Category Archives: SolarSystem

Hot Jupiters: Migration and Orbital Changes

Posted on April 17, 2022 by jordanekstein

Hot Jupiters are gas giants that have orbital periods that are very close to their stars; often less than 10 days. Usually this means they are less than 0.1AU away from their stars which is one tenth the distance between earth and the sun. While scientists originally did not think giant planets could exist this […] Continue reading →

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Enceladus: Alien Life in Our Own Solar System?

Posted on April 17, 2022 by Quint Gfroerer

Enceladus is an icy moon of Saturn, and is fairly small (or medium-sized, for a moon) with a diameter of about 500 km. For reference, the Moon has a diameter of about 3,475 km. Despite its size, however, Enceladus has been rated as among the most probable sources of life in our own solar system […] Continue reading →

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Blog Post 5: Comets and their Tails

Posted on April 17, 2022 by isaachuggins

Comets are large balls of dust, rock, and ice that travel across our solar system and other solar systems. They are large like asteroids, around 10 km in diameter in our solar system. The largest one in our Solar System is Bernardinelli-Bernstein, a massive body about 85 miles in diameter. These objects can approach near […] Continue reading →

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Possibility of Life on Europa

Posted on April 16, 2022 by Johann West

Picture from European Space Agency As of now scientists believe there are three requirements for a planet to develop and sustain life. Liquid water, the appropriate chemical elements, and an energy source. Europa has more than enough water, as it is believed that below the roughly 15 miles of solid ice, lies twice as much …

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Pluto: dwarfPLANET

Posted on April 16, 2022 by joubertklopper

Growing up with Pluto being known as the ninth planet, I’m interested in Pluto, its uniqueness and why it was revoked of the prestigious planetary title. The discovery of other planetary objects in the outer solar system today known as dwarf planets made the switch of Pluto’s classification from a planet to a dwarf planet. […] Continue reading →

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Mini Saturn Orbiting Saturn?

Posted on April 9, 2022 by josephmaquino9

Perhaps the moon in Figure 1 looks like a miniature version of Saturn. Maybe even an empanada. Saturn’s innermost moon Pan was first identified in 1990 in a photograph captured by the Voyager 2 spacecraft (which flew in 1981). Pan has an average diameter of 17.6 miles and orbits about 83,000 miles apart from Saturn. […] Continue reading →

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Amateur Astronomer Discovers Jupiter’s 80th Moon

Posted on April 7, 2022 by gcomartin

Amateur Astronomer Kai Ly used images from the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope taken in 2003 to identify a previously undiscovered Satellite orbiting Jupiter, the first planetary moon discovered by an amateur astronomer. The telescope used was the 3.6 meter Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope located on Mauna Kea. Ly used an image captured in February 2003 to identify a set […] Continue reading →

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Humanity’s Long-Term Future

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Jack Walton

For my third blog post, I wanted to research the future of Humanity. In about 5 billion years the Sun will run out of Hydrogen to fuse in the core, causing the sun to increase in size and become a Red Giant. It will get so large that it will swallow up Mercury, Venus, and […] Continue reading →

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Why Does The Moon Look Like It Does?

Posted on March 22, 2022 by McKenzieKing

In my previous blog post, I discussed the Giant Impact Hypothesis and how the Moon is thought to have been created. Now I want to talk about how the Moon came to look like it does. Just like every other…

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Blog #4: Coronal Mass Ejections

Posted on March 22, 2022 by nadiamcglynn

Coronal Mass Ejections are ejections of solar wind and plasma from our Sun’s corona. The blast from a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME), carries about a billion tons of material away from the sun at speeds ranging from 250 km/s to almost 3000 km/s. (NOAA) If they are directed toward Earth when they are ejected from […] Continue reading →

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