Ciencias Espaciales

Identification and analysis of astronomical orientation in Mayan burials from the Classic Period, in the Copán Archaeological Park

2023-11-27T17:32:42+00:00

Honduras has multiple registered archaeological sites. One of them and of great importance for the Mayan area is the Mayan Site of Copán, this important site is located in the western part of the country in the department of Copán and had its heyday between the 5th and 9th centuries. In the Archaeological Park of Copán, archaeoastronomial studies have already been carried out on different structures such as pyramids, temples, altars, ball courts and steles. These academic exercises have strengthened the protection of the cultural heritage present at the site, in this case the astronomical heritage, resulting in the interest for studying the orientation of the Mayan burials at the site, during the classical period, which is important to understand the cosmogony of this great civilization. From the archaeoastronomical point of view, the identification of the orientation the burials with respect to celestial objects is of main interest. The Mayans were great astronomers, committed to counting the days and observers of the apparent movement of the Sun. They also observed the Moon and the planet Venus with great interest, hence this research identifies and analyzes the possible orientation of burials of the classic period (250 AD – 900 AD) in the Mayan kingdom of Copan. The analysis of the possible astronomical orientations of the Mayan burials in Copán is an academic effort to strengthen the construction of the theoretical corpus of the field of Cultural Astronomy in Honduras. The preliminary results of this study suggest variations in the orientation of the Mayan burials in Copán and their possible astronomical connotation. It is recommended to expand this line of research.

The CHIBIL KIN from an anthropological perspective. The dynamics of predation and devouring in Mayan eclipses

2023-11-27T17:11:22+00:00

This article will discuss the act of devouring the celestial objects that occurred during eclipses among the Maya of different temporalities. The different leading agents in these acts of devouring will be focused and analyzed, and from the perspective of recent anthropological theories about predation, cannibalism and devouring in different parts of Abya Yala, including the Mesoamerican area, I will reflect on the act of devour the Sun and the Moon. Based on some questions such as: What would be the ontological implications of this moment? What is the role of non-human agents and the implication that the act of devouring the Sun or the Moon would cause them? With this, this research presents a first approach to this topic, in order to contribute to a better understanding of eclipses at different times in the histories of the Maya peoples.

Comparison of the Mayan Eclipse Table and the Greek Saros Cycle

2023-11-29T20:29:33+00:00

Motivated by the construction of the Monumental Antikythera Mechanism for Hermosillo and its future exhibition at the “Centro” campus of the Universidad de Sonora, Mexico, we undertook a study about the prediction of eclipses, implemented in this mechanism whose basis is the knowledge of the Saros Cycle. It was natural, to arrive at the need to add to this study, the Mesoamerican perspective of eclipses; in particular, we arrive at the analysis of the Table of Eclipses of the Dresden Codex. It was from the sequence of intervals of this table, which we decided to make a comparison between both perspectives: the Maya of the Dresden Codex and the Greek of the Saros Cycle. In this report we present our findings and contrast their main properties. In Maya case: The prediction of solar eclipses could be obtained from systematic observations of the Moon because, in the introductory section of the table (pages 51a and 52a), there are elements for elaboration of the sequence of 69 eclipses reported from pages 53a to 58b; The period of 11,960 days (11,958 in the sequence) allowed them to group solar eclipses according to their type by groups of 7 or 9; The ten vignettes after the 148-day intervals could be attributed to eclipses observed in the Maya zone; and, when comparing the sequence of eclipses in the table with the sequence of eclipses that occurred in the span of 700 to 800 CE, the series identified by the eclipse of 06/08/0788 was the series of greater coincidence. On the side of the Saros we have: the eclipses are recorded in the corresponding spiral of the mechanism and there are 27 solar eclipses; Each eclipse appears with date and time of occurrence by means of the spiral and the glyphs in it; in the period of 19,755 days (3 Saros = 3 X 6585 days = 1 Exeligmus) an eclipse occurs again at the same geographical longitude; Those reported are eclipses observed in the area of the mechanism going from partial to annular and, finally, to total and vice versa. These findings suggest that the Maya must have had a model of theWorld in which the Earth, Moon and Sun had a specific role to play in eclipses; and, consequently, they must have had a comprehensive model of their own.

The intervals between successive lunar eclipses and the structure of the eclipse table of the Dresden Codex

2023-11-29T20:12:07+00:00

The intervals between successive visible lunar eclipses and the structure of the Eclipse Table of the Dresden Codex. Despite recent interpretations by Bricker and Bricker and Justeson, the ways in which the Maya assembled the Dresden Codex Eclipse Table still need to be discovered. While the table structure reveals the methods and procedures by which they made predictions, we need to find out how the Maya came to develop them. It is possible that the Maya developed their forecasts from the records of eclipse dates; however, we have yet to discover them. We can correct the need for raw data with the solar and lunar eclipse canons of Espenak and Meeus. Because more lunar than solar eclipses are seen in any given area, we assumed that the Maya could predict solar eclipses in the same way as the lunar ones. Using the above data from Espenak and Meeus, Justeson deduced that the Mayan scribes chose the periods of 88 synodic months (tzolkinex) to predict eclipses. In this article, I demonstrate that the sequence of the five- and six-month intervals represented in the Eclipse Table appear to follow the patterns of lunar eclipses visible in the Maya region in the centuries preceding their installation in the mid-8th century. The work suggests that the Maya abandoned the tzolkinex and adopted the triple tritos count (3 x 135 lunations). Visible lunar cycles at Copán are examined.

Plausibility of Competency-Based Education in Aeronautical Engineering in Mexico

2023-11-29T20:46:41+00:00

Modern education demands the development of generic and specific competencies and certain skills of their enrollment so that upon graduating from a professional career they can join the productive sector in an expeditious manner and oriented to the requirements of the industry; However, when delving into the educational models based on competencies of the educational organizations that offer aeronautical engineering in Mexico, it is appreciated that the teachers who teach subjects mostly come from other higher-level specialties, in addition to leaving aside labor and expertise of its teaching staff, particularly in applied sciences that should be ad hoc to the aeronautical engineer. It is through the methods of quantitative and qualitative scientific research that it is possible to expose the restriction that teachers maintain in the praxis of the profession through the data obtained fromuniversities in Mexico offering aeronautical engineering at its higher level and make clear the incongruity of a competency-based education by detecting 60% of teachers under analysis without due work experience within the civil aviation, aeronautics, or aerospace industry. Additionally, the professional profile of these stands out as an area of opportunity for the acquisition of special postgraduate courses in aeronautics and / or those that allow acquiring theories, fundamentals and areas of specialization of teaching to improve teaching and be able to show and demonstrate with solid foundations in their subjects, given that only and exclusively 12.59% of these teachers have completed postgraduate programs in aeronautics and aviation, having the greatest crisis in the educational part in which simply 2.96% of teachers are trained, therefore the proposal for educational organizations to establish strategies and appropriate mechanisms among the various actors of the educational system to address this problem and walk towards the development of labor and training competence of teachers of aeronautical engineering in Mexico and achieve a true quality education under the model of competences.

Comparison and statistical analysis between models of probability of occurrence of forest fires for Honduras. Year 2019

2023-10-31T20:04:57+00:00

Honduras, due to its climatic and physiographic conditions in recent years, has suffered negative impacts due to wildfires that cause losses in the country’s economy, such as the closure of airports, in the health of urban and rural populations, incidence of pests and diseases in agriculture and forestry, greater soil degradation and erosion, alteration of water recharge systems, negative effects on biodiversity as well as the loss of scenic values. In 2019, 1,177 fires were reported with an affected area of 72,434.77 hectares. The departments with the highest incidence of wildfires were; Francisco Morazán, Olancho, and Copan. In this research, the performance of three models (ICF, Random Forest and Max-Ent) for the generation of susceptibility maps to wildfires from environmental variables was statistically analyzed. The models were calibrated with the fire report data generated by the ICF. Additionally, fire points were selected randomly obtained from the FIRMS System. The Random Forest model had the best performance with an AUC for test data of 0.973 and an AUC for MODIS-FIRMS data of 0.919. Using the average rankings of the environmental variable importance measures, proximity to human settlements was the best predictor of wildfire ignitions, closely followed by distance to unpaved roads and elevation, for models based on Machine Learning Algorithms.

Feasibility analysis of the Laguna del Pedregal in the Central District: a perspective from the academy of territorial planning

2023-11-13T14:18:37+00:00

The strengthening of the generation and application of knowledge from the academy in terms of Territorial Planning, as a contribution to the University-Society link, is directly linked to the development of plans for both local governments and mayors and associations that are interested in execute city improvement projects; in this case, the GOAL International Association with the project "Resilient Neighborhood: Building resilient cities through resilient neighborhoods" which is executed by the Municipal Mayor’s Office of the Central District (AMDC) with the technical assistance of GOAL. The analysis of the feasibility of urban use for the area of Laguna El Pedregal, has been carried out based on the studies developed by the Honduran Institute of Earth Sciences (IHCIT), with the purpose of being part of the tools that better support the urban planning of the administration of the Municipal Mayor’s Office of the Central District (AMDC), with which they are useful for decision-making in the correct sustainable management of land allowing the rehabilitation, preservation or restoration of their functions for the benefit of the city, and which is part of the functions of the Land Management of this municipality.

Notas Informativas

2023-11-29T21:04:23+00:00

La Revista Ciencias Espaciales es una publicación semestral de la Facultad de Ciencias Espaciales de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras. Cada año calendario se publica un Volumen que consta de dos Números. El primer número es llamado de primavera (que se publica a más tardar el 15 de junio de cada año) y el segundo de otoño (que se publica a más tardar el 15 de diciembre de cada año); ambos números incluyen artículos de los campos de Astronomía y Astrofísica, Ciencia y Tecnologías de la Información Geográfica, Arqueoastronomía y Astronomía Cultural y Ciencias Aeronáuticas. El color de fondo de la carátula de la Revista cambia anualmente según el departamento responsable de la coordinación de la publicación.

Analysis of low edge band data to constrain parameters of the universe's first light sources

2023-10-31T20:26:35+00:00

The universe in its earliest stages has been a great source of questions given the difficulty of direct observation. Models have been created, both mathematical and computational, capable of giving us an idea of the early universe and its evolution over billions of years. The 21 cm line emitted by neutral hydrogen can provide us with the observational information needed to check the accuracy of these models. This document presents a preliminary project for the study and analysis of the initial conditions that gave rise to an absorption profile at 78 MHz detected by the low-band instruments of the “Experiment to Detect the Global Epoch of Reionization Signature”. This profile agrees with the models of the global 21-cm signal of Neutral Hydrogen, during the formation of the first structures of the universe. It is expected that at the end of this project an efficient tool will be available for the study of the signals obtained by ground detectors and that, comparing them with different 21 cm models, will provide information that will help us better understand the first stages of the universe.