Author Archives: Garrett

Our Neighbor?: The Andromeda Galaxy

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Garrett

Image of the Andromeda Galaxy 1888 For this blog I wanted to talk about The Andromeda Galaxy. Other than it being the closest galaxy to our Milky Way I really didn’t know much about it. The Andromeda galaxy was first photographed in 1888 by Issac Roberts (picture above). Andromeda is located over 2 million light-years […] Continue reading →

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Strain 121: Surviving Beyond Boiling

Posted on April 29, 2024 by Garrett

Image of Strain 121 For my blog post I wanted to learn more about extremophiles. One extremophile I found particularly interesting was Strain 121. This single-celled organism is considered a hyperthermophile. Strain 121 can survive and reproduce at temperatures as high as 121 degrees Celsius (250 degrees Fahrenheit), which is where it gets its name. […] 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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The Most Famous Comet

Posted on April 8, 2024 by Garrett

The Bayeux tapestry For my blog post I wanted to focus on comets. I figured I would do some research on the only comet I knew by name before taking astronomy, Halley’s Comet. Halley is the most famous of its kind and its presence in our history goes back more than 1000 years. Halley was […] Continue reading →

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Understanding Auroras: The Physics of Earth’s Magnetic Light Shows

Posted on March 5, 2024 by Garrett

The Northern Lights The northern lights, or aurora borealis, is a display of natural light that occurs in the Earth’s sky. What you might not know is that there is another light show on Earth called aurora australis, which occurs in the southern hemisphere. So, what causes these natural and captivating lights? Solar winds are […] Continue reading →

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The Role of Radioactive Decay in Earth’s Internal Heat

Posted on March 5, 2024 by Garrett

Image: Cross Section of Earth As we have learned, the cause of seasons is the directness of sunlight a particular region of the Earth receives. What you may not know is that the sun is not the only source that heats up the Earth. The Earth actually internally generates its own heat through radioactive decay. […] Continue reading →

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How Gravity on the Space Station Actually Works

Posted on February 13, 2024 by Garrett

Chris Hadfield Juggling Tomatoes on the ISS (2013) As we have all observed, astronauts on the space station experience what appears to be zero gravity. You might think this is because the space station is far from Earth, and the force of gravity diminishes with the square of the distance, according to Newton’s Law of […] Continue reading →

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Historical Astronomers in Context

Posted on February 6, 2024 by Garrett

TYCHO BRAHE (1546-1601): Tycho Brahe is most famous for making the best observations of stars and planets in his era. He did this at a time without a telescope so he provided the most accurate empirical data of celestial bodies at the time. His documentation of  planetary positions helped lead Johannes Kepler to create his […] Continue reading →

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Blog1: The powers of 10

Posted on January 23, 2024 by Garrett

Image from Video: Powers of Ten™ (1977) The Powers of 10 is a video meant to help you understand the Universe’s relative size. After doing several exercises in class that dealt with relative sizes and distances, I realized I did not have a strong understanding of the scale of outer space. The video linked begins […] Continue reading →

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First Post!

Posted on January 15, 2024 by Garrett

Image Credit: Getty Images: Hulton Archive

This is my first post. As someone who studies physics and is in an astronomy course, I chose an image of Issac newton. If you would like to read more about Newton you can find out more on wikipedia
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