Space and astronomy news
Sometimes it’s good to take a break from mind-stretching cosmology models, quantum entanglements or events at 10-23 seconds after the big bang and get back to some astronomy basics. For example, the vexing issue of the potato radius. At the recent 2010 Australian Space Science Conference, it was proposed by Lineweaver and Norman that all …
Continue reading “Astronomy Without A Telescope – One Potato, Two Potato”
[/caption] Using their backyard telescope, today? No; however, this image of three exoplanets required just 1.5 meters (diameter; 60 inches) of a telescope mirror, not vastly larger than the biggest backyard ‘scope. These particular exoplanets orbit the star HR 8799, and have been imaged directly before, by one of the 10-meter (33-foot) Keck telescopes and …
Continue reading “Could An Amateur Astronomer Snap a Picture of an Exoplanet?”
[/caption] Big planet or companion brown dwarf? Using the Hubble Space Telescope and the Gemini Observatory, astronomers have discovered an unusual object orbiting a brown dwarf, and its discovery could fuel additional debate about what exactly constitutes a planet. The object circles a nearby brown dwarf in the Taurus star-forming region with an orbit approximately …
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[/caption]Most of the Earth surface, about 70%, is covered with water. The remaining 30% is made up of the seven continental landmasses. Underneath the water that fills the oceans, and the dirt and plants that cover the continents, the Earth’s surface layer is made of rock. This outer layer formed a hard, rocky crust as …
[/caption] ESA released new images of Mars’ moon Phobos, taken during the Mars Express March 7, 2010 flyby, showing the rocky moon in exquisite detail and also in 3-D. Mars Express orbits the Red Planet in a highly elliptical, polar orbit that brings it close to Phobos every five months, and it is the only …
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Matryoshka dolls are a popular novelty for tourists going to Russia to bring home for their children. These dolls, which are hollow wooden bowling pin-shaped representations of a Russian woman (or babushka), are nested inside of each other, each doll smaller than the one that encases it. In a perfect model of planetary matryoshka dolls, …
Jupiter probably does not have a solid core. Jupiter’s core contains some rock and hydrogen metals. Scientists can not be 100 percent certain if deep within the planet there is a solid core or not, but based on gravitational measurements compared with Earth’s, the best educated guesses possible based on those measurements say there is …
This artist’s conception shows the newly discovered super-Earth GJ 1214b, which orbits a red dwarf star 40 light-years from our Earth. Credit: Credit: David A. Aguilar, CfA More exoplanets this week! Today astronomers announced the discovery of so called super-Earth around a nearby, low-mass star, GJ1214. The newly discovered planet has a mass about six …
Continue reading “Astronomers Find Super-Earth With An Atmosphere”
[/caption] One of the legacies of the Apollo program is the rare lunar samples it returned. These samples (along with meteorites that originated from the moon and even one from Mars) can be radiometrically dated, and together they paint a picture a cataclysmic time in the history of our solar system. Over a period of …
[/caption] The Earth’s mass is 5.9736 x 1024 kg. That’s a big number, so let’s write it out in full: 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg. You could also say the Earth’s mass is 5.9 sextillion tonnes. Phew, that’s a lot of mass. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but the Earth has a fraction of the …