Tag Archives: blog7

spider!

i was looking to write something about the surface geography of pluto and came across this article about a cool geographic feature on the surface of pluto! since the flyby, we’ve had a lot of new information to sift through about the distant icy planet, and now we’ve found a new set of tendrils on … Continue reading spider! Continue reading

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Hot Jupiters and Why They Don’t Wreck our Model of Planetary Formation

Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, is located exactly where astrophysicists and planetary-formation theorists believe that it should be. Its size indicates that it should be located around the middle of the Solar System, where it was able to pick up rock, ice, and a lot of gases (such as hydrogen and helium) […] Continue reading

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A Lonely Planet Wandering Through Space

Astronomers have recently announced the discovery of a planet without a sun.  Known as PSO J318.5-22, the planet is a gas giant six times the mass of Jupiter, nowhere near large enough to be a Brown Dwarf.  In the past rouge planets or “planetary-mass objects” have been discovered but their size was large enough that […] Continue reading

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Blog #7 (Pluto)

It’s a well-publicized fact by now that Pluto has been downgraded from planet to dwarf planet. Many people felt betrayed that one of the 9 planets they learned from childhood was no longer considered a planet. In reality, it was a logical decision because Pluto’s orbit is more elliptical, icier, and smaller than the rest […] Continue reading

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The Darkest Planet in the Universe

The planet sullenly staring back at you is TrES-2b and no it is not just going through a phase, this exoplanet is indeed the universe’s ultimate goth. TrES-2b is a gas giant which was first detected in 2006 by the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Survey (TrES) employing the transit method of exoplanet discovery. In the transit method […] Continue reading

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Europa, a Galilean Moon of Jupiter

As the title suggests, Europa was discovered by Galileo in 1610.  Although Galileo’s instruments for investigating the cosmos weren’t as sophisticated as ours are today, the relatively large size of Europa, a size comparable to the moon’s size, made it possible for it to be discovered in 1610.  And since then, Europa has been investigated […] Continue reading

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A Giant spider on Pluto?

Launched in 2006, the New Horizons Space Probe set out with the mission to get the best view of Pluto that we humans have ever seen. And it just so happens that we succeeded! We are now seeing the absolute best images that we have ever seen of the famed dwarf planet. Recently, Pluto has […] Continue reading

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Doppler vs. Astrometric: Find the Planet

Currently, it’s quite difficult to discover new planets simply by direct observation. This is because the high interference of light caused by the planets’ respective stars makes it almost impossible to detect the light reflected off of planets. However, there are two indirect planet detection methods: Doppler and astrometric. The astrometric method relies on measuring […] Continue reading

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Exoplanet HD 189733b

Around 63 light years away form Earth sits the exoplanet HD 189733b. The planet has a mass of 1.13 Jupiter masses and orbits its star closer than Mercury orbits the Sun. Seen from afar, this planet is blue in color and has bands of white haze in its atmosphere that resemble clouds. Though HD 189733b […] Continue reading

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Pluto’s Kind Heart

  Pluto has been a topic of fascination for astronomers for a long time now. With the recent flyby of the New Horizons Spacecraft, a new image of Pluto has captivated the world. Pluto has a heart. Well not actually a heart but a region that looks like a heart! I guess Pluto is really […] Continue reading

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