NASA has several orbiting spacecraft trained to study the Sun during it’s 11-year cycle. Recently the team of astronomers and scientists behind the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) released a video showing a full year of activity on the Sun. You’ll want to crank this one up to 4K if you can, though it still looks spectacular in 1080p. It’s interesting to note that the bulk of the solar activity is along the rotational plane, which is the plane of the entire solar system. Also notice that as the days pass the Sun doesn’t rotate completely every day. This is because...
Galaxy NGC 4569 is a spiral galaxy that is part of the Virgo cluster, around 55 Million light years distant. Like any other spiral galaxy, we can learn about its motion through the cluster, the properties of its stellar population, and how quickly its converting gas and dust to stars. But this galaxy has an interesting property, it’s missing a lot of gas. For years, astronomers have had ideas about where the gas has gone, and with new data from the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), they now have the answer. The gas is being stripped off of the galaxy, and is now...
One of the first things you hear when learning about the states of matter is about good old H2O: Steam, Water, Ice. Naturally you are asked “Why does Ice float?” The answer is a simple matter of density, frozen water is less dense because water expands when it freezes. You can do a bit of an experiment by filling a balloon with water. Paint the balloon and put it in the freezer. When it freezes the water will expand, and so will the rubbery balloon, but the dried paint will crack at weak points. This is exactly the same thing...
You’ve seen the planets, now let’s look at some of the best moons to visit in the solar system, ala the romanticized art deco style! Ceres is like a gas station for that long trip to Jupiter, treated as an icy rock that is not the best tourist destination. Enceladus is a lot like the spacefarer’s version of Yellowstone park, with the southern hemisphere geysers being the appeal. My two favourites are Titan and Europa. Titan’s colour scheme and view of Saturn are gorgeous, but the best part is the paddle boats in the hydrocarbon seas. The most interesting visit...
When it comes to science communication, the most important thing to keep in mind is the perspective of the layperson, what someone will see, think, or understand if they have no prior knowledge. When you have some expert knowledge in science it can be hard to put it aside, but imagining the thought-process of a beginner gives you valuable information about how you are communicating, and can make a huge difference in your effectiveness. Which is why I am always thrilled to see things that communicate real science, yet stimulate the imagination. NASA, being a publicly funded organization, has to...
Gamma rays are the highest energy photons on the electromagnetic spectrum. Their wavelength is similar to the size of an atom, and when two of them collide they tend to produce a matter-antimatter particle pair. They represent energy high enough to synthesize the fundamental particles of matter, and are produced in the highest energy environments in the cosmos. The interchange of matter and energy works both ways, so one of the ways gamma rays are generated is through annihilation of a matter-antimatter particle pair. Looking back to the beginning of the universe it gives us the earliest ‘chicken or egg’...
Since the dawn of human history, we have looked up into the night sky and found patterns in the stars. Some of us saw animals, others saw gods and heroes, but we all agreed that they were greater than our simple existence. In this blog series, we will take a deeper look into the constellations that Astronomers use to map today’s night sky. We will look into the history of each of the 88 constellations and the stars and objects that form them, to discover more about our culture, and our connection with the universe. Our first constellation on the list is bright, large,...
What do you think made the bright features in the picture below? Was it a deep layer of rock underneath sand that was swept away by wind? Or maybe it was salt left over from the drying of an ancient lake? Or perhaps even ash left over by an ancient volcano. One of the answers is correct, and not the one I was hoping for. I wish it was from an ancient lakebed, oh what the salt deposits could teach us. But alas, it is only volcanic ash. So as true scientists, we follow what the data tells us, and learn...
The merger of black holes proven by LIGO yesterday looks amazing in this simulated view in today’s APOD. What would normally take a third of a second has been stretched out to show the entanglement. And remember, these things are far more massive than the Sun, so to be moving this quickly and merging is an extremely high-energy interaction. And kablammo, matter converted to energy, gravitational waves aplenty, and an even bigger black hole. Happy Long Weekend!
A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away…. Two black holes, with masses 29 and 35 times the mass of the Sun, merged to form an even bigger black hole. The merger resulted in three entire suns worth of matter converted to pure energy in the form of gravitational waves. The waves travelled a billion light years before a tiny meat-filled species on a pale blue dot in space figured how to see them. Thanks to the smartest one that species had seen in a century, they knew that black holes might merge, and that they would produce these waves if...
