Author Archives: Adriana Santos

All is Said and Sun

Posted on April 25, 2024 by Adriana Santos

Wow, I cannot believe we are already at the end of the semester! This class has certainly been a journey, and we learned so much together! At the beginning of this course, I was not sure what to expect, and I was nervous that it was totally out of my wheelhouse, but ASTR 2110 gave […] Continue reading →

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Messages to Space

Posted on April 24, 2024 by Adriana Santos

Ever since humans realized there are worlds beyond our own, we have been curious if there is life outside of planet Earth. The universe is huge, so we can likely assume that somewhere out in the vastness of space there is life. But is it intelligent? Could we communicate with them? Would we even want […] Continue reading →

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Upcoming Mission: Dragonfly

Posted on April 7, 2024 by Adriana Santos

Since our class is coming to a close, I have been curious about future astronomical missions. What will the students who take ASTR 2110 learn that we do not have access to yet? One of NASA’s upcoming missions in partnership with Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, is called Dragonfly and it will be observing the […] Continue reading →

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Exoplanet exploration: 700 light-years away

Posted on April 6, 2024 by Adriana Santos

It might seem strange that we are currently exploring planets that are so far away from us, especially since we cannot travel to them. But, these planets, called exoplanets or extrasolar planets can teach us a lot about star-system formation. We can then take this information and apply it to our own solar system! One […] Continue reading →

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Walking on the Giant Planets

Posted on March 2, 2024 by Adriana Santos

In class, we have been learning a lot about the different kinds of planets and what makes them have their unique characteristics. But did you know that if possible to send people to the Giant Planets, you would not be able to walk on them? One of the characteristics of the Giant Planets is that […] Continue reading →

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Life On? Venus

Posted on March 2, 2024 by Adriana Santos

Venus is known as Earth’s sister planet due to their similar sizes and structures, but Venus is a very different world than what we know on Earth. As NASA notes, if you were to slice both Venus and Earth down the middle, their interiors would be very similar, but their surfaces are much different. One […] Continue reading →

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Tides During a Superstorm

Posted on February 10, 2024 by Adriana Santos

As we know, the moon controls the tides, but what happens when the perfect circumstances come together and a storm is involved? This is part of what happened during Hurricane Sandy. In my Introduction post, I shared with everyone I am from New Jersey and love going to the beach, so back in 2012 when […] Continue reading →

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Historical astronomers in context

Posted on February 4, 2024 by Adriana Santos

Johannes Kepler: December 27, 1571- November 15, 1630. Kepler was important to astronomy because he developed three laws of planetary motion. He determined that 1) planets orbit the sun on an ellipse, 2) in an orbit equal areas are swept out in equal times with planets moving faster the closer they get to a gravitational […] Continue reading →

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Introduction

Posted on January 13, 2024 by Adriana Santos

Hi all! My name is Adriana and I am so excited to share some of my favorite astronomy findings with you all this semester! I promise I’ll try not to just excitedly yell about them. I am a senior majoring in Communication Studies and as you can probably guess from my image, I am a […] Continue reading →

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