Florida Asteroid Burning Up

Posted on April 15, 2021 by mwdobson3
Image of Florida asteroid

On Monday April 13th, a small asteroid was spotted in the night sky off the east coast of Florida. One of my family members was all the way across the state on the western side of Florida and saw the asteroid’s fireball-like appearance as it passed by Earth over 26,000 km away. According to the Space.com, the meteor was 4 meters in diameter will continue to move through space around the sun, returning to Earth in about 2 years. The tool the National Weather Service (NWS) uses to track these occurrences is called the Geostationary Lighting Mapper that captures images of the Earth at night and finds anomalies in light coming from Earth’s surface. When the April 13th asteroid burned up, the tool took the image shown below with the asteroid being inside the red circle.

NWS Geostationary Lighting Mapper

Although it would be difficult to tell the shape of the asteroid, we know that the majority of asteroids are potato-shaped since their gravity is not strong enough to shape them into spheres. They are primarily made of rock and metal as during the formation of the Solar System, they formed inside of the frost line. As this collection of rock and metal passes through Earth’s atmosphere, the asteroid begins to burn up as gasses in the atmosphere hit the front side of the rock. Then, the heat from these continual impacts causes the asteroid to heat up so dramatically that it glows in the night sky. Asteroids burning up occurs throughout the day and night, but we can only see them during the night since the sun is so bright it blinds us from the glow of an asteroid.

Here’s a link to a cool video of the event!!

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solar system superlatives: Saturn

Posted on April 15, 2021 by Peter Taylor

Welcome back to solar system superlatives! Last time, we learned about Mars and the breathtaking enormity of Olympus Mons, the largest mountain in our solar system. Now, let’s take a look at my personal favorite of the giants: Saturn.

Saturn’s rings during an eclipse

Needless to say, Saturn wins the prize of “coolest rings in the solar system.” Just take a look at some of these pictures and, if you didn’t appreciate them already, hopefully you can see how beautiful they truly are. It’s hard not to be mesmerized…I just spent like 20 minutes scrolling through NASA’s gallery trying to pick some of my favorites.

Mimas and Saturn
a shadow cast by Saturn’s rings

Too bad its almost 1.5 billion kilometers away.

But let’s take a closer look to really see just how spectacular these rings are. As you can see in the picture displaying a shadow cast by Saturn’s rings, the rings are incredibly thin, so thin they almost seem to disappear when viewed head-on. As it turns out, Saturn’s rings range from about 10 meters in thickness to about 1 kilometer. Although these numbers may sound big, I assure you that they are not. In fact, let me show you why.

Saturn rings
highest resolution image of Saturn’s rings to date

Saturn’s main ring system spans about 300,000 kilometers. Therefore, if we take a width to thickness ratio, we get 0.000033. And, yes, there are five zeros. For comparison, the width to thickness ratio of a standard 28 centimeter (11 in) piece of paper is about 0.00036 (assuming a height of 0.1 mm). And, yes, there are only three zeros there. In other words, Saturn’s rings are essentially 100 times thinner than a piece of paper. A piece of paper. Also, if that’s not enough, the thickness to width ratio for Saturn was calculated by using 1 kilometer as the estimated thickness. If we drop that to the 10 meters found at the thinnest points, the ratio drops by another factor of 100.

Congratulations, Saturn. You really outdid yourself with this one.

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Going Up?

Posted on April 14, 2021 by olivesobservatory
Image Source: MIT Technology Review

Space. Elevators. I know what you’re thinking- huh? What even are those? Those were my exact thoughts before I learned all about the concept of space elevators 10 minutes ago, and I’m going to share everything I learned with you. Rockets have been our only mode of transportation to space for quite a while, but space elevators could be the next big thing within the next century. In a space elevator, a tether is attached to both the Earth’s surface (in an equatorial region) and an object in space (most likely a geostationary satellite in Earth’s orbit), which allows for relatively simple (and cheap, compared to rockets) planet-to-space transportation. Motorized vehicles/pods could then travel freely along the tether without the help of rockets! Although this idea was first proposed in 1895 by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, it has really only been considered feasible until recently. In fact, a Japanese company and the Chinese government are seeking to build one by 2050 and 2045, respectively. Additionally, trials are already being run to test this idea. This is a truly revolutionary concept that could potentially open up space travel to the masses, and I’m incredibly invested in its development! To wrap things up, what kind of space elevator music do you think would be playing as you go up? I personally wouldn’t mind some Jimi Hendrix or the 2001: A Space Odyssey theme song. Also, what are your thoughts on this idea? Audacious or ingenious?

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Calling All Nerds! (Just Kidding, LOTR is Cool)

Posted on April 14, 2021 by olivesobservatory
Fomalhaut System (Source)

This image may look familiar to all you high fantasy fans out there as the Eye of Sauron from Lord of the Rings, but what if I told you that you didn’t have to travel to Middle-earth to see it? I know you’re all on the edge of your seats now! This is an image of the Fomalhaut System, which is located only a mere 25 lightyears away! I understand that might seem a bit far, but you can get back to me when you find out a way to get to Middle-earth that’s easier than traveling 25 lightyears (believe me, I’m open to suggestions). The above photo is actually an infrared image taken using a coronagraph (an instrument that blocks out light emitted by the star’s surface), but you might still be wondering what that brilliant ring is. That ring would be debris still left in Fomalhaut’s protoplanetary disk, where planet formation is occurring. Analysis of the debris ring has led astronomers to point to the existence of two exoplanets (or large accumulations of rubble), Dagon (already proven) and a hypothetical “Fomalhaut c.” These exoplanets shepherd the debris in a way that makes the clearly-defined edges of the ring, thus creating the distinctive Eye of Sauron shape. I’m really hoping we’ll get to learn more about this system in the near future, especially news regarding the elusive “Fomalhaut c”! Although my nerdy franchise of choice will always be Star Wars, that doesn’t stop me from appreciating a good fictional reference (especially when it’s naturally occurring). Do you know of any celestial objects that resemble iconic things of fiction?

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Makemake

Posted on April 14, 2021 by justinboreskyvanderbiltedu

Makemake was discovered in 2005 by Michael Brown, Chad Trujillo and David Rabinowitz. Makemake might be the most interesting dwarf planet with its cool name and special facts. Makemake is the second biggest dwarf planet and once it was discovered it led to the demise of the title of planet for Pluto. Because of Makemake being 2/3 the size of Pluto it led to scientists reconsidering and deciding that Pluto was actually a dwarf planet. Makemake was originally named Easter bunny, as it was discovered a few days before easter. Although Makemake might sound big being 2/3 the size of Pluto it is only 3 times as big as the Grand Canyon. Some other interesting facts about Makemake are: one year on earth is equivalent to 1/305 Makemake years, Makemake is the second brightest dwarf planet, its surface is dominated by methane which makes it extremely volatile and even though it isn’t too far away there are no plans to visit the planet soon!

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Kepler-452b

Posted on April 13, 2021 by dayanel123

You are probably looking at the title of this post and wondering “what?” I would be too. What is Kepler-452b? Is it a theory? A concept? A principle? The correct answer is that it is a name. But a name for what? Kepler-452b is the name of an exoplanet (a planet outside our solar system). This particular exoplanet warrants a blog post because, of all the exoplanets discovered so far, this one is most similar to our Earth. Although this exoplanet is considerably more massive than Earth, its orbit lies within the habitable region of its star. We don’t quite know if Kepler-452b is a rocky terrestrial planet, but if it is, it would be highly geologically active with a ton of volcanoes. here are some facts about it!

Its orbit is 385 Earth days, so only about 20 days longer than our year.

Its equilibrium temperature is 265k, which is a little warmer than Earth’s.

It is about 5 times as massive as Earth

Its about 1,400 light years away, which may seem far to us, but in space that is pretty close to Earth.

Its star has nearly the same mass and is nearly the same size as ours!

Although Earth and Kepler-452b are not identical, they could still be considered a cousin, and they are more related than any other exoplanet. If we were to travel at the speed of the New Horizons spacecraft we just learned about, it would still take us 26 million years to get there :(. Isn’t that cool? Do you guys think we will ever be able to visit it?

Here is an image showing its orbit relative to its star and Earth’s orbit.

By NASA
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Saturn’s Hexagon

Posted on April 13, 2021 by thestarstudent
Saturn’s hexagonal storm from NASA

Scientists at Harvard are trying to learn more about Saturn’s hexagonal storm on its north pole. While storms on Earth tend to be round or spiral in shape, this feature on Saturn is distinctly a hexagon, and we don’t fully know why! As of now, Harvard has created computer simulations that have indicated how polygonal shapes can be made with various storms of this scale. I mean, this storm is about two Earth’s wide, so it probably acts a little differently than our standard hurricane. Scientists believe that the hexagonal shape is due to interactions between air of different temperatures moving in different directions and at different speeds. They have even been able to reproduce the phenomenon in a lab!

Due to Saturn’s axial tilt and orbit length, its north pole has about 15 years in the sun and 15 years in darkness. While it’s preferable to study the storm during Saturn’s summer, the hexagon is still present when viewed through infrared light. And the thing is, the storm isn’t even the only thing happening on Saturn’s north pole; the planet has aurorae! All of these features are making Saturn stay high on my list of worlds. What do you love about Saturn?

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What does Pluto’s blue haze originate from?

Posted on April 13, 2021 by joeangella13
Image of Pluto’s atmosphere color backlit by sunlight from New Horizons mission (SOURCE)

Within the past year, new theories and suggestions have been proposed as to why Pluto’s atmosphere appears to have a blue haze. Before we get into any of the results from this theory, it is important to understand how we even got here in the first place. In a recent video that we watched in class, Dr. Stern explains the purpose of the New Horizons mission in exploring the dwarf planets and other objects in our outer solar system and the Kuiper belt in general. One image, which is shown at the top of the page, shows Pluto’s atmosphere resembling a blueish haze color which in actuality is not that surprising. This same mission revealed hazes on multiple icy worlds such as Titan, Triton, and we have discovered hazes on planets such as Venus, Mars and so on. While it may be very easy to assume that if two worlds have similar color in their hazes they may be form the same origin of properties, scientists are told to check the facts and find out for sure. And thankfully they did, because in actuality the properties between Titan, Triton, and Pluto are all vastly different when it comes to creating the hazes that they display. In conclusion, scientists suggest that Pluto’s atmosphere gets its blue haze from, “icy organic compounds,” which are different from the origins of both Titan and Triton. (Space) All in all though, this three way comparison allows us to truly grasp that there are important differences that are needed to be taken into account when considering the mechanisms in which hazes from in planetary atmospheres. (Space) Did any of this information surprise you? Comment down below and thanks for reading!

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The Journeyman of ALL Comets

Posted on April 13, 2021 by joeangella13
Image of the 2I/Borisov Comet (SOURCE)

In the past few weeks, scientists have revealed a major discovery about details from a comet that we have now identified came from an entirely different Solar System! This comet has been deemed as, “more pristine,” than any other comets examined by scientists, simply from the properties of its origin. (Independent) The comet has been given the name: 2I/Borisov and is only the second interstellar object to be discovered by scientists to date. Essentially what makes this comet so special is that while it has been flying through space for billions of years (since the beginning of the formation of our solar system) it appears to have never collided with/passed by close enough to other stars or objects that would, in turn, spoil the antiqueness of the fact that this is a relic of our origin of our solar system. The coma that has formed behind this comet also gives scientists an indication that whichever solar system it came from was, “mixed up,” by similar giant and terrestrial planets as our own. (Independent) What is your reaction to this news? Comment down below and see you next time!

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The Cassini Spacecraft and Huygens Probe

Posted on April 13, 2021 by thestarstudent
The last full mosaic image of Saturn that Cassini took from NASA

NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft, launched in 1997, flew by Venus and Earth’s Moon, through the Asteroid belt, and near Jupiter until it settled in the Saturn Planetary System for thirteen years. This was a historical mission for multiple reasons. Not only was it the first to orbit Saturn, but the Huygens Probe it carried was the first to land in the outer solar system and collected many data that were the first of their kind. The probe landed on Titan and sent information to Cassini and to Earth about that world’s atmosphere and ocean. Cassini continued to move throughout Saturn’s system and got within 31 miles of Enceladus’ surface. The spacecraft was able to detect traces of carbon dioxide and water, beginning a long term fascination with this world. Multiple more flybys were conducted to study its geysers. All of the information Cassini learned indicated that there was a strong possibility of life on some of Saturn’s moons (I have my money on Titan and Enceladus). So, in order to negate any possible crashes and contamination, on September 15, 2017, Cassini plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere and was either burned or crushed. However, even in its last moments, Cassini was sending information to Earth that could help with understanding Saturn’s past, present, and future.

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