Monthly Archives: April 2024

A New Era of Stargazing

Posted on April 24, 2024 by liamoneill95

This beach pictured on Nantucket Island is my favorite place on Earth, and the origin of my interest in astronomy and curiosity of what lies beyond what we know. This beach is on the tip of the island, making light pollution a limited issue and allowing for incredible stargazing when the sun sets beyond the […] Continue reading →

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The Moon

Posted on April 23, 2024 by Maddy Pollard

Last night I got to go observing for the first time! We used telescopes to look at three different astronomical objects, but my favorite thing to look at was the Moon. It was in the waxing gibbous phase, but it was so close to being full that it looked like a perfect circle (see the […] Continue reading →

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The Drake Equation

Posted on April 23, 2024 by Maddy Pollard

Are we alone in the universe? This is the question that has driven years of space exploration and innovation. Humans have always wondered if there are other advanced civilizations similar to our own. Unfortunately, we lack technology that is advanced enough to know for certain. But in 1961, astronomer Frank Drake wrote an equation that […] Continue reading →

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Blog 8: 51 Pegasi

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Nicholas Fleisher

In this blog post, I’m going to be discussing more of what we learned from Unit 4, specifically about the Doppler method. As we all now know, the Doppler method is a critical tool for detecting extrasolar planets. It searches for a star’s orbital movement around a center of mass by looking for changing Doppler […] Continue reading →

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Life on Mars?

Posted on April 22, 2024 by liamoneill95

Does life/did life once exist in areas of the solar system outside of our home planet Earth? In trying to answer this question, we turn to our closest neighbor and most likely candidate, Mars. As of right now, there is no evidence, past or present, that Mars has ever been home to life. That being […] Continue reading →

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Blog 7: Thermophiles!

Posted on April 21, 2024 by Nicholas Fleisher

In this blog, I’m going to be discussing all things thermophiles! Thermophiles are organisms that are found in really hot temperatures (60 degrees Celsius – 140 degrees Celsius). Found these organisms aren’t simply found there… they thrive there! Thermophiles typically inhabit a variety of extreme ecological sites, usually hot springs like in Yellowstone National Park […] Continue reading →

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Are we there yet??🚀

Posted on April 18, 2024 by Abbie!!

In my entire life, I have never traveled outside of the country. Most people on Earth have never traveled off of Earth. And none of us have ever traveled outside of our Solar System! We know that travel to the Moon is possible, but is it possible to visit worlds in other planetary systems? Is […] Continue reading →

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Blog 6 – Artemis II

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Leni Ertel

NASA announced the Artemis II mission, which will launch no earlier than September 2025. This mission will take 4 astronauts (Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen) to our moon. This mission will be NASA’s first crewed flight test of the Space Launch Rocket System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft. The purpose of this mission […] Continue reading →

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How do we discover Exoplanets?

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Garrett

Depiction of Astrometry For this blog I wanted to look into exoplanets and more specifically how we discover them. I found that there are 4 main methods to discover exoplanets. The first is the radial velocity method. This is how many of the first exoplanets were discovered. This method observes the doppler shift in the […] Continue reading →

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SOLAR ECLIPSE DAY!!!

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Abbie!!

Yesterday, (April 08, 2024), a group of friends and I drove up to Vienna, Illinois to observe the solar eclipse in totality. It was one of the best experiences in my life, and I think that getting to see such a beautiful and interesting astronomical phenomena in person is life-changing. Because totality only lasted for […] Continue reading →

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