Monthly Archives: January 2023

Hello,

Posted on January 22, 2023 by Andrew Cascio

I’m Andrew. I study computer science and mathematics here at Vanderbilt. I’ve been watching The Office a lot recently. Continue reading →

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Happy New Year!

Posted on January 22, 2023 by Trevor Pillow

Today marks the start of a new lunar year! There are several key differences between a solar new year and a lunar new year. The most common calendar system in the West, the Gregorian calendar, is based on the Earth’s orbit around the sun. Every New Year, the Earth is more or less in the […] Continue reading →

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Blog 1 – Solstices/Equinoxes

Posted on January 22, 2023 by kevkoppa123

There are 2 solstices: the June and December Solstice. The June Solstice is the point on the celestial sphere where the ecliptic is farthest north of the celestial equator. Similarly, the December solstice is the point on the celestial sphere where the ecliptic is farthest south of the celestial equator. The June and December Solstice […] Continue reading →

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About eclipses

Posted on January 22, 2023 by xingqiaowang

Eclipses are awesome, beautiful, and rare celestial event.As we talked in the class, there are four types of solar eclipse, including total solar eclipse, annular solar eclipse, partial solar eclipse and total annular eclipse. Because of my interest, I started looking for relevant information on the Internet. In the process, I found a website published […] Continue reading →

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Tidal Locking

Posted on January 22, 2023 by aaronxu041009

Earth’s Moon is in a synchronous orbit, meaning that people on Earth can only see the near side of the Moon. But what keeps the Moon locked in this synchronous orbit? The answer is tidal locking. Early in the history of the Solar System, a Mars-sized object collided with prehistoric Earth, and the debris from […] Continue reading →

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Solar Eclipses 😱😎

Posted on January 22, 2023 by sadiekarr

(Eclipse over Jackson, Wyoming by Ronan Donovan via NatGeo) In August 2017 a total solar eclipse was witnessed by many, cutting across the United States. My family, here in Nashville, TN, was able to see it! Even though it was a Monday, and I should have had classes, my school was cancelled for the day […] Continue reading →

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Moon phases

Posted on January 22, 2023 by shuhuaiwang

The image above shows the position of the Moon, the Sun […] Continue reading →

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Blog One – Night Sky Observing

Posted on January 21, 2023 by 7smessier45

In my first post, I briefly mentioned the international dark sky association. This association advocates for the protection of the night sky by leading the fight against light pollution through their efforts at the grassroots up to the international level.  Although cultures around the world have looked up at the night sky for millennia, in […] Continue reading →

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Light: Dangerously Fast?

Posted on January 21, 2023 by noahherrero

Gamma Ray Burst Close-Up Credit: NASA/Swift/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith and John Jones The Image above is an artists rendition of a phenomena known as a Gamma Ray Burst (GRB), where a star can project massive amounts of dangerous high energy light across the Cosmos. GRB’s are bit outside the scope of our solar system, so I […] Continue reading →

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The Cosmic Calendar

Posted on January 21, 2023 by zws42

The Cosmic Calendar is a visualization of the timeline of the Universe that was popularized by astrophysicist Carl Sagan. In this timeline, the entire history of the Universe is scaled down to the length of one Earth year. As you can see from the picture above, January 1st is marked by the Big Bang and […] Continue reading →

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