Category Archives: Universe

some final thoughts

Posted on April 27, 2023 by Emma Williams

When I started this class, I didn’t expect to find so many connections between astronomy and they other subjects I’m interested in! I am majoring in philosophy and political science, subjects that I believed to be totally independent from the physics and history of our universe. Thankfully, I was very wrong! I still am shocked […] Continue reading →

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Color-Band-Filters

Posted on April 21, 2023 by Alex Diefenbach

(Rudimentary colored filters) This semester, I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to do undergraduate research in the realm of astronomy here at Vanderbilt. My particular work’s main focus has been trying to find a correlation between the redshift and the luminosity of different stars observed in the universe. I created a code via […] Continue reading →

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Chemosynthesis

Posted on April 21, 2023 by Alex Diefenbach

(The Chemosynthetic Process) I remember back in AP Biology in high school, my teacher briefly mentioned during the unit on autotrophs, that there are certain types of organisms who create their own energy but do it in the absence of the sun. To me this was a complete conundrum. In every science related class, presentation […] Continue reading →

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The Drake Equation

Posted on April 17, 2023 by sydneyastr2110

The idea of life on other planets has always been a hot topic. An entire genre has been developed to showcase aliens stemming from human imagination. This is usually pseudoscience, but it does beg the question: are aliens real? While we have never contacted or found evidence of other civilizations, there is a way to […] Continue reading →

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The Event Horizon Telescope

Posted on April 11, 2023 by jackdoyle25

We’ve spent the semester so far studying the greatest discoveries and breakthroughs in the history of astronomy, from as long ago as Copernicus to as recent as the New Horizons flyby of Pluto. Even more recently, however, an astronomical breakthrough was made that will surely be the subject of textbook pages and lecture slides in […] Continue reading →

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The Cosmic Microwave Background

Posted on April 9, 2023 by constellationsarentreal

One of the pillars that the Big Bang Theory Model rests on is the existence and characteristics of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The CMB is an observed cosmic glow of radiation seen everywhere, filling the universe like a sea. Roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe cooled enough (~3,000K) for free-roaming electrons […] Continue reading →

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Halley’s Comet

Posted on April 9, 2023 by sahilreddy2

Giotto Spacecraft Approaching Halley’s Comet Halley’s Comet has the ability to completely destroy a city. Until learning about this comet in a previous homework assignment I never realized the true devastation even a comet of this size could cause on the earth. Halley’s Comet most famous observation occurred in 1066 where it was said that […] Continue reading →

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The Frozen World: Pluto

Posted on April 9, 2023 by sahilreddy2

Pluto’s Icey Surface taken from the New Horizons Spacecraft Pluto is one of the most interesting “planets” in our solar system and for decades now has had constant debate surrounding it. Pluto has an extremely thin atmosphere, one that is a lot thinner than ours on earth that is made up of primarily nitrogen. Its […] Continue reading →

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Blog #5: Pluto

Posted on April 9, 2023 by Astro 2110

The above photo was captured by the New Horizons Spacecraft and enhanced by NASA in 2015. Pluto is classified as a dwarf planet and is located in the Kuiper Belt in the far reaches of the Solar System. The average surface temperature on Pluto is around -233°C. This is because Pluto receives very little sunlight […] Continue reading →

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Nemesis: The Ultimate Party (And Ort Cloud) Crasher

Posted on April 8, 2023 by Alex Diefenbach

(Hypothetical Rendition of Nemesis – https://images.app.goo.gl/214dFoRtpLU4LSW59) There is a theory concerning the orbit of celestial bodies which has been proposed that would explain the extinction of the dinosaurs. The theory rests on the idea that our sun is part of an astronomical dynamic called a binary system. A binary system resembles the mechanics of satellite […] Continue reading →

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