Category Archives: Class

Blog Post 6: What Sokka and King Tut have in common.

Posted on April 18, 2022 by isaachuggins

Avatar the Last Airbender has received a surge of popularity in the past few years, as it is considered one of the most popular cartoon shows to ever air. One of the characters, Sokka, is a teenage boy from the Southern Water tribe and has multiple tools and skills, like his boomerang, to save the […] Continue reading →

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Life in the Milky Way

Posted on April 18, 2022 by Karan Bhardwaj

Other than life on Earth, is there any other planet in the Milky Way which might harbor life intelligent enough for inter-stellar communication? Many approaches to this question, with different philosophies have come to fruition throughout the years. One such approach is the Drake Equation: There are 7 different parameters to the Drake Equation, considering […] Continue reading →

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Exoplanets

Posted on April 17, 2022 by Kaitlyn Lane

The words in the above picture are hard to make out, but I really liked the visual of some of the known exoplanets graphed on a plot. The color and appearances of these planets are not truly known since we have not directly seen them, but they are inferred based on density, temperature, metal content, […] Continue reading →

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Blog 5: Comets

Posted on April 17, 2022 by Kaitlyn Lane

Comets are relatively small bodies in our solar system comprised of dust, rock, gases, and ice. They are remnants from the formation of the solar system, and their solid bodies, or nuclei, can range from a few miles to dozens of miles wide. When its orbit gets close to the sun, this nucleus heats up […] Continue reading →

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Wormholes

Posted on April 17, 2022 by jadonroy

One of the many wonders of our cosmos that peaked my curiosity to the world of astrophysics was the concept of the wormhole. After seeing a wormhole being used in one of my favorite movies, Interstellar , I became even more fascinated with this topic as it I was given a cinematic and visual example […] Continue reading →

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Neptune’s Triton’s Origins

Posted on April 17, 2022 by Sheila Chau

As compared to other moons, Neptune’s Triton was captured into Neptune’s orbit. This was found out due to its backward rotation and how it rotates at a high inclination to Neptune’s equator. Rather than being formed in the disk of gas around Neptune, Triton was most likely captured into Neptune’s orbit.  There is one way…Continue reading » Continue reading →

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Blog 5: Eris

Posted on April 17, 2022 by Charles Littleton

Eris is a trans-Neptunian object and is the second-largest dwarf planet in the solar system. It was discovered in 2005. It is .28 % the mass of Earth. Eris has one large moon, Dsymonia.It is about  96 AU away from the sun. Its orbital period is 559 Years. Its surface has methane ice. This shows […] Continue reading →

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Interesting facts about Pluto and our path to exploring it

Posted on April 17, 2022 by jadonroy

Dr. Alan Stern is most known for his role as the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to explore Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Recently, Dr. Stern spoke at Purdue University on October 10, 2019, discussing and examining the topic of “What If We Return to Pluto?” During this discussion, he detailed many interesting […] Continue reading →

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Detecting Extrasolar Planets

Posted on April 17, 2022 by solarelizabeth

Extrasolar planets can be difficult to detect because they are tiny, far away, and dim, but the Doppler Method provides an indirect way to find them. This method involves looking for alternating blueshifts and redshifts in the star’s spectrum, which reveal a star’s motion around its center of mass. This motion could reveal the presence […] Continue reading →

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Jupiter’s Magnetosphere

Posted on April 17, 2022 by Sheila Chau

Jupiter’s magnetosphere is by far the strongest. This is because of how thick its layer of metallic hydrogen is and its high-speed rotation rate. Its strength is 20,000 times stronger than Earth’s. It’s so large that it begins to avert the solar wind almost 3 million kilometers before it even reaches Jupiter. Jupiter’s magnetosphere in…Continue reading » Continue reading →

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