Category Archives: Class

The Lesser Known Moon

Posted on April 7, 2024 by Ayden Harris

Titan is a commonly forgotten about moon in our solar system. It is the second largest moon that orbits Saturn. There are a few interesting things about Titan. Titan is one of the most Earth-like worlds found to date. Titan’s atmosphere is comprised of mainly nitrogen (95%) and some methane (5%). However, why it is […] Continue reading →

Posted in Class | Tagged , | Comments Off on The Lesser Known Moon

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 →

Posted in Class | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Upcoming Mission: Dragonfly

The Kuiper Belt

Posted on April 7, 2024 by Ethan Jones

The Kuiper Belt was foreign to me before this class. I had never heard of it and because of that it stuck out to me. The basics of the Kuiper Belt is that it is the large region beyond Neptune. It stretches from about 30au-50au from the Sun. So far NASA says that only 2000 […] Continue reading →

Posted in Class | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on The Kuiper Belt

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 →

Posted in Class | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Exoplanet exploration: 700 light-years away

Blog 5: WHAT MAKES A METAL?

Posted on April 6, 2024 by matthewastro

Jupiter’s magnetosphere is generated thanks to a “metallic” layer of hydrogen around its core that is electrically conductive. Saturn also has “metallic,” electrically conductive hydrogen around its core, which enables it to have a magnetosphere as well. But the quotation marks? The answer is that metallic hydrogen isn’t a metal, in the traditional sense. First, […] Continue reading →

Posted in Class, Physics, Universe | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Blog 5: WHAT MAKES A METAL?

Differences Between the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt

Posted on April 5, 2024 by katie shapiro

There are as many comets in the sky as fishes in the ocean. -Johannes Kepler Going into this class I knew that comets came from the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud, however, I never put much thought into why comets are in these two areas. For some context, comets are considered “dirty snowballs” because […] Continue reading →

Posted in Class, SolarSystem | Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Differences Between the Oort Cloud and Kuiper Belt

Some things never change…

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Abbie!!

Asteroids are rocky leftover pieces from the planetary formation era that never ended up becoming planets. They orbit our Sun out in the asteroid belt, but they are too small and weirdly shaped (thanks to impacts!) to be classified as planets. To give a sense of the size range of asteroids, the largest asteroid, Ceres, […] Continue reading →

Posted in Class | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Some things never change…

Titan’s Tremendous Atmosphere and its Striking Similarity to Earth

Posted on April 5, 2024 by katie shapiro

One of the most fascinating things that I have learned from this unit was the diversity that are the jovian moons. Originally, I believed moons to be rocky, non geologically active objects that orbited planets. Although this is the case for some moons, especially the smaller ones, some moons hold very unique characteristics, such as […] Continue reading →

Posted in Class, Moons | Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on Titan’s Tremendous Atmosphere and its Striking Similarity to Earth

Blog 6: Io!

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Nicholas Fleisher

In this blog post, I’d like to talk about the BEST Galilean moon: Io. As I’m sure we all know, Io is known as the volcanic world of Jupiter’s moons. It holds large numbers of volcanoes, and frequent eruptions that repave the surface. In fact, its surface is relatively young with no impact craters. As […] Continue reading →

Posted in Class | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Blog 6: Io!

Blog 5: Jovian Magnetospheres

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Nicholas Fleisher

For this blog post, I’m going to be talking about the relative magnetospheres of the Jovian planets. As we have learned with terrestrials, magnetic fields are generated by motions of charged particles deep in their planet’s interiors. These magnetic fields create magnetospheres, which are like huge bubble that surround the whole planet and shield it […] Continue reading →

Posted in Class | Tagged , , | Comments Off on Blog 5: Jovian Magnetospheres