Monthly Archives: January 2023

historical astronomers in context

Posted on January 30, 2023 by Emma Williams

Johannes Kepler (born December 27, 1571– died November 15, 1630) contributed to the field of astronomy by the formulation of his 3 Laws of Planetary Motion, which were later derived and formalized by Isaac Newton. The laws are 1) that planets move in elliptical orbits around the sun at one focal point, 2) that a […] Continue reading →

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The Unfathomable Scale of the Universe

Posted on January 24, 2023 by georgeboardman20

A logarithmic scale of the universe, used to highlight humanity’s cumulative knowledge about the universe. Source: A Logarithmic View of the Universe The above image will highlight what I’m writing here about today, because in all of our daily lives we’re pretty myopic, but for good reason! We grew up here on this planet with […] Continue reading →

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Posted on January 23, 2023 by berlinbe

Like other electromagnetic particles, light has a specific velocity at which it travels. Further, it is presumed to be the fastest theoretical speed of any particle. The speed of light–referred to as “c” in a vacuum–is roughly 300,000,000 m/s. Since it moves so fast, most people never observe light as a moving particle or something […] Continue reading →

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Scale and Travel Times

Posted on January 23, 2023 by dromalley

At this very moment, the Voyager 1 spacecraft is hurtling through space at about 61,500 km/h each and every hour, carrying it ever further from our Solar system which it left 18 years ago. But despite this staggering speed, it would still take Voyager more than 75,000 years to reach the nearest star, Alpha Centauri. […] Continue reading →

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The Cosmic Calendar 🪐

Posted on January 23, 2023 by lightwyrs

“We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st.” -Carl Sagan The Cosmic Calendar is a concept presented by famous astronomer Carl Sagan. In this diagram, the 13.8 billion year history of the universe is condensed into a […] Continue reading →

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Blog #1: The Power of Ten

Posted on January 23, 2023 by reidwalker87

The Power of Ten video puts into perspective the miniscule size of not only individuals on Earth but of the Solar System entirely. At only 3 minutes into the video, we were already far beyond the Solar System with so much time remaining. Not only was I struck by the immense scale of the universe, […] Continue reading →

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We Were the Closest To the Moon than We Have Ever Been

Posted on January 23, 2023 by thisisntzenon

As a child, I spent a considerable time looking at the Moon, and at one point, I may have even believed it was my friend. From the backseat of many late-night car rides, it “followed me”. In fact, during this period, my mornings consisted of watching Bear in the Big Blue House and the character […] Continue reading →

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The “Ten”ets of the Universe

Posted on January 22, 2023 by oilrigatoni

Our brains struggle to comprehend the magnitude of our universe. We make comparisons based on that which we can see, yet it is totally inadequate to what reality holds. For example, the average person is just under 2 meters tall. But their size of the Earth when compared to that is substantial. The mean diameter […] Continue reading →

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The Ultimate Race

Posted on January 22, 2023 by jackdoyle25

We take it for granted that the speed of light is the universal speed limit; nothing can go faster than light. The knowledge of light-years is crucial to understanding the images that we see in the night sky. These images are not of the celestial bodies as they currently exist, but as they once were, […] Continue reading →

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The myth of travelling at Light Speed

Posted on January 22, 2023 by Liam Prescott

3*10^8 m/s. Wow. It’s practically impossible to conceptualize something moving 300 thousand Kilometers every single second, but believe it or not photons are doing this as we speak. To put this blistering pace into perspective, the distance from the North Pole to the South Pole is about 20,000 kilometers. Not even close to the length […] Continue reading →

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