Category Archives: Stars

Stellarium

Posted on January 27, 2014 by Leigh

I found the program Stellarium to be incredibly interesting and also very informative. The benefit of Stellarium is that it creates a visual and interactive representative of what can only be demonstrated through words and images in the textbook. Because … Continue reading → Continue reading →

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Thinking and Observing

Posted on January 27, 2014 by paanvaannd

I think it’s fun to simply look up at the stars sometimes and think about what might be out there. There’s so much we don’t yet know, so much to be discovered. We thought we had conquered the final frontier when Amundsen had finally reached the South Pole at the beginning of the 20th century, … Continue reading Thinking and Observing → Continue reading →

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Star Chart: An iPhone App Review

Posted on January 27, 2014 by kaswat

Recently, I downloaded the Star Chart App for iPhone and iPad (free in the app store). This app allows you to see the stars that are visible in your area through your phone.  The app uses GPS technology to create a 3D image on the phone of the stars, planets, and other objects in the… Continue reading →

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Spiral Galaxy

Posted on January 27, 2014 by paanvaannd

We’re used to being the big guys. When we think of something larger than us, we might think of whales or elephants, but we don’t deal with those regularly. We usually think of things like buildings, but we were the ones who built those too. Few people take the time to think about the scale […] Continue reading →

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Zodiac

Posted on January 26, 2014 by katiew

The Zodiac was created about 2,000 years ago as a way to track time. Each month, the sun appears to pass through 1 of 12 constellations that are each tied to a sign (In 1930, the International Astronomical Union, actually defined 13 constellations that the Sun passes through, but one does not have a sign). […] Continue reading →

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Is it a parallax or only one? ;)

Posted on January 25, 2014 by juliamac17

So one feature of star observation that has allowed us to figure out that we’re not the center of the universe is this really neat and slightly tricky idea of stellar parallax. It’s the phenomenon where based on our position in orbit, a star may appear to have moved based on the stars behind it. […] Continue reading →

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Star Walk: Planetarium in Your Pocket

Posted on January 25, 2014 by hollyreichert

When looking up into the sky at night, usually I can’t identify all the constellations above.  The Star Walk app knows where you are and tells you what stars and planets are above you.  You can hold it up wherever you are and it is like having a mobile planetarium.  Even in the city where […] Continue reading →

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Betelgeuse and Orion’s Belt

Posted on January 14, 2014 by paanvaannd

This is an image of Orion’s Belt (the three stars in a row on the bottom right) and the star Betelgeuse (the big bright star on the bottom left) taken by me on New Year’s Day. It is a sizable image, and a lot of star data might not be visible in this post due […] Continue reading →

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Impacts on Saturn and the Drake equation

Posted on April 29, 2013 by werdercj

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft recently observed meteors colliding with Saturn’s thin rings.  This marked the first direct evidence of small meteoroids breaking into streams of rubble and crashing into Saturn’s rings, although astronomers already expected this to be occurring regularly.  However, specific details of such impacts were merely speculation, much of which is cleared up via […] Continue reading →

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And It All Leads Up To The Now

Posted on April 21, 2013 by wherrysg

This semester we have studied everything from the creation of the universe to black holes to microscopic bacteria living on the bottom of the ocean floor. The range of topics covered in this class has helped round my view of the beginnings of time up until now and clarified many common misconceptions ranging from tides […] Continue reading →

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