Tag Archives: blog3

Solar System Formation and Coincidences

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Brian

Our solar system has many characteristics that can seem like odd coincidences. Why are all of the planets in the same orbital plane? Why are their orbits all nearly circular instead of being more eccentric? Why do they all orbit in the same direction around the Sun? The nebular theory of solar system formation, asContinue reading “Solar System Formation and Coincidences” Continue reading →

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Composition of Planets within the Solar System

Posted on March 22, 2022 by sissichen17

Different elements were occupied in different planets within the solar system. Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars were terrestrial planets made of rocks, which were composed of diverse metal elements including magnesium and aluminum. Specifically, mercury obtained a thin exosphere of oxygen, sodium, hydrogen, helium, and potassium. Venus consisted of an iron core and a carbon-dioxide […] Continue reading →

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The Cassini Spacecraft

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Quint Gfroerer

The story of the Cassini spacecraft is one of scientific discovery and self sacrifice. Cassini was launched in 1997 and spent 20 years in space, focusing on the planet Saturn, its moons, and its rings, before the spacecraft’s intentional demise in 2017. Through Cassini, we were able to land a probe on Titan, Saturn’s largest […] Continue reading →

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Theory of the Creation of the Moon

Posted on March 22, 2022 by McKenzieKing

Over the decades, there have been many hypotheses made about how our Moon was formed. There are many possibilities that we can rule out simply due to the facts that we know about the Universe. Firstly, we know that the…

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Making our Earth

Posted on March 21, 2022 by gcomartin

New findings by the AKARI space telescope, coupled with surface modeling at the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Tokyo Institute of Technology present new evidence that the asteroid matter which composes Earth was located much further out in the solar system than initially thought. Their study involved computer modeling to develop reflective spectra of hypothetical […] Continue reading →

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The Orion Nebula

Posted on March 21, 2022 by AndreaS

If you have participated in observing for class, then you have seen through a telescope the Orion Nebula. Nebulae are star-forming regions that when studied can tell us lots about how stars and solar systems come to be, and the Orion Nebula is no different. When we look at the Orion Nebula through a telescope, […] Continue reading →

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The Formation of Nebulae

Posted on March 21, 2022 by Karan Bhardwaj

In discussing how planets and stars form, one will quickly find the nebular hypothesis — an idea that stars and the planets that orbit them were formed from clouds of gas called nebulae. But how was this nebula first formed, where did it come from, and what are the different types of nebulae? A nebula […] Continue reading →

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Findings of The Cassini Spacecraft

Posted on March 21, 2022 by alexbawa

On October 15th, 1997, the rocket carrying the Cassini Spacecraft and its Huygens probe took off from Cape Canaveral. It was sent to the outer solar system to study Saturn, as well as its moons. The Huygens probe was deployed to one of these moons, Titan, recording images and data. In 2017, after running out […] Continue reading →

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Blog Post 3 Creation and Composition of the Solar System

Posted on March 21, 2022 by isaachuggins

The creation of our planet, the Earth, was achieved by the forces of gravity over millions of years, melding together different rocks into a sphere. This process, known as accretion, let the Earth grow into the size it is today, with the help of Thea, a large planet that turned into our moon. These rocks […] Continue reading →

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History of our Solar System

Posted on March 21, 2022 by jschorr21

Approx. 13.8 billion years ago, everything we know and love in the universe was formed with The Big Bang. Fast-forwarding 9.2 billion years, we can start to see the formation of our Solar System. 4.6 billion years ago, what we call the Solar System was nothing but a large cloud of debris, gas, and dust […] Continue reading →

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