Tag Archives: blog8

Solar Sails

Posted on April 10, 2016 by chasejaeger

Currently, we do not have the technology to travel to even the closest stars. The fastest spacecraft humans have ever built is the Voyager 1, which is currently traveling at roughly 17 km/s. However, even at these speeds it would take the Voyager I nearly 70,000 years to get to the nearest star system, Alpha […] Continue reading →

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Voyager Golden Record – Reading the Instructions

Posted on April 10, 2016 by podolakvandysolarsystem

On my last unrestricted blog post, I began a series of posts on my favorite topic in astronomy: The Voyager Golden Record. If you missed that blog post you can check it out here. Basically, the golden record is a message in a bottle being cast into the cosmic ocean. It will go very far […] Continue reading →

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Behemoth black hole found in an unlikely place

Posted on April 10, 2016 by segalastronomyblog

Watch out, Earth! Scientists have discovered a massive black hole in our universe, one that weighs the equivalent of 17 billions suns! While the size of this black hole is very significant, something that makes it even more unique is it’s location in our universe. According to astronomers, black holes this size are almost always […] Continue reading →

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The Lonely Giant – NGC 1600

Posted on April 10, 2016 by briannagalgano

Astronomers have discovered an enormously massive galaxy, NGC 1600, 209 light years away. NGC 1600 is an elliptical galaxy that is 17,000,000,000 billion solar masses. There are many massive black holes in the Universe (Source). In fact, there is a black hole at the center of every galaxy. It is thought that perhaps black holes […] Continue reading →

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Something like acid rain, but a lot worse

Posted on April 10, 2016 by philhawkins221

captain’s blog, Stardate 69741.0 So we’re spending a lot of time talking about moons lately. If I weren’t so well-educated in the astronomy of our Solar System I would maybe think: “you’re just learning about moons, isn’t that kind of boring?” But I AM so well-educated in the astronomy of our Solar System and know […] Continue reading →

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Fun Facts about Titan

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Alex Pratte

Out of all the moons in our solar system, my favorite one would have to be Titan. Titan is the second largest moon in our solar system, second only to that fat piece of lard Ganymede. However, Titan, has something that Ganymede doesn’t and that is an “earth like cycle of liquids flowing across its […] Continue reading →

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Sleipnir Fossa, Pluto’s “Giant Spider” Fracture

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Chloe

Pluto may have had its planet status revoked, but astronomers are still studying its surface through images captured by the NASA New Horizon’s spacecraft. In the last week, images and information about one of Pluto’s most recently discovered features was released.   Sleipnir Fossa and related fractures in an image captured by New Horizons on 14 July […] Continue reading →

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Leonids

Posted on April 10, 2016 by siyuan2016

image source The Leonids is a meteor shower associated with the comet Tempel-Tuttle. It gets its name from the location of its apparent radiant in the constellation Leo and has been famous for its most spectacular meteor storms since its identification in 1833. Since comet Tempel-Tuttle is a periodic comet with an orbital period of […] Continue reading →

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What’s in a Name?

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Gabi Grys

The Hubble telescopes famous successor was not always called the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The telescope, initially dubbed the Next Generation Space Telescope, was rechristened in 2002 to pay homage to the celebrated James Webb, NASA’s second administrator. Webb ran NASA from 1961-1968, a time when the emergent agency was still trying to define […] Continue reading →

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Carl Sa(vior)gan

Posted on April 10, 2016 by evinske

We read about them in our textbooks. They’re the giants with discoveries that make our understandings of moon phases and seasonal changes seem minuscule and insignificant. We stand on their shoulders when we learn about atmospheric conditions on different planets. We hold their hands while launching expensive equipment into the hardly-known (space). We sometimes name this […] Continue reading →

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