Category Archives: Class

The Aurora

Posted on March 12, 2020 by emily

The aurora borealis and aurora australis – often called the northern lights and southern lights – are mysterious and unpredictable displays of light in the night sky. The most common occurrences of this phenomena take place at higher northern and southern latitudes, less frequent at mid-latitudes, and are almost never seen near the equator. AurorasContinue reading “The Aurora” Continue reading →

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climate change and the coronavirus

Posted on March 10, 2020 by mcknia1

With the COVID-19 outbreak, a virus that has infected over 90,000 people worldwide, I’ve started to wonder how this may impact our wellbeing on an environmental level. Global warming, a phenomena caused by human activity, such as the releasing of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere poses many consequences for Earth’s inhabitants.Continue reading “climate change and the coronavirus” Continue reading →

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What Causes the Northern Lights?

Posted on March 10, 2020 by Emily Chen

The aurora borealis, or aurora australis if in Southern Hemisphere, is one of nature’s most dazzling phenomena consisting of massive bands of colorful light streaking across the sky. This spectacular light show, despite its captivating beauty, actually portrays the deadly solar radiation spewing out from the sun and largely dissipating when coming into contact withContinue reading “What Causes the Northern Lights?” Continue reading →

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Spacecraft in the Solar System

Posted on March 10, 2020 by Emily Chen

As we have learned so much about the solar system, much of our knowledge comes from telescopic observations, ground-based and those in Earth’s orbit, as well as spacecraft explorations. Robotic spacecraft operate primarily with preprogrammed instructions and carry radios that allow them to communicate with controllers on Earth. Having sent robotic spacecraft missions to numerousContinue reading “Spacecraft in the Solar System” Continue reading →

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Blog #4: Statistics Behind Our Solar System

Posted on March 9, 2020 by John Harrington

A concept that has always intrigued me is the possibility of life on Earth. It seems like every topic we cover reveals another statistical improbability that has allowed life to exist on Earth at all. For example, we are just far enough from the sun that we have an atmosphere, but not so far fromContinue reading “Blog #4: Statistics Behind Our Solar System” Continue reading →

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Blog #3: Spacecraft

Posted on March 9, 2020 by John Harrington

Spacecraft is a topic that takes relatively simple mechanics and merges it with the already fairly complex topic of astrophysics to create an extremely complicated topic that has gained notoriety for becoming considered one of the most difficult professions in existence (think of “this isn’t rocket science”). Something interesting to me about spacecraft is this:Continue reading “Blog #3: Spacecraft” Continue reading →

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SOHO, the Sun-Watching Satellite

Posted on March 9, 2020 by jackfumagalli

For my post this week, I decided to explore and learn about a spacecraft that I was not familiar with. After some research, I came across SOHO. SOHO is the longest-lived Sun-watching satellite to date. SOHO over its lifetime has been able to observe two full 11-year solar cycles and discover thousands of comets closeContinue reading “SOHO, the Sun-Watching Satellite” Continue reading →

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How Spherical is the Sun?

Posted on March 5, 2020 by Phillip Yoon

From what we know about planets like the Earth and its properties, we may expect the Sun to also experience a bulge, causing its shape to deviate from a perfect sphere. It turns out that the Sun isn’t a perfect sphere, but it’s pretty close to one. If fact, with the help of instruments onContinue reading “How Spherical is the Sun?” Continue reading →

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What is retrograde motion?

Posted on February 14, 2020 by swarnasakshi

Retrograde. It’s a word you hear tossed around quite a bit lately. Mercury always seems to be in retrograde, which, apparently, is not a good thing. But what is retrograde motion really? Retrograde is an apparent motion. An objects appears to be in retrograde when it is lapped by another object that is the pointContinue reading “What is retrograde motion?” Continue reading →

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The Visible Doppler Effect

Posted on February 12, 2020 by Lily

            Ever wonder why the siren of a police car or a firetruck seems to change in pitch after it passes by? Well, the phenomenon is known as the Doppler Effect. The Doppler Effect explains how sound, like in the example above, or light waves are manipulated by the movement of an object in relation toContinue reading “The Visible Doppler Effect” Continue reading →

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