The Journey Back to the Moon

Posted on March 5, 2024 by Justin Kim

Hello everyone! Almost spring break!

Isn’t it bonkers to think that we first sent human beings to the Moon in 1969? That’s 54 years ago! In that time, we have made such large strides in technology. Finally, there are plans to go back soon!

NASA is working hard on its Artemis campaign. This campaign aims to send astronauts back to the moon to create history. Christina Koch will be the first woman ever on the moon and Victor Glover will be the first person of color to ever step foot on the moon. There have been many delays to this campaign however. The renewed agenda is to launch Artemis II, a maned mission around the Moon, in September of 2025. One year later in September of 2026, Artemis III will be launched with the intention of landing astronauts on the moon. NASA stated that they established that time frame to ensure lessons from Artemis II can be incorporated into the engineering of Artemis III.

These are exciting times to be alive! We have not sent anyone to the moon in most of our lifetimes. I believe this campaign will inspire a whole new generation of astrophysics, astronauts, and astronomers. I hope that this is only the beginning!

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The Golden Record

Posted on March 5, 2024 by Ethan Jones
NASA

Aboard Voyager 1 and 2 there sits a golden record. This golden record contains anything NASA thinks is important to understanding humanity. The record contains both photos and images. The golden record fascinates me so much because of what they chose to put on it. First, they needed a way to communicate how to play the record. The did this with the part in the top left of the face of the record. The top right shows how the pictures are supposed to be created. Pictures include basic math, biology, and information about our solar system. Beyond the science stuff there are also photos of what life on Earth is like. Photos of cars, planes, sports and more. I encourage everyone to look it up and see the photos for yourself. There are also sounds including music but also everyday sounds like rain and dogs.

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Blog 4 – Weather vs. Climate

Posted on March 5, 2024 by Leni Ertel
The European Space Agency

There is often a lot of confusion when we talk about weather versus climate, and the impact both have on our planet. Many people who deny climate change/global warming do so because they are confused between weather and climate. I had a teacher in high school who told my class that climate change wasn’t real, because the past few years had been abnormally cold in Tennessee, where we live. My teacher was mistaking climate with weather. Thankfully, he didn’t teach environmental science or astronomy.

Weather refers to the combination of winds, temperature, clouds, and pressure that make days hotter, cooler, clearer, cloudier, calmer and stormier than others. Weather is what we feel when we go outside, and it is easy to comprehend by human standards. Climate is large scale, and is difficult to determine based on personal experience. Climate is the average of weather over many many years, frequently around 30 years. We cannot experience changes in climate, as they occur gradually over decades, centuries, and millennia (Bennett et al., pg. 280).

Understanding the differences between weather and climate is vital when discussing environmental issues and the changes that are occurring on our planet. This intersection between environmental science and astronomy is necessary to fully understand and address human impact on the Earth.

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What color is the Sun? (not yellow)

Posted on March 5, 2024 by The Cosmic Traveler

by me

The Sun is the brightest and biggest celestial body in our solar system. Its diameter is 865,000 miles, which is about 110 Earths long. Without the Sun’s light, there would be no life on Earth. The Sun is so important to us humans, yet some people don’t take the time to appreciate its beauty. The Sun gives off many colors and rays; it truly is something to awe at. Speaking of colors, many people have common misconceptions about the the color of our Sun. Many people believe that the Sun is orange, red or yellow; But, the Sun is actually white!

Yes, the Sun is white. The reason for this is because the Sun emits all colors, which appear to the naked eye as white. Here is a picture below:

by Stanford Solar Center

As you can see from space, the Sun is white. The reason why many people believe that the Sun is orange or yellow is because they are observing the Sun from Earth. When someone is observing the Sun from Earth, the atmosphere provides a ton of interference. This inference absorbs most of the energy and scatter’s most of the visible light from the Sun; Except yellowish light. Which is the reason why the Sun may appear yellow, orange, or even red.

The more we learn about the Sun, the better we are able to appreciate it and the services that it provides us. Even though it may seem like a dot that we’re not allowed to look at unless you want to be blind, it does a lot for us. Instead of taking things for granted, take the time to properly appreciate.

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Our Voyage

Posted on March 5, 2024 by John Newell

We have an innate desire to explore. If we look at our history as a species, that seems to be consistently true from the very beginning. But the frontier of space presents a distinct challenge from previous frontiers — it is simply SO large. Large enough, in fact, that for the first time in the history of exploration, we cannot be the pioneers ourselves. Instead, we must send machines in our place, like Voyagers 1 and 2. These probes have flown by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. But, even more than that, they kept going. Voyager 1 is now over 15 billion miles from Earth. It is, in fact, the most distant human made object from our planet ever achieved. The funny part is, this truly incredible distance is just so small. Scientists believe that Voyager 1 will reach the inner edge of the Oort Cloud, how we might define the outer edge of just our solar system, in 300 years. Just let that sink in.

NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA/JPL-Caltech

Our Universe is huge. But with human ingenuity, and stubborn determination, we just might be able to make a dent. Let’s keep exploring.

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The Cosmic Spin-off That Created Our Solar System

Posted on March 5, 2024 by Ethan Popper

Alright, let’s dive into how our solar system came to be, and trust me, it’s quite the cosmic tale. Picture this: over 4.5 billion years ago, the universe decides it’s time for a little creation project. So, in a neighborhood of our Milky Way galaxy, a giant cloud of gas and dust, known as a solar nebula, starts feeling a pull. Gravity pulls this cloud closer and tighter together, and it starts spinning, kind of like water going down a drain.

As it spins faster, the center of the cloud gets hot and dense, eventually sparking up to form the sun. But the story doesn’t end there. The leftover bits and pieces from this cosmic whirlwind start sticking together, forming everything from our favorite blue marble, Earth, to the far-flung icy worlds and all the other planets and moons in our solar system. So, next time you look up at the night sky, remember, it’s all there because of a cosmic mix and match that started billions of years ago.

The Cosmic Spin-off That Created Our Solar System

The Cosmic Spin-off That Created Our Solar System

The Cosmic Spin-off That Created Our Solar System

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Nature’s Closely Guarded Secret – Nuclear Fusion

Posted on March 5, 2024 by John Newell

We are, quite literally, made of stardust. Stars are the birthplace of many of the elements that make up our physical reality as we know it. Heavier elements (heavier than Iron, specifically) were created in a Supernova — a violent explosion of epic proportions at the end of a massive stars life. Inside of every star, however, exists the process of nuclear fusion. Under incredible amounts of gravitational pressure, two atoms collide, literally fusing together. The resulting atom is ever so slightly less massive than the sum of its parts. According to Einstein’s equation E=Mc^2, this “missing mass” is converted into energy, which ultimately prevents the star from collapsing in on itself, and provides us with heat and light.

Nuclear Fusion
Nuclear Fusion Diagram

The question is, could humanity possibly harness such seemingly limitless amounts of energy? Perhaps, but the process has proved itself to be incredibly difficult and expensive. As it turns out, creating the conditions of the core of a star, and resulting in an interaction of energetic gain is a little complicated. Some of the reactors we have built are truly beautiful things though!

The Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research Experiment

This reactor in South Korea achieved a reaction at temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius for 30 seconds! While we haven’t solved the problem yet, humanity and its conquest of understanding and harnessing the power of the universe is truly incredible.

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Blog 3 – Uranus

Posted on March 5, 2024 by Leni Ertel
NASA

Uranus is the 7th planet from the Sun, at approximately 19.2 AU away. It is primarily composed of hydrogen, helium, and hydrogen compounds. It is an ice giant, and its iconic pale blue-green color comes from methane. Sunlight passes through the atmosphere, and is then reflected by Uranus’ clouds. Methane absorbs the red within the light spectrum, leading to the recognizable blue-green color. It has over 24 moons, 13 faint rings, and does not have a solid surface. Uranus is distinct from the other planets in the solar system due to its extreme axial tilt. This tilt means that Uranus has the most drastic seasonal variations out of any other planet within our solar system. The only spacecraft that has visited Uranus is Voyager 2 (Bennett et al., pg. 201).

Uranus is named after the Greek god of the sky and father of Kronos. NASA plans to send another ship to Uranus, and a new mission has been deemed as one of the highest priorities of the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey 2023-2032. I find Uranus’ moons to be very interesting, not only because there are so many of them, but also because they are named for literary characters (I am an English major myself). These moons are named for Shakespeare and Alexander Pope characters.

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☆Born to shine, forced to fuse☆

Posted on March 5, 2024 by abbieychen

Stars, like us, have an exciting life journey. Stars are born when gas and dust in cold molecular clouds collapse from gravity. Just like our solar system, the formation of a star involves the gas cloud spinning, heating, and flattening until the star is formed. Something I thought was cool was that stars tend to form in groups!! These star-forming molecular clouds don’t just pop out one star at a time, but rather many.

But what determines which path the star will go down in its life? The most important characteristic of a star is its mass, because from that we can learn about its temperature, luminosity, and life journey. Depending on how massive the star is, their lives can be vastly different.

For low-mass stars, such as our Sun (crazy, right? our Sun is one of the smaller ones!), they live a slow and steady life of generating light to shine by fusing hydrogen atoms to helium. But when they run out of hydrogen to fuse, the star isn’t strong enough to resist gravity, and it will start shrinking. This is when the star transitions into a red giant, which is much larger and more luminous! In this stage, the star will fuse helium atoms until it runs out, and then the star will finally collapse. It will become bigger and more luminous as before, but eventually it will scatter into a beautiful planetary nebula.

Star ashes!! (Image credit: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage)

High-mass stars have a similar childhood to low-mass stars in that they convert hydrogen and then helium to get energy, but they do that much faster and are able to fuse heavier elements. This is because these high-mass stars have much higher temperatures that allow them to fuse heavier nuclei! That is, until we get to iron. The star will then run out of energy and start dying. When a high-mass star dies, it explodes into a supernova!! It might leave behind a neutron star (a very massive ball of neutrons) or even a black hole!

The death of stars is what allows more stars to be born. The material that a star produces during its lifetime will be able to birth new stars and planets! And the elements that were created from high-mass stars are what we are made of! So if you learn anything from this blog, remember that you are made of star stuff. ☆

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Blog 4: Telescope Industry

Posted on March 4, 2024 by James Bamshad

Telescope Industry Size Projection

The astronomical telescope industry is experiencing a gradual yet significant rise, with a projected market size of USD 1,298.71 million by 2031. This growth is driven by several key drivers, including technological advancements, increased interest in astronomy, and applications in education and research. Technological integration, such as the incorporation of digital features and extremely precise tracking systems, is attracting both amateurs and seasoned astronomers to purchase new products.

As the fascination with the universe continues to captivate people from all corners of the globe and with many new endeavors in the world of astronomy, the telescope industry is poised to see significant growth in the future. The industry is set to play a pivotal role in revealing mysteries and inspiring future generations of astronomers.

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