Monthly Archives: January 2015

BLOG#2 LOOK AT THE SKY

As now it is winter recently, Orion (actually part of Orion which looks like a large sandglass) (PS: I took a picture of Orion but it was too dim to be seen.) becomes the most visible constellation during nighttime on the sky. Sometimes the tail of Ursa Major is also visible when the sky is … Continue reading BLOG#2 LOOK AT THE SKY Continue reading

Posted in Class | Tagged , | Comments Off on BLOG#2 LOOK AT THE SKY

William Herschel believes in ghosts!

picture from: www.redorbit.com One of my favorite moments in the Neil deGrasse Tyson-hosted show Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey takes place in the first moments of one of the first few episodes.  It “flashes back” to the early 1800’s, showing a cartoon involving the famous astronomer William Herschel and his young son, John, walking along the […] Continue reading

Posted in Historical, Light, Universe | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on William Herschel believes in ghosts!

Blog Post #1: What would happen if you threw a baseball at the speed of light?

This web page gives us the answer. Basically, if any object with mass were moving at that speed, especially within our …

Continue reading

Continue reading

Posted in Class, Light | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Blog Post #1: What would happen if you threw a baseball at the speed of light?

Total Solar Eclipse

People have been fascinated with total solar eclipses. Part of that fascination comes from how rare they are. Solar eclipses occur every 18 months on average, but what makes them so rare is that they are visible from limited number of locations on Earth. It ends up being that a particular location would observe a […] Continue reading

Posted in Class, Observables, Sun | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Total Solar Eclipse

Traveling Faster Than The Speed of Light

Can you possibly travel at a speed faster than the speed of light? Scientists think it might be possible even without violating Einstein’s theory that the speed of light is the “galactic speed limit.” Some theoretical models show that in the early stages of the universe, right after the Big Bang, space expanded at a […] Continue reading

Posted in Class, Light, Space Travel | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Traveling Faster Than The Speed of Light

Introduction

Hey here, I am Kewei Xu. I am an Electrical Engineering Major with a Computer Science Minor. I   I sometimes forget to do assignments like this one. Did you read the previous sentence as “I sometimes” or “I I sometimes”? Continue reading

Posted in Class | Tagged , | Comments Off on Introduction

Planets bigger than Earth beyond Pluto?

Could it be possible that planets larger than the size of Earth lie beyond Pluto? According to researchers, the behavior of far-out celestial bodies far from the sun (such as Sedna and Pluto), seems to suggest so.  Such bodies, called “extreme trans-Neptunian objects” (or ETNO’s), should generally have an orbital distance of roughly 150 AU and […] Continue reading

Posted in Class | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Planets bigger than Earth beyond Pluto?

Light Travel Time and Observing Extraterrestrial Life

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#mediaviewer/File:NASA-HS201427a-HubbleUltraDeepField2014-20140603.jpg A topic that has really intrigued me is the speed of light and the time it takes for light to travel. The above image was taken by the Hubble Space telescope of galaxies billions of light years away. Some of these galaxies even extend back in time to only a few hundred million years of […] Continue reading

Posted in Aliens, Light, Observables | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Light Travel Time and Observing Extraterrestrial Life

The Cosmic Calendar

The universe is a staggering 14 billion years old – most of us can’t comprehend that length of time, so to put things into perspective, one can fit the entire history of the universe into one calendar year. With this “cosmic calendar,” the universe’s lifetime can be more easily understood by you and me. The… Continue reading The Cosmic Calendar Continue reading

Posted in Class, Historical | Tagged , , | Comments Off on The Cosmic Calendar

Hubble revisit the “Pillars of Creation”

Hubble has captured a new visible-light image of the famous “Pillars of Creation.” after nearly 20 years later.
Photo:left: NASA/ESA/STScI/J. Hester and P. Scowen (Arizona State University); right: NASA/ESA/The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/A… Continue reading

Posted in Class | Tagged , | Comments Off on Hubble revisit the “Pillars of Creation”