Astro2110 – The Solar System

Hi! I’m Jack, a senior studying Mechanical Engineering at Vanderbilt University. The image below shows where I’m from: Jupiter, Florida! Sadly, my hometown was not named after the planet, Jupiter.

Hello everyone, my name is Thomas Shelton and I’m a sophomore here at Vanderbilt. My favorite baseball team is the New York Mets.

Hi all! My name is Adriana and I am so excited to share some of my favorite astronomy findings with you all this semester! I promise I’ll try not to just excitedly yell about them. I am a senior majoring in Communication Studies and as you can probably guess from my image, I am a Gemini. (I will not be able to escape the astrology references, even though they are not scientifically backed.)

I am from New Jersey where I love to spend a lot of time at the beach. I took the photo above this summer when the moon appeared low and bright in the night sky. Earlier that night, as the moon was rising, it appeared to have a red or orange tint as well. This phenomenon can be explained here: Why the Moon sometimes looks orange. Pay attention the next time you see the moon rise, especially if you are on the East Coast and see it coming above the horizon, to notice this change in hue! As we know, our eyes can deceive us when looking at elements in space, but we will work to uncover the science to explain it!

This is a picture of my hometown Annapolis, Maryland! 

astro2110 me

BBC Sky at Night Magazine

The incomprehensible scale of the universe is intimidating to most people. Forget feeling insignificant or small on Earth as one person out of 8 billion. That’s nowhere near how it feels to realize that when the scope of the universe is concerned, Earth and humanity are much, much less than a rounding error. They might as well be a zero, meaningless when discussing the hundreds of billions of galaxies and their contents. For what is thought to be a spectacular achievement – intelligent life – we are less than worthless.

Except that isn’t true. Yes, there are quintillions of planets out there (1 quintillion = 1 million trillion!), and going off sheer probability, other intelligent life is likely somewhere among those planets. But that isn’t how people judge themselves or others on their good days. When you feel happy and fulfilled, you don’t stop to consider that you are just one of 8 billion and then demean your self-image and emotions for being “meaningless”, because not everything has to be a competition or make you stand out.

The same goes for humanity’s place in the universe. Yes, this planet is one of quintillions, but it’s our planet. In the near-infinite cosmos, we are all here, at this exact point in time. It doesn’t have to be about being important or meaningful among the stars, because living and existing as we are now is more than enough. Because there is only one Earth like ours, and we’re the ones that get to live on it.