Are we there yet??🚀

Posted on April 18, 2024 by Abbie!!

In my entire life, I have never traveled outside of the country. Most people on Earth have never traveled off of Earth. And none of us have ever traveled outside of our Solar System! We know that travel to the Moon is possible, but is it possible to visit worlds in other planetary systems? Is it as easy as they make it seem in movies?

There are so many challenges that make interstellar travel difficult. Since it’s so hard to even get close to the speed of light, space travel will take an incredibly long time to even reach the closest star system. Our Universe has a speed limit of 3×10^8 m/s (aka the speed of light!), and the fastest going engine that humans have been able to invent so far is still tens of thousands of times slower than that. To even get close to the speed of light, we will need to design new engines that have insanely high energy requirements (we would probably need more energy than our Earth uses in one year to make a spacecraft half the speed of light… that’s a lot to ask for).

The craziest thing I learned from our textbook is that when traveling at such high speeds is that time will be much slower there than on Earth due to Einstein’s theory of relativity. Maybe it would only take a few years to travel to another star, but so many more years would pass on Earth during the few years we spend traveling!! It’s almost scary to imagine traveling to space, because even if I only took a quick one-year space trip, when I return to Earth, everyone I know would be way older than me. (but is that really a bad thing?)

Parker Solar Probe is the fastest spacecraft so far, traveling around 200km/hr!! (image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Steve Gribben)

We’ve launched five spaceships into space so far, but unfortunately due to all these barriers, they will not be returning anytime soon. Space travel is incredibly difficult, but astronomers are constantly working towards making better spacecraft designs and figuring out other ways we can learn about our vast Universe. 🚀

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Blog 6 – Artemis II

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Leni Ertel
phys.org

NASA announced the Artemis II mission, which will launch no earlier than September 2025. This mission will take 4 astronauts (Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen) to our moon. This mission will be NASA’s first crewed flight test of the Space Launch Rocket System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft. The purpose of this mission is to verify our capabilities for further deep space and lunar exploration. They will orbit the moon for 10 days.

This mission builds upon the success of Artemis I, and will pave the way so, hopefully, the first woman will be able to land on the moon for Artemis III! This mission is vital in NASA’s continuation of space and lunar exploration. These missions without the intention of discovery are just as vital: without them, deep space discoveries could not be made.

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How do we discover Exoplanets?

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Garrett

Depiction of Astrometry

For this blog I wanted to look into exoplanets and more specifically how we discover them. I found that there are 4 main methods to discover exoplanets. The first is the radial velocity method. This is how many of the first exoplanets were discovered. This method observes the doppler shift in the light of stars that are caused from a planet rotating around it. The next method is transit photometry. This is the method we have learned about in class, where orbiting planets cause dips in light levels of distant stars. Microlensing is another method that is particularly interesting as it is unrepeatable. Microlensing works when one star crosses behind another and the closer star bends the light. If the closer star has an exoplanet there will be a spike in the levels of the bending light. The last method is astrometry. Astrometry tracks the precise movements of stars themselves and by detecting minuscule wobbles about the center of mass we can detect exoplanets. Even after learning about these methods, detecting planets light years away is still mind blowing. I would like to further research the origins of these clever techniques and learn more about what led scientists to invent these methods.

Sources: NASA, BBC

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SOLAR ECLIPSE DAY!!!

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Abbie!!

Yesterday, (April 08, 2024), a group of friends and I drove up to Vienna, Illinois to observe the solar eclipse in totality. It was one of the best experiences in my life, and I think that getting to see such a beautiful and interesting astronomical phenomena in person is life-changing. Because totality only lasted for a minute or so, I did not feel like trying to take many pictures as the camera does not do it justice!!!! it truly looked like there was a hole in the sky.

is it sunset hour… or is there just an eclipse?? (image credit: me)

It was magical, and especially trippy, that I could see the world get dimmer and feel it getting colder as the Sun got covered up slowly. Observing the Sun slowly get covered with our eclipse glasses was so beautiful. The entire park cheered when the sun got completely engulfed. It looked like sunset hour during totality!!!

HOLE IN THE SKY!!! (image credit: my friend)

I feel so lucky that I got to experience the solar eclipse this year. This might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, unless I get to see the next one in 20 years.

me watching the sun get covered!!! (image credit: my friend)
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Pluto, The Hated One

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Ethan Popper

Blog Post #5 – Pluto, The Hated One

Pluto, our beloved cosmic underdog, has had a rollercoaster of a journey in the astronomical community. Once considered the ninth planet of our solar system, it was demoted in 2006 to “dwarf planet” status, much to the dismay of Pluto enthusiasts worldwide. But don’t let its diminutive classification fool you—Pluto is a fascinating world brimming with mysteries and surprises. With its heart-shaped glacier, named Tombaugh Regio after its discoverer Clyde Tombaugh, and a variety of complex surface features, Pluto continues to capture our imaginations and challenge our understanding of planetary science. It’s like the solar system’s favorite little sibling: small, but full of character and unpredictability.

Exploring Pluto is like delving into a cosmic detective story. Its surface is coated in nitrogen ice, with towering mountains and vast plains that hint at a geologically active past. And then there’s the question of its atmosphere: thin and tenuous, yet it expands and contracts with Pluto’s elliptical orbit around the sun. The New Horizons mission in 2015 gave us our first close-up look at this enigmatic world, revealing a landscape more dynamic and diverse than many had anticipated. Despite being relegated to the outer reaches of our solar system, Pluto remains a key piece in the puzzle of our cosmic neighborhood, proving that even the smallest planets can hold the biggest secrets.

Pluto, The Hated One

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Blog 5 – Pluto

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Leni Ertel
National Geographic

Watching the talk about the New Horizons mission made an impact on the way I now view space exploration. There are so many aspects to it detailed in the video I had never thought about before. Over the course of watching the talk, I was also able to fall in love with Pluto!

New Horizons was the first spacecraft to explore Pluto up close. Up until the point the spacecraft reached its destination, the only picture of Pluto was blurry, black and white, and pixelated. With the ability of New Horizons to fly by Pluto, the beautiful images depicting a planet with red dust and a heart shape allowed for the New Horizons scientists to deduce information about Pluto they had never been able to before. The most important discovery of this mission was the realization that Pluto is geologically active! Due to its small size and distance from the sun, it was assumed that Pluto was not active anymore, and would be cold, hard, and covered in craters. Instead, there is so much to explore on this magical planet!

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The Unknown Planet

Posted on April 8, 2024 by Ayden Harris

Growing up we always heard about how our solar system had eight main planets orbiting the Sun; Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. But, what if there was another planet? This is known as the ninth planet hypothesis, and no I don’t mean Pluto. It is estimated that it could have ten times the mass of Earth and orbit the Sun twenty times further than Neptune. So, one revolution around the sun is anywhere between 10,000 and 20,000 Earth years!

The reason astrophysicists believe that there is a ninth planet is because they noticed that objects in the Kuiper belt had unusual orbits. Unfortunately right now, there is no proof about this other than just mathematical modeling to try and explain the Kuiper belt’s gravitational anomaly. Scientists hope to utilize the most powerful telescopes known to date to begin searching for this mysterious planet 9. Perhaps we may need a more powerful telescope to find what is beyond the Kuiper belt, but only time will tell.

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Protecting Our Home

Posted on April 8, 2024 by John Newell

History is doomed to repeat itself. Will we be ready?

Around 66 million years ago, an object estimated to be around 10km wide struck Earth at incredibly high speeds. The energy released was equivalent to roughly 100 million megatons of TNT. The impact, then, released over 6.5 billion times more energy than the catastrophically powerful nuclear weapon dropped on Hiroshima. An asteroid only 50 meters across exploded 10km above the Earths surface in Russia, 1908. The resulting Tunguska Event left over 800 square miles of forest flattened and windows hundreds of miles away shattered. This small asteroid, exploding far before it reached Earth’s surface, released nearly double the amount of energy as the most powerful hydrogen bomb ever detonated.

The Chicxulub Blast, Wired

Obviously, these sort of incidents are quite rare. But, as a consequence of humanity being a single-planet species, one large enough object could truly erase our entire existence. Thus scientists have been looking into ways to redirect or destroy in-coming threats before they reach us. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test is one such example — the fact that, today, these kinds of things are within our capability is truly astounding. These projects may seem high effort and low benefit, but let’s be clear: when they save the day, there will be no doubt they were worth every penny.

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Could Aliens See Us?

Posted on April 8, 2024 by Owen Purcell

One of the most inspiring ventures in the world of astronomy in the 21st century is the increasing discovery of exoplanets. They represent the most extensive effort to find life outside of Earth. So far, we have discovered thousands of planets surrounding other stars, but there is something of a selection bias. Astronomers use a few primary methods: the first is the transit method, and the second is the astrometry method.

Transit involves measuring the dip in light coming from a star, caused by an obstruction of the light from a planet crossing in front of its star relative to the observer. This has a very strong selection bias in several ways. The first is that only planets that cross in front of the star can be detected. This limits the number of possible systems enormously. The second is that only planets that transit somewhat often, meaning only planets that are very close to their host star can be detected.

Astrometry involves measuring the amount of red-shifting or blue-shifting that is present in the starlight, due to the wobble caused by the gravity of the planet while it orbits. This has a heavy selection bias for large planets that orbit close to their host stars.

So I ask the question, “If someone were to look at the sun looking for planets, what would you see?” And the answer, if you were using current methods, is almost nothing. Nearly all of the nearby star systems are not aligned with the sun’s planetary plane, which means they are receiving effectively no information on the orbiting bodies. The few that are lucky enough to be aligned would be able to detect Jupiter if they had a long enough observation, probably using the transit method. None of the other planets would likely be detectable, because they either take much too long to observe three or four orbits, or they are too small to be detected through either method.

In a certain light, this could be seen as quite liberating. Our methods seem so feeble, unable to detect the vast majority of what is almost certainly out there. But, it also means that other, more innovative methods need to be developed if we want to map the universe around us.

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You Take the Moon and It Blocks the Sun

Posted on April 8, 2024 by obisesoa

Lucky Shot!

An eclipse occurs whenever a celestial body passes in front of or behind another in a way that whoever is on the surface can notice such an obstruction. Lunar eclipses occur on average twice a year when the moon moves into the Earth’s shadow during the full moon phase, which happens to be the only phase that occurs exclusively at night. Solar eclipses are far rarer, due to the moon being far smaller than the body it obscures or the body obscuring it, and occur exclusively during new moons, meaning it is not positioned in a way that the sun can reflect light to us.

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