Tag Archives: astro2110

Amateur Astronomer Discovers Jupiter’s 80th Moon

Amateur Astronomer Kai Ly used images from the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope taken in 2003 to identify a previously undiscovered Satellite orbiting Jupiter, the first planetary moon discovered by an amateur astronomer. The telescope used was the 3.6 meter Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope located on Mauna Kea. Ly used an image captured in February 2003 to identify a set […] Continue reading

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Cryovolcanoes on Pluto

A recent discovery published by Nature Communications has revealed a series of ice volcanoes on the surface of Pluto. The images which lead to this discovery were captured by Nasa’s New Horizons in 2015, but it was only recently that scientists were able to identify specific peaks that they now believe are ice volcanoes, known […] Continue reading

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Kepler-186f

Kepler-186f is an extrasolar planet that was discovered on July 23, 2015. It was the first rocky planet about the size of Earth found in the habitable zone. The habitable zone is an area around a star where the temperature is good for liquid water. Oth… Continue reading

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Interstellar Travel using Warp Drives

Perhaps the most challenging obstacle between humans and interstellar travel is the distance it would take to traverse the light-years of distance to even the closest stars. The closest star to Earth, besides the Sun, is known as Proxima Centauri, at about 4.25 light-years. For reference, the fastest a human spacecraft has traveled was a […] Continue reading

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You Can’t Sit With us

The famous used to be planet kicked out by none other than Neil deGrasse Tyson is now considered a dwarf planet, ever since 2006. Pluto was reclassified because it didn’t meet the three criteria the IUA uses to define a full sized planet Criteria Must orbit a star  It must be big enough to have […] Continue reading

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Thousands of Other Planets (Post 4)

Other planets and galaxies in space have been the subject of many science fiction novels and television shows, most notably Star Trek. This week, NASA officially confirmed that 5,000 exoplanets outside of our Solar System exist. This discovery is monumental within the astronomy community, because although it has been speculated that there are millions or […] Continue reading

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Nuclear Fusion: The energy of the universe… but not the energy of the Earth?

Nuclear fusion is the fundamental source of energy generation in our universe. Stars (like our Sun) undergo nuclear fusion in their cores and emit energy in the form of heat and light. This stellar energy stands in the way of a dark, cold, lifeless universe, and provides the necessary ingredients for life on Earth. Sadly, […] Continue reading

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The Evolution of Earth’s Atmosphere

So many of Earth’s features today, from our blue sky to life itself, depend on the atmosphere surrounding the planet, but it has taken billions of years to evolve to where it is today. This post will explore the evolution and progression of Earth’s atmosphere as well as the processes that led to these changes. […] Continue reading

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Humanity’s Long-Term Future

For my third blog post, I wanted to research the future of Humanity. In about 5 billion years the Sun will run out of Hydrogen to fuse in the core, causing the sun to increase in size and become a Red Giant. It will get so large that it will swallow up Mercury, Venus, and […] Continue reading

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Why Does The Moon Look Like It Does?

In my previous blog post, I discussed the Giant Impact Hypothesis and how the Moon is thought to have been created. Now I want to talk about how the Moon came to look like it does. Just like every other…

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