Tag Archives: astro2110

The expanding universe

Most people understand that the earth moves around the sun and rotates on its axis. However the earth moves more than just around the sun. In fact, our entire actually orbits around the center of the Milky Way at over 500,000 miles per hour. So why don’t we crash into anything? The answer is that […] Continue reading

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Blog 1: Asymmetry of the Moon

By looking at the image above, it’s clear to see that the dark splotches we’ve come to associate with our closest cosmic neighbor, the Moon, are only seen on one side! The farside of the moon is much more uniform with a lot more craters than the side we see. This stark difference has puzzled […] Continue reading

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Introductory Post

By me – this is a photo of my sister and I at our favorite beach in Nantucket Island. This is where I first became fascinated with space; there is little light pollution here and for as far back as I can remember, I have stared at the night sky for hours at a time […] Continue reading

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The Speed of Light

In 1905, Albert Einstein took the first crack at the Newtonian foundational physics. In his paper on special relativity, Albert Einstein postulated that the speed of light, c, is constant in all inertial reference frames. Assume that a person on a bicycle is holding a flashlight and moving at a constant speed relative to someone […] Continue reading

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Blog 1

Imagine if the entire history of the universe could be squeezed into a single calendar year, providing a perspective of how much time has truly passed in this universe. Enter the cosmic calendar, a concept introduced by the astronomer Carl Sagan. Within the cosmic calendar, each month corresponds to over 1 billion years, allowing us […] Continue reading

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The Vast Size and Scale of the Universe

BBC Science Focus The Universe is also used as a reference point to display somethings enormity. “I love you more than anything in the world” is massively trumped by “I love you more than anything in the Universe.” But what does this really mean? How much can the universe really hold? How big is it […] Continue reading

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Blog 1 – Light Speed

The speed of light is a fascinating topic that has significance from everyday life to the vast expanse of the cosmos. The speed of light is the speed at which light travels through a medium, and for a vacuum, this speed has been defined as 299,792,458 m/s. This speed is almost incomprehensible to us due […] Continue reading

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It’s not a phase, Mom! ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆

One thing I love about the nighttime is getting to see the different phases of the Moon in different times of its cycle. The Moon cycle consists of 8 phases as you can see in the picture below, and lasts 29.5 days, which is around one month! In this period, we see the Moon go from […] Continue reading

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Humans and Light Speed

by me The speed of light is around 300,000,000 meters per second. It’s so fast that it can circle the Earth 7.5 times in one second. I always wondered if humans can ever achieve speeds the same as light, but we’ve only managed to go 176,462 meters per second with the Nasa Parker Solar Probe. […] Continue reading

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Blog 1 – Solstices, Equinoxes, and Seasons

Traditionally, the Solstices mark the beginning of the most treacherous seasons. Being from Miami, when the summer solstice came around everyone always knew that the days would only get hotter. Once the winter solstice hit, we always prayed that there would be some form of respite (news flash, rarely was). Arguably, this is the worst […] Continue reading

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