I See the Light

The Solar System An amazing part of the class this semester was the ability to understand and correct some of the misconceptions that I have held about the Solar System for years. Whether it was about the ‘dark’ side of the moon, the brightness of the North Star, tides, the asteroid belt being hard to …

A Whole New World!

Director Boston doing research Because the caves, mines, and crevasses on Earth are filled with extremophiles, NASA uses those lifeforms as a guide to its exploration of the universe. The hidden parts of the planet have to make their own way of survival. Surface life has photosynthesis, but subsurface only a tiny fraction of that …

A Moon Above the Rest: Jupiter’s Moon Ganymede

Jupiter's Moon Ganymede Galileo Galilei discovered many “luminous objects” in 1610 that were orbiting Jupiter. Thought to be stars, it was discovered that they were moons: Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. Ganymede is the largest moon in the Solar System and is even larger than the planet Mercury. It is the only satellite in the Solar System known …

Saving the Appearances

The map of the System Strict Aristotelian cosmology follows that all bodies are made of the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. These four exist in the terrestrial realm and the stars exist in the celestial realm. A fifth element, aether, exists there and that is what heavenly bodies are composed of. Aristotle provided …

Second Planet to the Sun

The Clouds among Venus The planet Venus is named for the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It is the second largest terrestrial planet. It is also the second brightest natural object in the sky. Venus’ apparent magnitude of -3.8 to -4.6 makes it visible on a clear day. Venus’ atmosphere can be divided into …

Ancient Achievements

Ancient Scientists In other religions, there was no need for astronomy except for the creation of the calendar. Ancient Pagans used Stonehenge to determine their calendar. In Early Judaism, they created their calendar. For Christianity, although it helped dictate holidays, it had pushback from philosophy and scientific observations. Astronomy played a major role in early …

A Science Lesson in History

Isaac Newton was born on January 4 in 1643 in Woolsthorpe, England and died on March 31 in 1727 in Kensington, England. Sir Isaac Newton contributed to the discovery of gravity, the laws of motion and forces. He also clarified the understanding of optics and invented calculus. The first law is that an object in …

The 13th Zodiac

The Zodiac Constellations When NASA formally announced in 2016 that there is a 13th Zodiac Constellation, people everywhere were so shocked. They felt that NASA had been withholding information from the public. Cosmopolitan, an entertainment news outlet that does daily horoscopes for its users, published a story immediately providing the new borders for the zodiac …

Welcome to Neverland

In my Astronomy class this semester, we will be learning about the Solar System and the universe we reside in. The world can seem so small but is massive when looked at through a Cosmic Perspective. I have always been a child at heart, so Disney is intertwined in everything I do. There are so many …