Astronomy
- Big Planet, Small Star
One of the smallest stars in the Galaxy has been found to have a planet orbiting it that is six times more massive than Jupiter. This gas giant is as far from its star as Mercury is from our Sun, but because the star is so small, it is like a scaled...
- Amusing Astronomy Facts
It is not always the serious side of things that can encourage us to study it deeper. Sometimes, the strange and amusing characteristics are the ones that prompt your interest first. At the beginning, you may just get a piece of information that can...
- A Nearby Watery Planet
A new rocky planet, GJ 1214b, has been found very close to the solar system, one of a few hundred exoplanets currently known. Making this discovery special, though, is that the planet contains water, being almost completely covered by it, and that its...
- A Large Planet Orbiting A Small Star
An artist's conception of the planetary system. Astrometry, a 50 year old technique used to find exoplanets, planets around other stars, has finally succeeded. Planets outside the solar system are nearly impossible to see, so the method relies on...
- Planets Like Binary Stars, Too
In our solar system, planets, comets, asteroids, and dwarf-planets all orbit around a single star, our Sun. But imagine if we could witness two Suns in our sky. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has helped astronomers see that planetary systems are...
Astronomy
Star Astronomy
Astronomy is as large as the universe that it seeks to discover. Star astronomy is just one part of the overall science and hobby. It would take a lifetime just to learn about all the objects that orbit our own small sun. Some people, then, decide to become experts on the stars.Our sun is 94,000,000 miles from Earth, and that's the closest star we know. It generates an amazing amount of heat to reach all that distance. Our own sun contains just over 98% of the total mass in the solar system. That includes all the other planets even with huge Jupiter and Saturn on our side. It would take 109 Earths to span the sun's disk, and over 1.3 million Earths would fit within the sun. The nuclear reaction at the Sun's core comes from pressure 340 billion times that at sea level on earth and temperatures of over 27,000,000°F. That would burn toast to a crisp instantly.Since it's so close to Earth, relatively compared to other suns, the Sun is the most thoroughly studied star. The next nearest star is 250,000 times further from Earth. But when you travel far from Earth star astronomy really starts to hum. A human can see about 5000 stars, all in our own Milky Way galaxy, from Earth. Using telescope, a person can see far more of the 1x10^22 stars estimated in the universe. If you're counting that's a one followed by 22 zeros. Even a small amateur telescope brings hundreds of thousands of stars to a person's view. Wow! Larger telescopes can see other galaxies that contain an estimated total of over 200 billion stars. It's a project of generations just to count each one.Star astronomy experts have now proven that many other stars have planets. Stars wobble when planets orbit them, and that wobbling can be measured. And in late 2008 astronomers finally took the first pictures of planets orbiting other stars, and even of entire solar systems. We are ever closer to finding intelligent life.
- Big Planet, Small Star
One of the smallest stars in the Galaxy has been found to have a planet orbiting it that is six times more massive than Jupiter. This gas giant is as far from its star as Mercury is from our Sun, but because the star is so small, it is like a scaled...
- Amusing Astronomy Facts
It is not always the serious side of things that can encourage us to study it deeper. Sometimes, the strange and amusing characteristics are the ones that prompt your interest first. At the beginning, you may just get a piece of information that can...
- A Nearby Watery Planet
A new rocky planet, GJ 1214b, has been found very close to the solar system, one of a few hundred exoplanets currently known. Making this discovery special, though, is that the planet contains water, being almost completely covered by it, and that its...
- A Large Planet Orbiting A Small Star
An artist's conception of the planetary system. Astrometry, a 50 year old technique used to find exoplanets, planets around other stars, has finally succeeded. Planets outside the solar system are nearly impossible to see, so the method relies on...
- Planets Like Binary Stars, Too
In our solar system, planets, comets, asteroids, and dwarf-planets all orbit around a single star, our Sun. But imagine if we could witness two Suns in our sky. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has helped astronomers see that planetary systems are...