Tag Archives: blog5

The Future of Exoplanet Analysis

Posted on April 16, 2022 by Brian

The search for extrasolar planets and alien life is a fascinating research focus that sits at the intersection of astronomy, physics, planetary science, and biology. As we have discussed in class, discovering exoplanets is a very difficult task, but we have discovered roughly 5,000 exoplanets to date and are making significant progress in that area.Continue reading “The Future of Exoplanet Analysis” Continue reading →

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Pluto – A Planetary Anomoly

Posted on April 16, 2022 by parallaxHubble

When the spacecraft New Horizons first flew past Pluto in 2015, astronomers didn’t really have too much of an idea of what to expect. Pluto had only been discovered about 85 years earlier (source) on February 18th, 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. Due to Pluto’s immense distance, small size,Continue reading “Pluto – A Planetary Anomoly” Continue reading →

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Pluto: dwarfPLANET

Posted on April 16, 2022 by joubertklopper

Growing up with Pluto being known as the ninth planet, I’m interested in Pluto, its uniqueness and why it was revoked of the prestigious planetary title. The discovery of other planetary objects in the outer solar system today known as dwarf planets made the switch of Pluto’s classification from a planet to a dwarf planet. […] Continue reading →

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486958 Arrokoth | blog V

Posted on April 15, 2022 by clviggiano

486958 Arrokoth claimed its rank as a notable solar body after the New Horizons flyby in early 2019, a mission executed in conjunction with the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and Southwest Research Institute. This object, often tagged with its informal name of Ultima Thule, is Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) located on the outskirts of the […] Continue reading →

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My Favourite Planet in Solar System — Uranus

Posted on April 15, 2022 by sissichen17

Uranus was my favorite planet in the solar system. From childhood, I was first attracted by its fabulous faint blue color. After learning astronomy, I recognized more fascinating facts about this mysterious planet which made me love it more! Uranus was famous for its large tilting angle, and this was probably due to a collision […] Continue reading →

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Is There a Planet Nine?

Posted on April 15, 2022 by timmyshaheen

For centuries, humans have been observing the stars and the planets searching to understand more about the sky. As our technology becomes more sophisticated, so do the problems that we try and solve. Currently, there is a cluster of extreme trans-Neptunian objects with unexplained phenomena in their orbits. These objects all complete the closest part […] Continue reading →

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Ceres

Posted on April 12, 2022 by Emily Bertram

The most famous dwarf planet is Pluto but not many people know about Ceres. Ceres is located between Mars and Jupiter in the asteroid belt. There are many interesting facts surrounding this dwarf planet such as: it was the first asteroid to be discovered in 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi. Piazzi was an Italian astronomer and […] Continue reading →

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Pluto: from planet to dwarf planet

Posted on April 11, 2022 by Lindsey

Pluto is one of the six dwarf planets that we have currently identified in our solar system, and it was the first object discovered in the Kuiper belt. It was discovered in 1930 and was initially declared to be the ninth planet. However, when other objects were discovered in the Kuiper belt (like the dwarf […] Continue reading →

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Mini Saturn Orbiting Saturn?

Posted on April 9, 2022 by josephmaquino9

Perhaps the moon in Figure 1 looks like a miniature version of Saturn. Maybe even an empanada. Saturn’s innermost moon Pan was first identified in 1990 in a photograph captured by the Voyager 2 spacecraft (which flew in 1981). Pan has an average diameter of 17.6 miles and orbits about 83,000 miles apart from Saturn. […] Continue reading →

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Life Among the Rings

Posted on April 7, 2022 by isaiandrade01

Perhaps one of the best chances of finding life on another world in our solar system, one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, is a world of great interest. Although considerably smaller than our own Moon, Enceladus is a small world composed of a top layer of ice, which is on average 20 km thick across the […] Continue reading →

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