Water is essential to life on Earth. So, if we are searching for life off-world, it would make sense to look for signs of water. Astronomers have been doing exactly that: employing different methods to find the first signs of life outside of our own world. Until recently, it wasn’t known whether there is water… Read more »
Sue the T Rex. Lucy the early human ancestor. These are scientific discoveries that are remembered and even loved. They have names and feel real despite being collections of bones. Even the buckyball evokes the idea of fun where other structures of molecules do not. Names are important. Astronomy has been doing this for a… Read more »
Planets are formed in “protoplanetary disks” composed of gas and dust orbiting a central star. Once a planet has formed in the disk, the radius of its orbit can change due to gravitational forces between the planet and material in the disk. In this way, planets can migrate from their original location, a phenomenon that… Read more »
Taking astronomical images can be a very rewarding process—in part because of the gorgeous images you take, but also in part because of all the obstacles that can prevent you from observing the skies. We can protect our telescopes in buildings during the day to keep them clean and dry, but when night comes and… Read more »
This post is from ScIU’s archives. It was originally published by Maria Tiongco in September 2016, and has been lightly edited to reflect current events. Have you ever taken time to gaze at the stars on a clear night, either with a casual eye or a telescope? If so, you might have seen the famous… Read more »
It was over 400 years ago that Galileo Galilei first looked through his handmade telescope and observed the cloud bands that the planet is now famous for. The red gas giant of our solar system was revealed to be surrounded by swirling clouds, including one bright red spot–a cyclone of epic proportions that has been… Read more »
This post is from ScIU’s archives. It was originally published in June 2017, and has been lightly edited to reflect current events. If you aren’t in the field of astronomy, it may be hard to understand what we astronomers do. Surely we don’t set up small telescopes in our backyard to do research—most locations are… Read more »
I attended my first astronomy conference in high school and I’m not ashamed to admit I understood less than a tenth of what was said at the meeting. This meeting was a small conference dedicated entirely to discussing new science which could be done with a telescope that was little more than concept art at… Read more »
Our understanding of the formation of planetary systems has historically been based on the observations about our own Solar System. A planet is a roughly spherical object orbiting a star that has sufficiently strong gravity to clear its orbital path of other debris. The four terrestrial planets (Earth, Venus, Mercury, and Mars) of our Solar… Read more »
In a world that looks more and more like a science fiction novel, it can be tempting to assume that a computer program or code can do all your tedious work for you. Algorithms suggest videos you might like to to watch on YouTube, plan your road trips to visit friends, and can even frost… Read more »
