Category Archives: Class

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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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Put a ring on it!! 🪐

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Abbie!!

When I think of rings, the first planet that comes to mind is Saturn. Saturn has the most impressive rings out of all the Jovian planets in our solar system. (In fact, Saturn’s rings are so prominent that I sometimes forget that other Jovian planets also have rings!!) First, let’s talk about the properties of […] Continue reading →

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Blog 4: Systema Cosmicum

Posted on March 6, 2024 by Seth Creech

History Channel Portrait of Galileo Galileo was one of, if not the most revolutionary astronomer of all time. He lived at a point where the Catholic Church controlled a large section of public and private life, but they were also seeing their power wane through the Protestant Reformation, championed by Martin Luther (among others). The […] Continue reading →

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Kepler-452b

Posted on March 6, 2024 by Owen Purcell

Kepler-452b is an exoplanet about 15 light-years away from us.  It is notable because it is the most Earth-like planet that has been discovered so far.  It is 60% larger than Earth, which is certainly significant, but it has an orbit that lasts 385 Earth-days, and it orbits only 5% further from its star than […] Continue reading →

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Sideways Wonder, Uranus

Posted on March 6, 2024 by obisesoa

Aside from being named after Jupiter’s progenitors rather than his offspring or contemporaries, Uranus has the obvious distinction from having its axis be almost horizontal, meaning it rotates on its side like a wheel rather than like a top, possibly due to a drastic collision it suffered while forming that it never bothered to correct. […] Continue reading →

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Combining Forces: Nuclear Fusion in the Solar System

Posted on March 6, 2024 by Seth Creech

Business Insider Ignition Image Shown above is from the National Ignition Facility, where scientists successfully produced (and reproduced) a nuclear fusion reaction that had more energy output than input. The underlying math behind this lies in E=mc2, which shows that Mass (m) can be converted into a large amount of energy at the sacrifice of […] Continue reading →

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So what is a Black Hole?

Posted on March 5, 2024 by The Cosmic Traveler

by me A black hole is an astronomical object in space where the gravitational pull is so strong that nothing can escape from it, including light. The “surface” of a black hole is known as the event horizon. Black holes are undetectable by telescopes because no light can escape from them; However, they can be […] Continue reading →

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