Whenever we watch movies about space, the movie tends to influence our perspective of what's out there in space and how things work. Due to people's lack of knowledge, it is easy for them to accept what films or images present to them. Therefore, there are many misconceptions in astronomy about how things actually work in the universe. In Neil Comens' book, Heavenly Errors, over 1600 misconceptions are identified! For example, many people have different theories about how the moon changes shape every night or why stars shine in the night sky. People believe that the sun is the largest and brightest star in the universe. In reality, however, it is not. The sun is classified as a star, but there are many other stars out there that make it look like a dull grain of sand. The sun is very powerful though. Fuses hydrogen atoms into helium. This energy will allow the sun to emit a ton of light and heat for a long time. Since the sun can put out so much energy and heat, think about how much more other, larger stars put out. This brings us to the idea that the North Star, Polaris, is another star that is up there on the “biggest and brightest” list. While it's really bright, that's only because it's so close to us. Technically it's a medium-sized star in a convenient spot for us to orient ourselves towards. Everyone has a zodiac sign on which they base their daily horoscope. But do they really know where those signals come from? First of all, all that horoscope stuff is actually astrology, but the real signs come from the constellations on the ecliptic. In our celestial atmosphere there is the ecliptic which is the path of the stars and constellations. On this path there are twelve constellations including Virgo... in the center of the sheet... weak and fast reflexes, necessary to avoid an asteroid. Asteroids have collided with each other before, but that's extremely rare considering how far away they are from each other. As you can see, we have been temporarily blinded from the truth by imaginary things that are easy to believe and that we want to believe. There are so many misconceptions and theories and most of them are just ridiculous. Astronomy can be a very complicated subject, but it is absolutely necessary to understand what really happens in our galaxy and in the enormous frontier we call space. Works Cited McDaid, Liam. “44 Common Misconceptions About Astronomy.” Sacramento City College. Np, nd Web. 12 November 2013. .Rao, Joe . “10 Popular Misconceptions About Astronomy Explained.” Environmental news and information. Np, 14 November 2011. Web. 12 November. 2013. .