astro201

Europa Report

Posted on by conorastr201

europa

Image pulled from a movie review

This past weekend, I watched a movie on Netflix called Europa Report. The movie was a detailed the gripping journey of six people on their trip Europa with the sole mission of confirming or denying the existence of life on Jupiter’s moon Europa. Not only was this a great, well done film, but it also touched on a lot of the points we talked about in class and read about in chapter 24 of our book. Europa was specifically chosen because of the liquid oceans underneath its icy exterior, they search for microbes in the water being pushed up through cracks, they sent probes don through the ice, the list goes on. I will admit, there may have been a few inaccuracies an inconsistencies throughout the picture, but overall it was far more accurate than your typical Hollywood sci-fi movie.

Studying the Effects of Space Travel on the Human Body

Posted on by conorastr201

Mark and Scott Kelly

Mark and Scott Kelly

NASA is conducting an experiment to determine the effects of living in space on the human body. Such studies have been done before, but this one is unprecedented in the length of time the subject will spend in space (a full 365 days) and in that the participants are identical twins.

One astronaut named Scott Kelly has agreed to live in the International Space Station for a full year while his identical twin brother, Mark Kelly, has agreed to take part from  the ground. Both brothers will undergo physical and psychological testing before and after Scott’s trip, and both will follow similar diets. Because the brothers share the same DNA, any changes that occur between them will likely have been caused by their environment.

This study is ground breaking as it will allow scientists to find ways to mitigate any problems that come with living in space for any future space trips, and may pave the way to one day travel to Mars, Venus, or even other systems entirely.

Salt Water Oceans Thought to be on Ganymede

Posted on by conorastr201

Ganymede

Ganymede

Astronomers have recently determined that Jupiter’s largest moon Ganymede likely has an ocean of salt water underneath its icy, inhospitable crust. Ganymede is the only moon in our solar system that has a functioning magnetic field; because of this it is also the only one to have auroras. Scientists in Cologne studied these auroras over a period of time in the hopes that they could learn something about the icy moon’s interior.

Ganymede is embedded within Jupiter’s magnetic field as well, which causes some interesting phenomenon. For example, it was determined that Ganymede must have a salt water interior that was interacting with Jupiter’s magnetic field. How did they determine this? By watching the auroras wobble of course! Scientists observed a wobble in Ganymede’s aurora of only a couple degrees, far off from what would be expected, and this result was used to determine Ganymede’s interior composition.

NASA’s Dawn Spacecraft Orbits Ceres

Posted on by conorastr201

Photo taken from Dawn

Photo taken from Dawn

That’s no moon! Just this past week, the Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. The dward planet is one of the oldest planetary object left in our solar system, and as such could provide valuable information about the early formation of the planets; it is an in-between step, a half-way formed planet that began it’s life just like Earth. Dawn will not orbit around to the bright side of Ceres until mid April, at which point we can expect to receive hundreds of high resolution images.

The Continual Search for Planets

Posted on by conorastr201

The discovery of planets throughout the ages

The discovery of planets throughout the ages

The discovery of new life-harboring planets has been a hot topic in the last century, but there has always been a limitation: we couldn’t see other planets. However, observational technologies and techniques have progressed to the point where we may be able to find more Earth-like planets within a few short years.

The main problems with discovering so called exo-planets is that they are not luminous, they don’t shine. Because of this, we need to indirectly detect them by observing the stars around which they orbit. As the planets orbit their respective stars, they briefly block some of the light from reaching us; however, that only works when the systems are exactly in-line with ours, which rules out the vast majority of systems.

There is one other way, though, which involves measuring the “wobble” in the star as the planets orbit. As the planet circles, it exerts a gravitational force on the star, causing it to wobble ever so slightly. This has allowed us to find planets that have a radius equivalent to the diameter of our Earth, but hopefully that size will shrink as we continue to develop new and more precise observational technologies.

The Scale of Atoms and Modern Processors

Posted on by conorastr201

Artist's Depiction of a Lithium Atom

Artist’s Depiction of a Lithium Atom

Everyone knows that atoms are small, but exactly how small is small? This new video by Kurz Gesagt explores this question, and the sheer scale is mind boggling to try to imagine.

Among the analogies used is that of filling rooms with rice grains; if the end of your finger was the size of the room, and you filled that room with rice, and then you took one of those rice grains, made it the size of a room, and filled it with rice, and then you took the space in-between and filled it with sand, you’d have atoms! I kept expecting him to stop, but the scaling down goes on and on to a size that is truly unimaginable.

However, as technology increases, we continue to work more and more with things on this kind of scale. The processor of a modern computer has billions of transistors on a single chip barely larger than a fingernail. The transistors have become so small that they are now about twenty-two nanometers across, or a mere fifty atoms. Even more than this, the transistors are now able to process information at an astonishing rate of one trillion instructions a second. It’s hard to imagine technology advancing further than it has already, but I am sure we will find a way.

Historical Astronomers in Context

Posted on by conorastr201

Johannes Kepler is remembered mostly for his discovery that the orbits of stellar objects are elliptical, as well as for his laws of motion, which he did using the observations gathered by Tycho Brahe. His work helped merge the ideas of physics and astronomy together. Additionally, he was prominent in the field of optics and developed a new version of the refracting telescope.

1607 – The first English colony is established on the North American mainland at Jamestown, Virginia. This marks the beginning of what would become the United States of America.

1582 – Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian calendar. This calendar is still the international standard used today, which is pretty impressive considering it is over 400 years old.

There was a lot that went on during the early 1600s! Two incredibly important figures of astronomy were working simultaneously, one of the most famous books was being published, America was being settled, England was in turmoil with the execution of Mary Queen of Scots, Protestantism was grabbing hold, Francis Drake was circumnavigating the globe, the list goes on. They make up some of Man’s greatest accomplishments, and they were all happening concurrently, and they all still affect us to this day.

The New Andromeda Photo

Posted on by conorastr201

Earlier this month, scientists from NASA and the ESA took a massive photograph of the Andromeda galaxy. The picture contains over a billion pixels and takes up over 40GB of hard drive space. Watching the video provided in the source is absolutely mind boggling; it gets very up close and personal, yet each pixel of the image contains, on average, 667 stars. And we have to remember, the Andromeda galaxy is but one of many. There are billions of galaxies in our universe, each with a trillion stars. The vastness of space is truly mind-boggling.

It seems inevitable that we will some day explore this vastness, but what will we find out there? New elements? Systems and objects that break our current understanding of physics? Life? The possibilities are endless, and they are all out there waiting for us.

Source: http://www.iflscience.com/space/take-time-appreciate-size-universe

The Search for Habitable Exoplanets

Posted on by conorastr201

Earlier this month, the Kepler space telescope spotted three planets of Earth-like size orbiting in a nearby star’s “habitable zone,” or the area around the star in which water could exist in liquid form on a planet’s surface. However, the planets they found, along with the other 26 Earth-like exoplanets found thus far, do not perfectly mimic our own planet and have been deemed uninviting to life as we know it.

After searching thousands of systems and discovering close to 2,000 planets outside our solar system, none look promising of supporting human life should we ever need to find a new home, which begs the question: is our system unique? Given the infiniteness of space it seems unlikely, but we have yet to prove that true. Perhaps the conditions that brought about our home, with days just long enough to warm our surface, but not so long that our ground is cooked, and a million other chance occurrences, really do make us one of a kind.

Source: http://www.iflscience.com/nearby-star-has-three-planets-slightly-larger-earth-one-habitable-zone