Tag Archives: Solar System

Black Holes!

Black holes are regions of spacetime where gravity is so strong that nothing can escape. I have always found the idea of black holes because they can be hard to understand or conceptualize. A weird fact about black holes is how hot they are on the outside and how incredibly freezing they are on the […] Continue reading

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The Himalayas of Venus

The Himalayas might be considered the most impressive mountain range on Earth, but what about other geological formations on planets around the solar system? Most famously, Olympus Mons is the tallest mountain in the solar system, located on Mars at 21229 meters, and about 2.5 times the size of Mount Everest. Alternatively, while not as […] Continue reading

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Born from the Stars

It may be hard to believe, but in all technicality, everything in the solar system, including humans, are born from star dust. Let’s start at the beginning, at the big bang. The matter released from the big bang made up the first generation of stars, only containing the elements hydrogen and helium. Eventually, when the …

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The Apollo Missions: Fun Facts

Almost everyone has heard about the apollo missions to space and the valuable information obtained about our solar system. Here are some interesting facts about the apollo program: One crazy statistic is that the Saturn V launch vehicle was taller than the Statue of Liberty. This rocket was a huge engineering feat, reaching 316 feet […] Continue reading

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What makes the Tides happen?

This blog will be referencing information sourced from the Tides: Crash Course Astronomy #8 video. We know that mass has gravity, and more mass had more gravity. This raises the question, why does the moon have a greater impact on the Earth’s tides than the Sun, even though the Sun has such a greater gravitational …

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How Stonehenge is Astronomical

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument that is basically a ring of stones. Located in Salisbury, England, tourists come everyday to see the beautiful mystery. There are many legends and myths about how Stonehenge was created. According to different theories it could have been built by wizards, Danes or it was ruins from Roman Temples. Although […] Continue reading

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Tides on Titan

As we learned in class, different celestial bodies can have varying tidal forces depending on their masses in relation to the object of interest. This phenomenon was mainly explored by the tidal forces on the Earth by the Moon and the Sun. In order to calculate the gravitational forces between two objects, we utilized the […] Continue reading

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My first eclipse

The solar eclipse of May 20, 2012 is the most spectacular astronomical event I have ever personally experienced. The event was an annular eclipse with the moon only blocking out the center of the sun, resulting in a ring of light around the dark moon. The eclipse occurred less than 48 hours after apogee, so […] Continue reading

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Moon Phases!

To start off, I am going to be focusing on our own Earth’s Moon. As we all know, the Moon goes through phases as it orbits the planet. It’s current phase is dependent on where it is in the sky…

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Blog 1 – Initial Review of SkyView Lite

SkyView Lite is an iPhone application that allows the user to point their phone at different parts of the sky and see an overlay of constellations in the direction that they point. I downloaded the app and tried it out. This post is going to be about my experience using the app. The app works […] Continue reading

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