Category Archives: Class

You Take the Moon and It Blocks the Sun

An eclipse occurs whenever a celestial body passes in front of or behind another in a way that whoever is on the surface can notice such an obstruction. Lunar eclipses occur on average twice a year when the moon moves into the Earth’s shadow during the full moon phase, which happens to be the only […] Continue reading

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The Solar Eclipse

Like many of you I was very excited to see the solar eclipse today. I thought about driving to see totality, but ended up choosing against it as I figured it would be too much, and I had a quiz the morning of. So, I decided to stick around campus and watch it from here. […] Continue reading

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The Most Famous Comet

The Bayeux tapestry For my blog post I wanted to focus on comets. I figured I would do some research on the only comet I knew by name before taking astronomy, Halley’s Comet. Halley is the most famous of its kind and its presence in our history goes back more than 1000 years. Halley was […] Continue reading

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Ancient History of Eclipses

Hello all! In honor of the partial solar eclipse we got to briefly see in Nashville on Monday, I wanted to explore some of the interesting history of eclipses. The first known recording of an eclipse was from November 30th in 3340 BCE in Ireland. This discovery was based on “overlapping circular rock carvings, called […] Continue reading

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Blog 6: The Solar Eclipse Today

This is my picture of the solar eclipse from today. The fact that eclipses even happen is one of the craziest coincidences, as the difference in relative size of the Moon and the Sun is the same percentage-wise, meaning that when the Moon is exactly in front of the Sun, it completely blocks it. There […] Continue reading

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Blog 5: The Controversy Behind Pluto’s Planethood

Pluto orbits our Sun far out past Neptune, and has been the source of controversy as we have learned more about it. The argument centers around whether this celestial object should be defined as a planet or a dwarf planet. This leads to an even bigger question: what separates a dwarf planet from a planet? […] Continue reading

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The Eclipse Almost Stole My Sight

by Marca On Monday, April 8, 2024, North America witnessed a solar eclipse, and it almost blinded me. But before I talk about that, what is a solar eclipse? A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon moves between the Sun and the Earth, which blocks the Sun totally or partially and casts a shadow on […] Continue reading

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nASA’s OSIRIS-REx Mission

The sample return capsule from the OSIRIS-REx mission OSIRIS-REx was NASA’s mission to collect a sample from the asteroid Bennu. In September 2023, OSIRIS-REx returned to Earth to drop off material from Bennu.  OSIRIS-REx continued on a new mission, OSIRIS-APEX. The objective of the new mission is to study Apophis, which the spacecraft will reach […] Continue reading

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Solar Eclipse

Being in Nashville, I saw a partial solar eclipse today. It was unfortunate that it was extremely cloudy. Hence, the solar eclipse showed up once in a couple minutes. The clouds proved to be an excellent source of shades. So much so, that the combination of the thick clouds and the eclipse glasses blocked out […] Continue reading

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bLOG 6: HOW MUCH DOES SIZE MATTER (FOR VOLCANISM and CRYOVOLCANISM)?

Even some of the smallest world in our solar system exhibit (or have exhibited) evidence of volcanism or cryovolcanism. Asteroids like Vesta, with radii of only several hundred kilometers, displays features that indicate that they once exhibited active volcanism and even separation by differentiation. Although their volcanism lasted for periods that were geologically very brief, […] Continue reading

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