Tag Archives: astro2110

The Moon

Posted on April 23, 2024 by Maddy Pollard

Last night I got to go observing for the first time! We used telescopes to look at three different astronomical objects, but my favorite thing to look at was the Moon. It was in the waxing gibbous phase, but it was so close to being full that it looked like a perfect circle (see the […] Continue reading →

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The Drake Equation

Posted on April 23, 2024 by Maddy Pollard

Are we alone in the universe? This is the question that has driven years of space exploration and innovation. Humans have always wondered if there are other advanced civilizations similar to our own. Unfortunately, we lack technology that is advanced enough to know for certain. But in 1961, astronomer Frank Drake wrote an equation that […] Continue reading →

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Blog 8: 51 Pegasi

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Nicholas Fleisher

In this blog post, I’m going to be discussing more of what we learned from Unit 4, specifically about the Doppler method. As we all now know, the Doppler method is a critical tool for detecting extrasolar planets. It searches for a star’s orbital movement around a center of mass by looking for changing Doppler […] Continue reading →

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Life on Mars?

Posted on April 22, 2024 by liamoneill95

Does life/did life once exist in areas of the solar system outside of our home planet Earth? In trying to answer this question, we turn to our closest neighbor and most likely candidate, Mars. As of right now, there is no evidence, past or present, that Mars has ever been home to life. That being […] Continue reading →

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Blog 7: Thermophiles!

Posted on April 21, 2024 by Nicholas Fleisher

In this blog, I’m going to be discussing all things thermophiles! Thermophiles are organisms that are found in really hot temperatures (60 degrees Celsius – 140 degrees Celsius). Found these organisms aren’t simply found there… they thrive there! Thermophiles typically inhabit a variety of extreme ecological sites, usually hot springs like in Yellowstone National Park […] Continue reading →

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Are we there yet??🚀

Posted on April 18, 2024 by Abbie!!

In my entire life, I have never traveled outside of the country. Most people on Earth have never traveled off of Earth. And none of us have ever traveled outside of our Solar System! We know that travel to the Moon is possible, but is it possible to visit worlds in other planetary systems? Is […] Continue reading →

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Blog 6 – Artemis II

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Leni Ertel

NASA announced the Artemis II mission, which will launch no earlier than September 2025. This mission will take 4 astronauts (Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Jeremy Hansen) to our moon. This mission will be NASA’s first crewed flight test of the Space Launch Rocket System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft. The purpose of this mission […] Continue reading →

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How do we discover Exoplanets?

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Garrett

Depiction of Astrometry For this blog I wanted to look into exoplanets and more specifically how we discover them. I found that there are 4 main methods to discover exoplanets. The first is the radial velocity method. This is how many of the first exoplanets were discovered. This method observes the doppler shift in the […] Continue reading →

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Pluto, The Hated One

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Ethan Popper

Blog Post #5 – Pluto, The Hated One Pluto, our beloved cosmic underdog, has had a rollercoaster of a journey in the astronomical community. Once considered the ninth planet of our solar system, it was demoted in 2006 to “dwarf planet” status, much to the dismay of Pluto enthusiasts worldwide. But don’t let its diminutive […] Continue reading →

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Blog 5 – Pluto

Posted on April 9, 2024 by Leni Ertel

Watching the talk about the New Horizons mission made an impact on the way I now view space exploration. There are so many aspects to it detailed in the video I had never thought about before. Over the course of watching the talk, I was also able to fall in love with Pluto! New Horizons […] Continue reading →

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