Monthly Archives: April 2016

Comets and stuff

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Alex Pratte

For blog 7 I’ve decided to write about comets. Comets, according to space.com is “an icy body that releases gas or dust”(space.com) Astronomers believe that comets are leftovers of the gas, dust, ice, and rocks that originally formed our solar system. It is believed that comets carried some of the water and organic molecules that […] Continue reading →

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Stop! In the Name of…

Posted on April 10, 2016 by impossibleensign

Gravity? What causes Hot Jupiters to not be eaten by their parent stars? Continue reading →

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Leonids

Posted on April 10, 2016 by siyuan2016

image source The Leonids is a meteor shower associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. It gets its name from the location of its apparent radiant in the constellation Leo and has been famous for its most spectacular meteor storms since its identification in 1833. Since comet Tempel-Tuttle is a periodic comet with an orbital period of […] Continue reading →

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Extrasolar planets

Posted on April 10, 2016 by siyuan2016

image source In the class, we learn about the astrometric technique, Doppler technique and direct imaging used to detect extrasolar planets. And in this blog, I’d like to introduce some other planet-hunting strategies that have proved to be applicable. The first method is called gravitational microlensing. A gravitational microlensing occurs only when two stars are […] Continue reading →

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Extrasolar planets

Posted on April 10, 2016 by siyuan2016

image source In the class, we learn about the astrometric technique, Doppler technique and direct imaging used to detect extrasolar planets. And in this blog, I’d like to introduce some other planet-hunting strategies that have proved to be applicable. The first method is called gravitational microlensing. A gravitational microlensing occurs only when two stars are […] Continue reading →

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What’s in a Name?

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Gabi Grys

The Hubble telescopes famous successor was not always called the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The telescope, initially dubbed the Next Generation Space Telescope, was rechristened in 2002 to pay homage to the celebrated James Webb, NASA’s second administrator. Webb ran NASA from 1961-1968, a time when the emergent agency was still trying to define […] Continue reading →

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Carl Sa(vior)gan

Posted on April 10, 2016 by evinske

We read about them in our textbooks. They’re the giants with discoveries that make our understandings of moon phases and seasonal changes seem minuscule and insignificant. We stand on their shoulders when we learn about atmospheric conditions on different planets. We hold their hands while launching expensive equipment into the hardly-known (space). We sometimes name this […] Continue reading →

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Halley’s Comet

Posted on April 10, 2016 by martisnv

Halley’s Comet is visible from Earth every 75-76 years. It is the only known short-period comet (a comet that has an orbital period of less than 200 years) that is visible to the naked eye. Halley most recently visited the inner parts … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Pluto – A Dwarf Planet

Posted on April 10, 2016 by podolakvandysolarsystem

Pluto is a Dwarf planet in the ring of objects beyond Neptune called the Kuiper Belt. Similar to other objects in the Kuiper Belt, Pluto is composed of rock and ice. Its orbital period is 248 Earth years, and has an inclined orbital path compared to all the planets whose paths lie in the ecliptic […] Continue reading →

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Let’s Talk About Carl Sagan (Remix)

Posted on April 10, 2016 by andyastronomer

“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” These are the only words I really remember of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series when I watched it in high school physics class. However, Carl Sagan left a much greater legacy than his musings on apple pie. Carl Sagan inspired an […] Continue reading →

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