Category Archives: Stars

Transiting Exoplanets: The Search for Terrestrial Worlds

Posted on April 10, 2013 by werdercj

On Monday, NASA announced a new project scheduled to launch in 2017: the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).  This project was selected after a three-year competition, and will use surveys covering 400 times as much sky as any past missions to discover transiting exoplanets.  This struck me as particularly significant having just studied methods of […] Continue reading →

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Binary (Double Star) Systems

Posted on April 10, 2013 by marknshirleyvu

If you’ve ever seen any kind of sci-fi movie, I’m sure you’ve seen an example of a binary star system.  Countless space movies (most notably Star Wars) feature an alien sky with more than one Sun.  While the effect is usually dramatized in film, these binary star systems are in fact very real. A binary […] Continue reading →

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100,000 Stars

Posted on April 9, 2013 by kevinm387

Above is a video of an awesome website, 100,000 Stars. This website is an interactive, 3D map of the closest 100,000 stars to us. The video gives a little taste, but I encourage everyone to go to the site and explore for yourselves. Zooming in on our Solar System, you encounter the Oort Cloud first, […] Continue reading →

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A Black Hole’s Diet

Posted on April 7, 2013 by wherrysg

Source Incredible! While studying a distant galaxy, astronomers noticed a bright flare of X-rays coming from another galaxy that happened to be in their field of view. Upon closer look, they discovered that it was actually a black hole ‘eating up’ what they believe to be either an extremely large planet or a smaller brown […] Continue reading →

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Nearby Star System Discovered

Posted on March 20, 2013 by werdercj

Above: an artist’s conception of the binary system On the same note of new discoveries, Kevin Luhman, a researcher in Penn State’s Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, just discovered a pair of stars that constitute the closest star system found in a century, and the third-closest star system we have ever discovered.  The binary […] Continue reading →

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Everyday is SUNday

Posted on March 17, 2013 by ndtidol

The Sun is the single most important object in our solar system. It makes up over 99% of the mass of the solar system, exerts gravitational force over the whole […] Continue reading →

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Why do we associate stars with being white?

Posted on March 14, 2013 by zoodrey

If you asked your neighbor what colors the stars in the sky are, 9/10 (with the 10th probably being an astronomer) would answer white. Why do we associate stars with being white? They actually emit all colors of the rainbow; the color emitted is based on the temperature of the star. So, you may think … Continue reading » Continue reading →

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Happy Valentine’s Day! I bought you a Star!! <3

Posted on February 20, 2013 by zoodrey

Your very own Star! Websites exist that allow you to buy a loved one a star.. often for as low as $14.95, such as this one. You even get to choose from different gift packages to satisfy all your star naming cravings. That must really be a good way to win a girl over… buy … Continue reading » Continue reading →

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Frickin’ Laser Beams

Posted on February 18, 2013 by burnspress

On July 5, 2012, the world’s largest laser fired a record shattering shot that generated more power than the entire United States does at any given moment. The laser, located in Livermore, California, is housed in a building the size of three football fields dubbed the National Ignition Facility (photo above). The NIF laser is an […] Continue reading →

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The Million Star Falsehood

Posted on January 28, 2013 by marknshirleyvu

I was only a little bit surprised when I learned recently that there were not a million stars visible in our night sky.  One million is a huge number, and as small as stars are, I never believed there was nearly enough space in our sky for one million of them to be visible.  However, […] Continue reading →

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