Tag Archives: Comets

Comets?! ☄️

Posted on April 3, 2017 by mariabulanova

Everyone got some basic knowledge about planets, stars, and asteroids at school, but not many people actually know much about comets. How are these things formed? Why do they have tails? How big are they? Stay with me if you want to find out. 🙂 Our entire Solar System was created by the collapse of […] Continue reading →

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Asteroids: Death, or Life?

Posted on April 10, 2016 by astr2110geoffren

Just hitching a ride Most people don’t think of asteroids as the bringer of life to Earth. Actually, for many, it’s the exact opposite. When someone says asteroids many people automatically think about mass extinctions, specifically the extinction of the dinosaurs (which was caused by a large asteroid). However, there is a theory called panspermia which […] Continue reading →

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Are We Overdue for a Mass Extinction?

Posted on April 10, 2016 by mattsastronomyblog

People have argued about if and when the human race will die out on earth.  We have essentially taken ourselves out of the food chain, meaning that we won’t be hunted to extinction.  We have also made great strides in medicine making it unlikely that we will die out from disease.  It may seem improbable […] Continue reading →

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Comets and stuff

Posted on April 10, 2016 by Alex Pratte

For blog 7 I’ve decided to write about comets. Comets, according to space.com is “an icy body that releases gas or dust”(space.com) Astronomers believe that comets are leftovers of the gas, dust, ice, and rocks that originally formed our solar system. It is believed that comets carried some of the water and organic molecules that […] Continue reading →

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The Stardust Mission

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Chloe

Missions that deliberately bring back extraterrestrial material to Earth are rare. The NASA Stardust, a probe that launched in  1999, sought to collect dust samples from the comet Wild 2’s tail. Prior to the mission, experts believed that the dust in comets’ tails would be pre-solar particles. Instead, what they found from the particles retrieved […] Continue reading →

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Blog Post #7: Comets Can Be Artists Too

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Elizabeth D.

bbc.com A new study shows that Mercury may have been “painted” black by passing comets. In class, we have learned to compare …

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Colliding with Jupiter

Posted on April 5, 2015 by willymanng

The Shoemaker–Levy 9 collision with Jupiter was the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision of Solar System objects. Shoemaker–Levy 9 disintegrated in to 21 fragments during a close encounter with Jupiter in July 1992 and finally collided with Jupiter two years later in July 1994. The remarkable collision lasted a week and left large, … Continue reading Colliding with Jupiter → Continue reading →

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Colliding with Jupiter

Posted on April 5, 2015 by willymanng

The Shoemaker–Levy 9 collision with Jupiter was the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision of Solar System objects. Shoemaker–Levy 9 disintegrated in to 21 fragments during a close encounter with Jupiter in July 1992 and finally collided with Jupiter two years later in July 1994. The remarkable collision lasted a week and left large, … Continue reading Colliding with Jupiter → Continue reading →

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The Mystery of the Mass Extinction

Posted on April 5, 2015 by oliviasn

Before reading the section in Chapter 12 of the textbook on cosmic collisions (Section 12.4), I had not realized that there exists some controversy as to whether or not an impact killed the dinosaurs. I had always been taught that an asteroid hitting the Earth resulted in the mass extinction and had never considered that […] Continue reading →

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Mercurial Art

Posted on March 31, 2015 by Marissa LePore

“It appears that Mercury may well be a painted planet,” said Prof Peter Schultz, a co-author from Brown University. Mercury’s dull surface has long been a point of perplexion in the field of planetary geology. Scientists have thought that there must be a mystery darkening agent contributing to the planet’s low reflectance. A new study has given […] Continue reading →

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