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Category Archives: General
What’s up with the tropics?
Latitude and longitude coordinates are seen everywhere; they’re immensely useful for marking geographic location and helping with navigation. The system is simple enough: latitude is distance north or south from the equator and longitude is distance east or west from the Prime Meridian. But what are the Tropics of Cancer and of Capricorn that areContinue reading “What’s up with the tropics?” Continue reading
Posted in General
Tagged astro2110, blog2, precession, Solar System: Sun
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The Beginning: A Little More of Me
Welcome to the inaugural post to Jonah’s Astronomy Interests! Just to start, here are some things about me because why not: I’m from St. Louis, Missouri (if you couldn’t tell from the picture above) and I wish I could’ve minored in astronomy but physics wasn’t the move. Another thing to share: I love when I’mContinue reading “The Beginning: A Little More of Me” Continue reading
Finale – Culminate Post
I learned much more than I thought I would in this course. Before taking this class, all I really knew about our solar system was that there are 8 planets (and Earth is the third one), the asteroid belt is a thing, Jupiter is big, and Saturn is the planet with pretty rings. I didn’t … Continue reading Finale – Culminate Post → Continue reading
Posted in Class, General
Tagged astro2110, blog7, Solar System
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I See the Light
An amazing part of the class this semester was the ability to understand and correct some of the misconceptions that I have held about the Solar System for years. Whether it was about the ‘dark’ side of the moon, the brightness of the North Star, tides, the asteroid belt being hard to navigate through, or … Continue reading I See the Light → Continue reading
Posted in Class, General, Science
Tagged astro2110, blog7, Misconceptions, Solar System
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A Whole New World!
Because the caves, mines, and crevasses on Earth are filled with extremophiles, NASA uses those lifeforms as a guide to its exploration of the universe. The hidden parts of the planet have to make their own way of survival. Surface life has photosynthesis, but subsurface only a tiny fraction of that energy trickles down so … Continue reading A Whole New World! → Continue reading
Posted in Class, General, Observables, Terrestrials
Tagged astro2110, astrobiology, blog6, extremophiles, NASA
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Eight Planets or Nine?
Most of us probably remember a time when the Solar System had nine planets, with Pluto as the ninth and (usually) farthest from the Sun. In 2006, following the discovery of Eris, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) voted to reclassify Pluto as a “dwarf planet” (don’t forget the quotation marks!). However, there might one day […] Continue reading
A Moon Above the Rest: Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede
Galileo Galilei discovered many “luminous objects” in 1610 that were orbiting Jupiter. Thought to be stars, it was discovered that they were moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System and is even larger than the planet Mercury. It is the only satellite in the Solar System known to possess a … Continue reading A Moon Above the Rest: Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede → Continue reading
Saving the Appearances
Strict Aristotelian cosmology follows that all bodies are made of the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. These four exist in the terrestrial realm and the stars exist in the celestial realm. A fifth element, aether, exists there and that is what heavenly bodies are composed of. Aristotle provided the basics of the physics … Continue reading Saving the Appearances → Continue reading
Posted in Class, General, Historical, Observables, Universe
Tagged aristotle, astro2110, blog4
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Second Planet to the Sun
The planet Venus is named for the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It is the second largest terrestrial planet. It is also the second brightest natural object in the sky. Venus’ apparent magnitude of -3.8 to -4.6 makes it visible on a clear day. Venus’ atmosphere can be divided into two layers: the cloud … Continue reading Second Planet to the Sun → Continue reading
Posted in Class, General, Sun
Tagged astro2110, Atmosphere, blog3, planet, Solar System, venus
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Newton’s Law of Gravitation and General Relativity
Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation first appeared in the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in July 1687. It describes why that apple fell on Newton’s head (as some stories would have it), why we stay rooted to the ground (without drifting off into space), and why the Earth is locked in orbit around the Sun (among … Continue reading Newton’s Law of Gravitation and General Relativity → Continue reading