Tag: space

  • The Moon

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    Brendan Barry
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    Happy Friday, everyone. Especially all of you up our Gingrich Moon Base. Credit for the piece goes to Randall Munroe.

  • Our Nearest Neighbour

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    Brendan Barry
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    Yesterday scientists announced the discovery of a likely rocky planet within the habitable zone of Proxima Centauri, Sol’s (the Sun’s) nearest star. The New York Times covered the discovery with a piece full of nice explanatory graphics. Now if we can only get onto the whole matter–anti-matter warp engine thing we could go explore the…

  • Quasi-satellite Asteroid Orbits

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    Brendan Barry
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    Scientists discovered Earth has a new quasi-satellite. It is an asteroid, and it does not orbit the Earth. But, because of the relationship between its orbit and Earth’s around the sun, it is involved in what NASA described as a dance with Earth. This is not Earth’s only dance partner, however, as we interact with…

  • What Comprises Planet Nine

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    Brendan Barry
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    Well, to start, we don’t really know for sure. We also don’t really know Planet Nine exists for sure. But, you plug its existence into mathematical models and it explains some of the quirks we see in the Kuiper Belt, the cloud of dust and ice at the outer reaches of the Solar System. A team…

  • Supermoon Lunar Eclipse

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    Brendan Barry
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    Last night we experienced a total lunar eclipse here in Chicago. Unfortunately, significant cloud cover meant that much of the event went unseen. That was unfortunate, because eclipses are fantastic. To explain it we have this piece from the BBC. And for those were either unable to see it or did not know about it,…

  • Kepler 452b

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    Brendan Barry
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    So this is sort of a recycled post, in the sense that I talked about it back in April of 2013. But it’s worth revisiting in light of last month’s announcement of Kepler 452b. For those unaware, the planet is a little bit larger than Earth, but is believed to be a potentially rocky planet…

  • How We’re Talking to New Horizons

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    Brendan Barry
    in

    So New Horizons is long since gone from Pluto. But it will still take 16 months to send back all the photographs and science. Why so long? Because so far away. 3 billion miles away. Put another way, light from the sun takes eight minutes to reach Earth as it travels at, well, the speed…

  • Your Guide to the Solar System

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    Brendan Barry
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    As New Horizons will soon begin sending back photographs of Pluto, Charon, and the other moons, I figured it would be a good to share a Wall Street Journal piece that looks at the other photographed bodies of the system. Credit for the piece goes to Jon Keegan, Chris Canipe, and Alberto Cervantes.

  • New Horizon’s Flypast

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    Brendan Barry
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    A little after 07.30 EDT, New Horizons began its race past Pluto, what your author grew up learning as the ninth planet in the Solar System—the last planet to be explored. I recall thinking that when it launched back in 2006 I had no idea what I would be doing nine years later. Or at…

  • Putting Tatooine to Shame

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    Brendan Barry
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    While the title sounds science-fiction-y, it is true. Star Wars has a famous scenece where a landscape is shown with a binary star system in the sky. But we now know of a quintuple-star system that has two separate sets of binary stars. This BBC article takes a look at how the system is structured.…