Category: Astronomy
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Black People in Astronomy and Astrophysics
In recent years, the number of black people within the STEM industry has been on a gradual rise. However, the same cannot be said for the physics and astronomy departments. Researchers have actually noted a decline in diversity in the past ten years of the field. In physics, black representation is down to 3%, as…
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Life in the Universe, where are those aliens?
Life and the likelihood of life outside earth is a subject that has puzzled and amazed both astronomers and laymen in equal measure. When we talk about the existence of life, some believe that there are intelligent life forms out there and there are those who believe that belief in extraterrestrial life is ludicrous. Below…
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Space Highways, what are they?
Think of a highway of sorts, winding through planets and the Sun creating tunnels – that is essentially what space highways are. These gravitational channels are created when stellar objects, such as planets within our solar system, tug at each other creating forces between them. These forces act like ocean currents that can be used…
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10 Things to See With a Small Telescope
If you just recently bought your small telescope, I’m sure you’re excited to explore the skies and find out just how much of the universe you can observe. The universe is vast and interesting. Pop culture itself references a lot from outer space; Harry Potter, Star Trek, Big Bang Theory, and many more shows have…
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Dimensions and Distances
Image above:Left: The Earth compared to our Sun.Right: Our sun (one pixel) compared to VV Cephei Our universe is vast, however, from our little area of space, we can assume that what we can see is the biggest that there is out there. This is not true, our sun for example is an average size…
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ʻOumuamua a special asteroid that gave us a surprise visit in 2017
In October 2017, an astronomer observed an object zooming past our sun at an incredible speed. The astronomer was Robert J. Weryk, and he noticed this bizarre object while he was recording images at the Haleakala observatory in Hawaii. This object was then named ʻOumuamua which loosely translates to a messenger from afar arriving first…
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What Are Black Holes?
Black holes are one of the most fascinating aspects of space. They have such an extreme gravitational pull that not even light can escape. They are so phenomenal that they are said to have the ability to alter entire galaxies. Black holes are severely curved off that it can be considered pinched off from the…
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Handheld Telescope (a.k.a. Pirate Brass Telescope with a Wooden Box)
With Pirate Movies we have seen a come back of those old Telescopes that navigators used for centuries before the GPS was publicly available. Although often referenced as Pirate Telescope, those were regular captain navigation telescopes and pirates happened to steal them along other treasures. Not like pirates invented them…
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Why Do You Want a Case for Your Telescope?
As I explained in my post Advice on Buying a Telescope Online, there are two types of telescopes. Both have a different set of needs when it comes to maintenance. The maintenance is an important part if you do want your telescope to continue to perform well and who wouldn’t want such?! In most cases…
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We can now show star motion in another Galaxy!
Source of the Observation of Moving Stars From data that we gathered about 12 years ago (2005) using the International Space Telescope (IST) and data being gathered now (2017) by Gaia, some astronomers calculated the motion of various stars in the Dwarf Galaxy named Sculptor.