Tag: Star

Interesting Astronomy & Astrophysics news from the week of 10/18/2020

Next week’s night sky: This week, Mars will be extraordinarily easy to stop. From October 28-30, about an hour after sunset, simply locate the moon. The reddish dot above it will be Mars! Halloween is a full moon! This is the perfect time to look at the moon for a great socially distanced holiday. Are non-spherical planets possible? Some of the planetary systems researchers have found experience extreme conditions. These large, gassy planets orbiting very close to their stars are called hot Jupiters. One of these hot […]

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Interesting Astronomy & Astrophysics news from the week of 10/11/2020

Next week’s night sky: On Wednesday, the Orionids Meteor Shower peaks! The remnants of Halley’s comet created this shower. The best time to watch these meteors is between midnight and dawn. Then, shower will reach rates of 10-20 meteors per hour. To find the shower, look to the southwest. Friday is the first quarter moon. This is the best time to see the lunar terrain, as the low-angled sunlight dramatically lights the lunar surface.. Betelgeuse may not be so far away New research suggests the red supergiant […]

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Interesting Astronomy & Astrophysics news from the week of 9/20/2020

Next week’s night sky: On Tuesday, September 9, Saturn will appear to stand still. Usually, planets appear to move across the night sky and change places in reference to other stars. However, on this day, Saturn will move with the stars. This will make the planet a lot easier to find! Just look for the bright planet in the southern sky, then remember the pattern the stars make around it. Anytime during the night, you will be able to find that pattern and find Saturn!October 1 is […]

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Interesting Astronomy & Astrophysics news from the week of 9/13/2020

Next week’s night sky: Wednesday marks the first quarter moon. Jupiter and Saturn will be to the right of the moon, seemingly in a line pointed at the moon. On Sunday, the golden handle appears on the moon. The “Golden Handle” effect is produced by the way the slanted sunlight lights up the prominent mountains of the moon. Best seen through some sort of magnification, the golden handle will appear as a small line trailing from the light side of the moon to the dark side. A […]

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Interesting Astronomy & Astrophysics news from the week of 9/6/2020

Next week’s night sky: On Monday, September 14, an extremely rare double transit of Jupiter will happen. What makes this transit special is that not only are there two transits happening at once, the great red spot will also be visible! To find Jupiter, go to stellarium-web.org.  Thursday is the new moon. This is a great time to go stargazing because the moon doesn’t blot out any stars. The butterfly nebula VLT captured a new image of the butterfly nebula!. But this cosmic bubble of gas, isn’t […]

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Interesting Astronomy & Astrophysics news from the week of 8/30/2020

Next week’s night sky: Wednesday marks the end of Mars’s forward retrograde motion. If you train a camera on Mars all night, you will notice that it stops moving forward and starts going backward! This effect happens because Mars’s orbit is slower than ours. You can observe this effect when you are neck to neck with another car on the highway, and then pull ahead. Next Thursday is a third-quarter moon. Look extremely closely at the terminator between night and day to see the fine details in […]

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Top Astronomy & Astrophysics research from the week of 8/23/2020

Next week’s night sky The moon reaches its full stage, halfway through its rotation around Earth, on Tuesday. This is a great time to look more closely at the moon! With a good set of binoculars, you should be able to make out the detail of the craters and planes of the lunar surface. On Saturday, the moon and Jupiter will be only around 1 degree apart. Just wait about half an hour after sunset, and then look for a reddish brown-object shining right near the moon. […]

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Theoretical Vs. Observational Astronomy

Astronomy is one of the oldest existing sciences, started when humans first looked at the night sky. The study of the sky is split into two main parts, observational astronomy and theoretical astronomy. Observational astronomy deals with the study of electromagnetic radiation from space. This simply means taking photos of the sky and then analyzing these photos. Theoretical astronomy uses tools of physics and chemistry to create analytical models. This branch tries to explain why things happen. How do these branches work together? The two branches complement […]

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Top Astronomy & Astrophysics research from the week of 8/9/2020

Next week’s night sky: There is an exciting planet-related event happening this week! On Saturday, August 22, there will be a rare double shadow transit over Jupiter! A shadow transit occurs when the shadow of a moon passes over a planet. Shadow transits quite regularly to Jupiter, which has a lot of moons. However, these shadow transits last only minutes, making a dual shadow transit extremely rare. This shadow transit will happen at 06:32 GMT on Saturday, August 22. The moon becomes a new moon on August […]

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Top Astronomy and Astrophysics research from the week of 7/26/2020

Next week’s night sky: On Monday, August 3rd, the moon will be a green corn full moon. This means that the moon is near the Aquarius or Capricorn stars, which always happens in August. On Thursday, August 6th, NEOWISE will pass Messier 53. This is a great photo opportunity if you have a good telescope! A destroyed cluster Scientists have recently discovered the long-lost remnants of a globular cluster ripped apart by the Milky Way! A globular cluster is a huge, spherical collection of more than a […]

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