The Great Titan

Posted on April 7, 2018 by adventuresinspace

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Titan Picture Source

Titan is Saturn’s Largest moon (the second largest moon in the solar system), and was discovered in 1655. Titan is almost the size of the largest moon, which is Ganymede (Jupiter’s largest moon). However, despite their similar size and relatively similar distance from the Sun, Titan has characteristics that Ganymede does not.

Titan is the only moon in the Solar System to have clouds and a relatively dense atmosphere. It also has liquids flowing on the surface, similar to the geology on Earth. From the Cassini Mission, researchers have discovered rivers and lakes on Titan’s surface of ethane and methane. They have also discovered that Titan has evaporation, condensation, and rainfall. Titan’s surface seems relatively young because it is not heavily cratered, but scientists are unsure if this is because the surface is actually young, or because the geological processes have eroded older craters.

It is very interesting that while Earth and Titan have different distances from the sun, size, temperatures, life, and composition, they still have similar geological processes.

Do you think that it is possible that Titan formed inside the asteroid belt, possibly encountered some collision with another object, exited the inner solar system, and was caught by Jupiter’s orbit?

Information on Titan- NASA

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Blog 5: Saturn’s Rings

Posted on April 7, 2018 by battismm
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Saturn’s most distinct feature is its stunning rings, visible even through basic telescopes! Thanks to flyby and orbiter missions around the planet, we have wonderful photos of Saturn and its rings. The image above shows the rings on the night side of Saturn, part of which fall into the planet’s shadows and the other part reflects sunlight onto the night side of the planet. Most of the best images of Saturn’s rings, including this one, were captured by the Cassini Mission. The banner image of this post is also from Cassini and shows the rings and planet backlit by the Sun. The reflectivity of rings is due the rings composition and density. The rings are composed of particles of ice and rock, thought to be from asteroids and comets that got obliterated when they came too close to Saturn.

 

Prometheus and Saturn's rings
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

The image above shows the thin, more distant ring called the F ring. It also shows a glimpse of Saturn’s moon, Prometheus. Prometheus is the inner orbit shepherd moon for the F ring and Pandora is the outer orbit shepherd moon. These moons keep the F ring in its orbit around Saturn, one pushing inward and the other outward balancing the ring’s location.

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Pluto

Posted on April 7, 2018 by adventuresinspace

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Picture Source- Forbes

Pluto was discovered in 1930, and at the time was considered the ninth planet of our Solar System. With further exploration, scientists realized that Pluto is actually part of a larger set of worlds that are a part of the Kuiper Belt. Pluto was then reclassified into a  dwarf planet. Pluto is 39 more times away from the Sun than Earth is and it is 1/6 the width of Earth. Pluto’s year is 258 Earth years and its’ day is 153 Earth hours.

A unique characteristic of Pluto is that its largest moon, Charon, is approximately half the size of Pluto, making this planet-moon ratio the smallest in the solar system thus far. Pluto and Charon also orbit one another, in contrast with the other 6 planet-moon systems where it is the moons that orbit the planet only. Because Charon’s orbit around Pluto also takes 153 hours, if we were on Pluto’s surface the moon would never rise or set- it would remain in the sky at all times.

Pluto’s atmosphere changes throughout Pluto’s year. Pluto has an elliptical and tilted orbit around the Sun, so when Pluto is closest to the sun the ice on its’ surface changes into gas which escapes into the atmosphere thickening it. Pluto’s atmosphere is at a much higher distance when compared to Earth’s because of the low gravitational pull Pluto has.

NASA’s Information on Pluto

Could it be possible that with new heat technology, there is a possibility that humans could travel to Pluto and inhabit the planet?

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Black Holes Discovered in Milky Way Center

Posted on April 7, 2018 by jonsastroblog

Diagram showing location of 12 newly discovered black holes. More Info Here

For many years now, the astronomy community has believed that there must be a single super-massive black hole at the center of our galaxy, but new research done by astronomers at Columbia University may have changed that belief. According to their research, data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory has shown that there are at least 12 other black holes in close proximity to Sagittarius A (the name for the giant black hole at the center of our galaxy). Extrapolating their data further, this group concluded that there might be as many as 10,000 black holes within three light years from Sagittarius A. According to Chuck Hailey, the lead author of the study, “that’s a crowd.”

Black holes are notoriously hard to find, but the ones observed by the ones studied by Hailey and his group fall into a specific category. Stellar binaries, as they’re called, occur when black holes capture stars in their gravity wells. This interaction releases massive amounts of x-rays, which allows astronomers to more easily observe them. The thought is that many of these black holes formed further away from the galactic center and “fell” closer to the center over time. When black holes interact with stars, the lose energy which causes them to fall towards Sagittarius A like how, “heavy sediment sinks faster than light sediment in water.” Over time, thousands of these black holes may have fallen closer to Sagittarius A, but it’s still very hard to know exactly how many there are. Further studies need to be conducted before we can definitively say how many black holes are in our galactic center.

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Black Holes Discovered in Milky Way Center

Posted on April 7, 2018 by jonsastroblog
Diagram showing location of 12 newly discovered black holes. More Info Here

For many years now, the astronomy community has believed that there must be a single super-massive black hole at the center of our galaxy, but new research done by astronomers at Columbia University may have changed that belief. According to their research, data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory has shown that there are at least 12 other black holes in close proximity to Sagittarius A (the name for the giant black hole at the center of our galaxy). Extrapolating their data further, this group concluded that there might be as many as 10,000 black holes within three light years from Sagittarius A. According to Chuck Hailey, the lead author of the study, “that’s a crowd.”

Black holes are notoriously hard to find, but the ones observed by the ones studied by Hailey and his group fall into a specific category. Stellar binaries, as they’re called, occur when black holes capture stars in their gravity wells. This interaction releases massive amounts of x-rays, which allows astronomers to more easily observe them. The thought is that many of these black holes formed further away from the galactic center and “fell” closer to the center over time. When black holes interact with stars, the lose energy which causes them to fall towards Sagittarius A like how, “heavy sediment sinks faster than light sediment in water.” Over time, thousands of these black holes may have fallen closer to Sagittarius A, but it’s still very hard to know exactly how many there are. Further studies need to be conducted before we can definitively say how many black holes are in our galactic center.

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The Peculiar Dwarf Planet: Haumea

Posted on April 7, 2018 by jonsastroblog

An artist’s concept of Haumea More Info Here

Haumea is a recently discovered dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt that has some very unique features. The first thing many people notice is that Haumea is shaped more like a football than a sphere. This is due to the fact that Haumea spins around its axis roughly every four hours. This extreme rotation causes it to stretch out into its elongated shape. It’s spin also allowed scientists to quickly calculate its density, because different materials would have been stretched in different ways. Scientists concluded that Haumea was entirely rock, but further observations of Haumea’s surface showed that the surface was highly reflective. As a result, we now believe that Haumea is mostly made out of rock but is also covered in a thin layer of ice.

Haumea is also interesting because it has two moons and a slight ring system, despite its small size. It’s ring system was discovered when it blocked out light from background stars in 2017. The two moons of Haumea are tiny in comparison to the dwarf planet. Hi’iaka, the larger of the two moons, is only about 1% the size of Haumea. Namaka is about 10% the size of Hi’iaka, making it .1% the mass of Haumea. Even though it’s pretty common for Kuiper Belt Objects to have moons, it’s very unusual for them to have two or more. It’s thought that these moons were once a part of Haumea and were ejected after some large impact in Haumea’s past. This impact might also explain Haumea’s ring system and extremely violent rotation. Very little is still known about Haumea-and Kuiper Belt Objects in general- so further studies need to be done before we can know more about why Haumea looks the way it does today.

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The Peculiar Dwarf Planet: Haumea

Posted on April 7, 2018 by jonsastroblog
An artist’s concept of Haumea More Info Here

Haumea is a recently discovered dwarf planet in the Kuiper Belt that has some very unique features. The first thing many people notice is that Haumea is shaped more like a football than a sphere. This is due to the fact that Haumea spins around its axis roughly every four hours. This extreme rotation causes it to stretch out into its elongated shape. It’s spin also allowed scientists to quickly calculate its density, because different materials would have been stretched in different ways. Scientists concluded that Haumea was entirely rock, but further observations of Haumea’s surface showed that the surface was highly reflective. As a result, we now believe that Haumea is mostly made out of rock but is also covered in a thin layer of ice.

Haumea is also interesting because it has two moons and a slight ring system, despite its small size. It’s ring system was discovered when it blocked out light from background stars in 2017. The two moons of Haumea are tiny in comparison to the dwarf planet. Hi’iaka, the larger of the two moons, is only about 1% the size of Haumea. Namaka is about 10% the size of Hi’iaka, making it .1% the mass of Haumea. Even though it’s pretty common for Kuiper Belt Objects to have moons, it’s very unusual for them to have two or more. It’s thought that these moons were once a part of Haumea and were ejected after some large impact in Haumea’s past. This impact might also explain Haumea’s ring system and extremely violent rotation. Very little is still known about Haumea-and Kuiper Belt Objects in general- so further studies need to be done before we can know more about why Haumea looks the way it does today.

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Planet no. 9

Posted on April 5, 2018 by Caroline Henning

Pluto–a well loved member of our solar system with a short-lived reputation as a planet. Discovered in 1930, it was classified as the ninth planet in our solar system until its demotion to a dwarf planet in 2006. I remember that fateful day in elementary school science class when we got the news: Pluto was not considered large enough to be a planet, reducing the number of planets in our solar system to a mere eight. Pluto has a diameter equal to approximately half of the width of the United States–roughly 1,400 miles.

sad_Pluto-e1364831800673

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Io: Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon

Posted on April 5, 2018 by natsastronomy

converted PNM file
Jupiter’s moon Io

If you showed me a picture of Io, my first thought would not be that it is a moon. To me, it looks like a block of cheese, a little rotted in certain places. That is because it looks so different from our idea of a moon, or that is Earth’s moon. Earth’s moon is largely colorless, and has many craters to do previous impacts. While moons are often thought of as geologically inactive, Io is a prime example of how that is completely not true. Io is not only geologically active, but also the most geologically active body in our entire solar system.

Io is one of Jupiter’s moon, located about 422,000 km from it’s planet. Size wise, it only slightly larger than Earth’s own moon. Despite this similarity, Io and Earth’s moon are very different. Io is so geologically active that when the Voyager spacecraft flew by and took pictures, there was not a single impact crater to be seen. That is because the surface is so young, and constantly being recreated due to the geological activity, all of the craters are quickly covered. It’s temperatures range from -130 degrees Celsius to 1649 degrees Celsius. This disparity gives us a glimpse of how active this moon really is.

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Io: Jupiter’s Volcanic Moon

Posted on April 5, 2018 by natsastronomy
converted PNM file
Jupiter’s moon Io

If you showed me a picture of Io, my first thought would not be that it is a moon. To me, it looks like a block of cheese, a little rotted in certain places. That is because it looks so different from our idea of a moon, or that is Earth’s moon. Earth’s moon is largely colorless, and has many craters to do previous impacts. While moons are often thought of as geologically inactive, Io is a prime example of how that is completely not true. Io is not only geologically active, but also the most geologically active body in our entire solar system.

Io is one of Jupiter’s moon, located about 422,000 km from it’s planet. Size wise, it only slightly larger than Earth’s own moon. Despite this similarity, Io and Earth’s moon are very different. Io is so geologically active that when the Voyager spacecraft flew by and took pictures, there was not a single impact crater to be seen. That is because the surface is so young, and constantly being recreated due to the geological activity, all of the craters are quickly covered. It’s temperatures range from -130 degrees Celsius to 1649 degrees Celsius. This disparity gives us a glimpse of how active this moon really is.

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