Monthly Archives: April 2016

The Demise of Pluto

Posted on April 10, 2016 by samihahplanet

  Left: Pluto Demoted, Right: Size Comparison The discovery of Pluto had scientists ecstatic. Far out in the distance was this tiny, freezing,  icy planet with moons! Then it was official: Pluto must be added to the list of planets. It’s round, orbits the Sun and has a posse of moons, what more could we need? […] Continue reading →

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Titan’s Peaks

Posted on April 10, 2016 by nedastro2110

Mountains have always been a source of fascination for me. I climbed my first 14er, Mt. Yale (Elevation 14,199 ft.), when I was in middle school. Hopefully one day I can return to Colorado to climb more as well as many other mountains in this world. One of my favorite mountains is Mount Amiata in […] Continue reading →

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Hot Jupiters and Why They Don’t Wreck our Model of Planetary Formation

Posted on April 10, 2016 by harperastronomyblog

Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, is located exactly where astrophysicists and planetary-formation theorists believe that it should be. Its size indicates that it should be located around the middle of the Solar System, where it was able to pick up rock, ice, and a lot of gases (such as hydrogen and helium) […] Continue reading →

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A Lonely Planet Wandering Through Space

Posted on April 10, 2016 by 2016spaceodyssey

Astronomers have recently announced the discovery of a planet without a sun.  Known as PSO J318.5-22, the planet is a gas giant six times the mass of Jupiter, nowhere near large enough to be a Brown Dwarf.  In the past rouge planets or “planetary-mass objects” have been discovered but their size was large enough that […] Continue reading →

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Why We Think Dark Matter Exists

Posted on April 10, 2016 by solarsystemjoe

Solely based on our experiences, we might be inclined to say that most of the universe is composed of “normal matter,” electrons, quarks and other subatomic particles.   However,  we have reason to believe that there are other kinds of matter in the universe, dark matter and dark energy.  In fact, according to this pie […] Continue reading →

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Solar Sails

Posted on April 10, 2016 by chasejaeger

Currently, we do not have the technology to travel to even the closest stars. The fastest spacecraft humans have ever built is the Voyager 1, which is currently traveling at roughly 17 km/s. However, even at these speeds it would take the Voyager I nearly 70,000 years to get to the nearest star system, Alpha […] Continue reading →

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Blog #7 (Pluto)

Posted on April 10, 2016 by astronomer0110

It’s a well-publicized fact by now that Pluto has been downgraded from planet to dwarf planet. Many people felt betrayed that one of the 9 planets they learned from childhood was no longer considered a planet. In reality, it was a logical decision because Pluto’s orbit is more elliptical, icier, and smaller than the rest […] Continue reading →

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Voyager Golden Record – Reading the Instructions

Posted on April 10, 2016 by podolakvandysolarsystem

On my last unrestricted blog post, I began a series of posts on my favorite topic in astronomy: The Voyager Golden Record. If you missed that blog post you can check it out here. Basically, the golden record is a message in a bottle being cast into the cosmic ocean. It will go very far […] Continue reading →

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The Darkest Planet in the Universe

Posted on April 10, 2016 by nickwtheastronomer

The planet sullenly staring back at you is TrES-2b and no it is not just going through a phase, this exoplanet is indeed the universe’s ultimate goth. TrES-2b is a gas giant which was first detected in 2006 by the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey (TrES) employing the transit method of exoplanet discovery. In the transit method […] Continue reading →

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Europa, a Galilean Moon of Jupiter

Posted on April 10, 2016 by solarsystemjoe

As the title suggests, Europa was discovered by Galileo in 1610.  Although Galileo’s instruments for investigating the cosmos weren’t as sophisticated as ours are today, the relatively large size of Europa, a size comparable to the moon’s size, made it possible for it to be discovered in 1610.  And since then, Europa has been investigated […] Continue reading →

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