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Author Archives: Matthew Marcus
Beyond The Solar System (ASTR 2110)
One thing that surprised me from this course was learning how gravity rounds out and differentiates the interior layers of planets. I suppose I had never really considered how the planets in our solar system formed, and I must have assumed that denser material simply gathered first and less dense material collected on top of […] Continue reading
Posted in Aliens, Class, Science, SolarSystem
Tagged astro2110, astrobiology, blog8
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So Where Is Everybody?
As one may have gathered from reading the many, many pages of “The Cosmic Perspective,” the human race has learned a lot about the universe. We can determine the masses, chemical compositions, and orbital paths of celestial bodies. We’ve identified thousands of planetary systems in outside our own. We know how stars are born and […] Continue reading
Are There Planets Outside of Our Solar System?
The answer to this question is a resounding yes. Before the Copernican Revolution, back when many cultures still believed the Earth to be the center of the universe, the fact that these exoplanets exist would have been largely unthinkable. But today, well over 5,000 exoplanets have been discovered. When these distant bodies have eluded us […] Continue reading
Posted in Class, Exoplanets
Tagged astro2110, blog6
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All About Comets
In popular media, comets are often depicted as huge balls of fire streaking across the sky. See Sozin’s Comet from Avatar the Last Airbender as an example: It may then be surprising to learn that asteroids are small, ice-rich bodies that are completely frozen for the majority of their life cycles. Comets tend to have […] Continue reading
Posted in Class, Small SS Objects, SolarSystem
Tagged astro2110, blog5, Comets, kuiperbelt, media
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Why Two Types of Planets?
FIGURE 8.5 from The Cosmic Perspective (taken from Quizlet) When looking at a diagram of our solar system, one likely notices that there are two visually distinct categories of planets. The smaller, rocky planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars—are known as the terrestrial (Earth-like) planets, and the larger, more gaseous planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—are known […] Continue reading
Posted in Class, Jovians, SolarSystem, Terrestrials
Tagged astro2110, blog4
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The Nebula Theory
Image from Formation of the Solar System on by Sydney Garrett One of the greatest questions of our solar system is how it came to be. A theory worthy of consideration has many criteria it must be able to fulfill: it should explain the motion of our celestial bodies, the two different types of planets, […] Continue reading
Spectroscopy
Blog #2 While the role of light in our everyday lives is to make color and form visible, by studying light with spectroscopy, we can learn a surprising amount about the object that produces a certain spectrum of wavelengths. In order to understand spectroscopy, first, we must understand what light physically is. Light is composed […] Continue reading
Historical Astronomers in Context
Johannes Kepler (27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) Johannes Kepler’s most recognized contribution to astronomy are his three laws of planetary motion, published in 1609. First, planets’ orbital paths are elliptical, with the sun positioned at one focus. Second, during a planet’s orbit, equally sized sectors are swept out from the planet to the […] Continue reading
Posted in Historical
Tagged astro2110, HW3, Kepler
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The Cosmic Calendar
For me, one of the biggest challenges in studying astronomy is truly understanding the scale of space and time. When humans have walked the earth for hundreds of thousands of years, it is hard to recognize that our collective existence is a mere flash in the grand scheme of the universe’s 14-billion year life. Every […] Continue reading
Hello!
photo by Josh Rehders My name is Matthew, and I’m a student at Vanderbilt University. I love singing, and you can find a video of a Barbershop Harmony Performance I was in at the hyperlink below at 19:42. Continue reading