Tag Archives: blog8

Could Titan hold life?

Posted on April 9, 2014 by kaswat

A joint mission with the NASA and ESA called Titan Saturn System Mission (TSSM) will explore Titan’s surface more in depth. It will allow us to see if the liquid-water features have allowed life to form on Titan. If there were life, it would obviously have to be adapted to the -180⁰C surface temperature and… Continue reading →

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Planetary System

Posted on April 9, 2014 by mariah0407

It amazes me how small Earth is.  I find it difficult to comprehend even the size of Earth alone.  Flying to other continents can take days.  Then I look at a scale model like the one below and I realize how small we are in comparison to the rest of the planets.  Jupiter and Saturn are […] Continue reading →

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A TITANIC COLLISION…but not really

Posted on April 9, 2014 by Asad Pabani

Collision: col·li·sion (kəˈliZHən) – noun: an instance of one moving object or person striking violently against another. Now imagine the outcome of a collision between Andromeda and the Milky Way which, according to the dictionary definition, should be a violent impact between two massive galaxies with millions of stars hurtling towards each other 2000 times faster than a […] Continue reading →

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Schwarzschild Radii and You

Posted on April 9, 2014 by zkorman

So what is a Schwarzschild radius? And is it a concept that is dangerous for us? First of all, the second question is silly: nearly every concept in astronomy and/or physics has implications or applications that are dangerous to us. So we’ll ignore that one. Second of all, the Schwarzschild radius is a property of a given … Continue reading Schwarzschild Radii and You → Continue reading →

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Almost Hit by a Meteorite

Posted on April 8, 2014 by Chad F

In the video above, a skydiver was almost hit by a meteorite falling through Earth’s atmosphere.  There is only one person in recorded history, Ann Hodges from Alabama in 1954, to ever be hit by a meteorite and that was off of a bounce.  With all of the people that have lived throughout human history, you have a better chance of […] Continue reading →

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Saturn’s Rings

Posted on April 8, 2014 by katiew

In the outer solar system, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all have rings, but Saturn’s are by far the largest and most spectacular. Galileo was the first to discover them in 1610, but for years they remained a mystery and much is still unknown about them. In the 1980s, the Voyager missions got a closer […] Continue reading →

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Astronomy Jargon

Posted on April 8, 2014 by eschellhase

Some words I like. Here are some words I’ve encountered in astronomy I had not known elsewhere. Barycenter–The point of the center of mass between two or more bodies. Lagrangian points–Zones around the sun where an object placed there will orbit the sun relative the the Earth’s orbital progression. “Dwarf Planet”–The International Astronomical Union always […] Continue reading →

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80% of the Universe That We Can’t See

Posted on April 8, 2014 by joshkphilips

Image Source Over the past couple of centuries, we have learned a great deal about our Universe. However, the more we seem to learn about the cosmos, the more we realize that we do not understand. When Jan Oort and Fritz Zwicky first hypothesized the existence of dark matter in our Universe, a breakthrough in […] Continue reading →

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Wobbling Stars

Posted on April 7, 2014 by bsturge93

Most people would be surprised to know that every star in the sky is not a “stationary” center of their solar systems. Of course, the entire solar system is flying through space, orbiting the center of its galaxy. But many would look at the Sun and say that relative to the rest of the Solar … Continue reading Wobbling Stars → Continue reading →

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Is Pluto a planet?

Posted on April 7, 2014 by joshkip

A few weeks ago, I was discussing my astronomy class with a friend, when he interrupted to tell me his summation of the subject: “Spoiler Alert,” he told me. “Pluto isn’t a planet after all.” It wasn’t as thrilling as the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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