5:19 PM

Searching the Heavens (Advance Class) by Professor Jackson

Jackson entered his room with a small smile ready to delve deeper into the sky with his Advanced Students. He had quickly fallen in love with teaching it was easy and seeing the same passion he had in his students’ eyes was great. It wasn’t easy but Jackson loved the challenge for getting through to the children. He had thought he was going to miss the long nights as a research assistant to Gyula Szabo but he found being the main Astronomer in a building was a lot more rewarding. He stood leaning about his desk as the students entered and sat upon the various chairs and couches of the inner tower room.

Once the time chimed ten pm Jackson clapped his hands getting everyone’s attention. “Good evening!” He began with a smile. He looked over at the class and nodded to make sure everyone was here, the great thing about having such small classes was he had learned their names quickly and didn’t have to do roll every single class. “We are going to be studying Galaxies tonight.” He said with a smile. “So we will start in here and continue outside.”

“Now I assume that you all know that a galaxy is a huge gravitational bound system of stars, planets, dust, gas and dark matter. Now galaxies can be as dwarfs with as few as ten million stars, up to giants with hundred trillion stars all orbiting the galaxy’s center mass. Galaxies may contain multiple star systems, star clusters, and various interstellar clouds.” He began his speech as he walked around the room watching the students take notes.

“There are three types of galaxies Ellipticals, Spirals, and Irregulars. Now an Elliptical is a sphere shaped, smooth, and a nearly featureless bright profile.” Jackson paused and pointed up to his charmed sky that showed an Elliptical Galaxy.

“The Spiral galaxies consist of a rotating disk of stars and other interstellar dust and clouds, along with a central bulge of generally older stars.” He once again pointed up at his charmed sky that now held a Spiral Galaxy.

“And finally there is the Irregular Galaxies. There is no rhyme or reason to how or why they are formed. One example is the The Hoag’s Object. Which is a Ringed Galaxy. Yet there are many examples this is just one.” He nodded slowly and smiled.

“Now today’s assignment is to break out your telescopes on the balcony and find an example of each galaxy. Correctly identify it and what kind of Galaxy it is. If you need any help or have any questions please just call me over.” With that he let the students go with a smile.

OCC: A list of galaxies! We’ll just pretend your telescopes are charmed to see into the deep spots of space.

Subthreads:

Because overachieving is fun. by Thomas Fitzgerald, Aladren with Jera Valson, Thomas

Long time, no telescope. by Grayson Wright

0 Professor Jackson Searching the Heavens (Advance Class) 0 Professor Jackson 1 5

Thomas Fitzgerald, Aladren

July 13, 2010 11:14 PM

Because overachieving is fun. by Thomas Fitzgerald, Aladren

He'd had enough classes to be getting on with, enough that keeping his grades up in all of them and running Aladren's Quidditch team had occasionally gotten difficult back when they had been in the running for this year's Cup, but when Astronomy had become available for the first time in years after midterm, Thomas had still opted to try to pick it up quite a distance from where he'd left it off.

He wasn't quite sure why he had done this. While he liked to think it was a fatal flaw of always wanting to be best and know as much as possible, he suspected it had more to do with a previously unsuspected liking for adrenalin or, on days when he didn't feel so politically correct, self-torture. He spent most of his time being careful never to overestimate his abilities, so there was a kind of thrill in deliberately picking up something he wasn't sure there were adequate resources for.

Sometimes there was. Tonight, there was just a strong urge to kick himself for being exactly the kind of moron with a point to prove and no brains to come up with a good scheme to prove it that he despised. He had a metric ton of essay to write for Fawcett and not much less homework from Levy, and MacKenna adding to the load would make the rest of his week misery incarnate. He took notes over galaxy types far more quickly than usual, the deterioration of his usually neat handwriting reflecting a baseless feeling of being a little harassed.

After that, though, they were put to finding examples of those galaxy types, and Thomas could almost feel his mind settling as he set up his telescope. Ridiculous, but there was something soothing about stargazing, and curfew plus a workload and a reluctance to leave his roommates around his things without supervision (Gray he was used to, insofar as any person operating primarily on the normal plane of reality could get used to Gray, but getting used to him had taken years that Thomas hadn't had to get used to Ian) made this one of the few occasions when he could get away with it.

It was always a little overwhelming, though, at first. Just enough to bring him to the edge of unhappy speculation over his actual significance in the universe. There were times when only having a certain kind of imagination was of help, because he had never wanted to be a tormented intellectual.

After a few minutes of adjusting and patiently looking for landmarks, though, Thomas got some perspective back and was able to spot something that matched the description he'd been given for an elliptical galaxy. Noting down what he thought were the right coordinates on paper, pushing the image into his head, and leaving his telescope pointed as it was, he moved away from the device and took out his book and wand for light to check its identity.

0 Thomas Fitzgerald, Aladren Because overachieving is fun. 0 Thomas Fitzgerald, Aladren 0 5

Jera Valson

July 18, 2010 1:15 PM

Because interacting is better by Jera Valson

Although she was only taking three classes at RATS level, Jera was also doing independent studies in herbology (which would be trickier for any student whose father wasn't a herbologist), and had decided to add Astronomy to her schedule when it had become available. Perhaps it would have been more logical for her to have taken another independent in Ancient Runes - another subject with which she had grown up, and had even been named after - but logic wasn't always the best way to progress. Jera already knew all she cared to about Runes; she knew very little about her universe, and she found it fascinating. Besides, she found the majority of her classwork well within her capabilities. Even with the extra-curricular time consumers of Assistant Captain and Assistant librarian, the first part of each title was adequate in explainin how Jera still had a fair amount of free time. Taking an extra class for her remaining time at school was simply another way to occupy herself, especially as in five full years she had still not managed to affirm herself in any kind of friendship group.

Professor MacKenna was supposed to be a real expert in his field, so Jera was excited to be learning from him. In this class - as in any other - she took avid, organised notes throughout his lecture. Then when they were given the assignment, she wasted no time in getting to a telescope with her parchment, quill (and spare), and textbook.

Peering through the telescope actaully caused Jera some mild discomfort. Her dark, straight hair had to be tied back from her face to prevent it from falling in front of her eyes or tickling her face, and one of her dark eyes remained closed as the other was pressed against the cool metal of the eyepiece. Searching the skies was fun at first - almost mystical - but then it became tiring. Finally Jera's gaze settled on a good representation of one of the galaxies she was supposed to be locating. Delighted to be able to take a break from star-staring, she took a hasty couple of steps backwards in order to write down the co-ordinates, but bumped into something behind her. Turning to apologise, Jera relaized it hadn't been a person, but another telescope, and she'd knocked it from where it had been focussed. "Oh no, I'm sorry," she said to Thomas, her voice reflecting the regret she felt. "I just knocked that right off. Please tell me you're done with it!" If he had to start all over again she'd feel awful (and a tiny bit concerned she might have to avoid more Bludgers than usual at their next practise).

0 Jera Valson Because interacting is better 112 Jera Valson 0 5

Thomas

July 19, 2010 9:08 PM

Indeed, it can be. by Thomas

Thomas was distracted from his textbook by the long end of his telescope suddenly sweeping back toward his face. He reached up to stop it automatically, as though it were an oddly-shaped Quaffle, but there was no need; it hadn’t been hit that hard. Just hard enough to knock it out of position.

He hoped he’d gotten those coordinates down right.

Pushing the instrument so that it was at least pointing the right way again, he met Jera’s apologies with a smile. He was a little cautious around her – she was the Headmistress’ daughter, and while he acknowledged that many families were not like his, he had to at least consider that hers might be and that her mother might, therefore, be happily using her to keep an eye on the situation on the ground, as his grandfather or parents would have done without blinking – but Thomas rather liked his Assistant Captain. She was, as such things went, fairly easy to work with, and she was one of the few other Aladrens he’d met who seemed properly grounded.

Of course, any manner of ambition or delusion of grandeur could have been hiding beneath the surface, since she was an Aladren and also fairly quiet, but as long as she didn’t try to work him into some scheme to take over the world, he expected they would continue to get along fine. As long as it didn’t involve him having to bend the knee to a would-be God-Emperor at some point, what other people plotted or even did in their own time was their own business in his opinion.

“Well, I was planning to check it again before I wrote it down, but it’s all right,” he told her, shrugging the matter aside. “I’m pretty sure I’ve got enough for my answer.” He nodded to her telescope. “Making good progress?” Expressing some interest, as opposed to going straight back to his work, would help make it clearer that he wasn’t mad about the setback. That was one he had noticed himself, though he supposed it might also be in one of the self-help and public relations books he hadn’t gotten through studying yet. Thomas would admit to being a bit vain, but not vain enough to think that he was going to come up with something that people who wrote about how to deal with other people for a living had yet to come up with.

0 Thomas Indeed, it can be. 0 Thomas 0 5

Grayson Wright

July 21, 2010 4:01 PM

Long time, no telescope. by Grayson Wright

Gray didn’t like to think of himself as such – it was an extremely dirty word in his family lexicon, used only as a dire insult in the hopes of shaming the family member in question into reforming for all that it had never had more than temporary results – but he was, in fact, a little lazy. He would do what he had to do, no doubt about it, but he didn’t much enjoy it and he would even less often volunteer to do more stuff unless guilted into it. That happened a lot more often than the insult worked, since his mom was literally the only member of his family who didn’t inspire deep feelings of guilt for existing in him, but when the playing field was perfectly level, he was almost always going to go back to his books instead of taking on a task that helped no one else and didn’t especially amuse him.

He wasn’t really sure, yet, if taking Astronomy was an example of him being amused or of him being sentimental. For him, the subject was eternally linked with the lovely, unattainable Addie Laurent, the first person outside his family he’d ever successfully interacted with and the closest thing to what – according to his reading – was called by the ridiculous name of ‘a crush’ he’d ever had. That confused him, since apparently the opposite sex was supposed to become more appealing instead of less so as he went through the teenage years and young to mid-adulthood, but since he could still honestly say that, given the choice, he’d rather kiss a girl than another guy, he didn’t think it was anything to worry about too much. Not least because all that sort of thing actually required the participation of another party, and he was both completely average-looking and widely known to be socially awkward.

Of course, the same could be said of his father, but his father’s first date had been at age thirty and with the woman, Gray’s mother, he’d married six months later. So he was back to it being nothing to worry about.

His initial attraction to Astronomy, the summer before first year and thus before Addie, had been to the stories. Constellations were usually named after Greco-Roman myths, with the occasional other pantheon thrown in for flavor, and having the narratives to attach to the nonsense shapes had made it easier to remember and enjoy them. This didn’t apply as directly to galaxies, but a different source had caused them to be a matter of mild intrigue. That source was his cousin’s bookshelf. Anne found Muggle literature, particularly their ideas about magic, fascinating – her final paper for the Muggle Society class she’d taken had focused on that; Gray had tried to read it, just to see what all the fuss was about, and had concluded that being incomprehensible was a sign of genius in some fields – and he had read enough of that to be intrigued by their ideas about traveling to other galaxies and finding full-fledged civilizations there, if confused by a lot of the surrounding words. So, while he wasn’t expecting to see anything vaguely Roman but with crystal spires and flying technology divorced from magic there, it was still with some interest that he pointed his telescope into the sky…

…And immediately sat back again, holding his left eye.

Damn. His glasses, thick as they were, were interfering with the deep-space charms. And he wasn’t sure, really, what would happen if he tried to look without wearing them, not least because he hadn’t seen much more than the immediate surroundings of his bed without them since long before he’d ever come to Sonora; if he tried hard he could remember things being all blurry for a long time and complaining to his mother until she finally took him to see a Healer, but he’d been wearing glasses for easily most of his life, at one point in his fourth year having to have them adjusted to be stronger every holiday. Remembering seeing clearly without them was flat-out beyond him. Normally, he no more thought about the fact that he wore glasses than he did about the fact that he had two hands.

“Do not like this,” he muttered, taking his glasses off and carefully folding them up and holding them by the bridge. He could, of course, just Summon or repair them if he lost or stepped on them because he’d put them down, but he preferred to keep magic as far away from his lenses as possible and wouldn’t like the moment of helpless panic once he realized they weren’t where he could put them back on at will. Putting out his free hand even more carefully to find the telescope, he bent, with exaggerated caution, to look into it again, taking care not to poke himself in the eye. That hurt.

It was difficult to get his eye to focus properly through the amped-up telescope, especially since his eyes had a tendency toward accommodative spasms anyway, but he finally managed to find what he thought was the Sunflower Galaxy. He decided to check the picture in his book before he wrote it down, though. Gray had never been a firm believer in his own observations, generally preferring to look at whatever the teacher told him to look at here or in Care of Magical Creatures and then base his answer off the diagrams in the book. This technique, with small quirks related to the individual creature or night taken into account, had yet to fail him.

16 Grayson Wright Long time, no telescope. 113 Grayson Wright 0 5