Today is a busy day in the world of astronomy and space news. The US Air Force has approved SpaceX for military launches, ending a ten year monopoly by Boeing and Lockheed-Martin. A black hole jet moving at nearly the speed of light is having traffic issues, resulting in knots of jet material rear-ending each other. An experiment in Quantum Mechanics has shown that reality simply doesn’t exist until we measure it. Finally, the Gemini planet imager has found a bright, disk-shaped ring of dust around the star HD 115600, which is being likened to the Kuiper Belt in the...
For a long time, the scientific community has been hopeful for a mission to some of the most interesting moons of the solar system. Europa, Enceladus, and Ganymede all have subsurface oceans and will give substantial insights into the formation and evolution of life in the solar system and beyond. The only problem is that it costs an astronomical (literally) amount of money to get there. A bare bones mission to Europa would cost over 600 Million dollars, and if we are spending that much we had better be sure it will work. Money aside, the technology to get appropriate...
I always love to chat about stories by close-to-home scientists. I just talked recently about some University of Waterloo cosmological work, but today I can follow it up with a very close to home scientist that I’ve run into a few times. Something about seeing the achievements of those you know makes you feel pride too – it gives us all a good reason to support friends, colleagues, and even acquaintances, since we can share in their passion. Astronomer Lisa Esteves, a PhD candidate from the University of Toronto, has been watching exoplanets carefully with the Kepler Space Telescope, seeing...
The two major solar observatories, SDO and SOHO, both saw a massive solar event in exceptional clarity. Starting April 28th, a huge solar plasma loop broke away and was blasted millions of miles out into space from the surface of the Sun! This massive outburst of energy comes during the peak of the 11-year solar activity cycle, and shows us just how incredible and energetic our home star can be. Solar filaments like the one that broke away are long chains of solar plasma, a state of matter where super-heated gas becomes stripped of its electrons. The plasma filaments follow...
About a year ago I had an idea for a music video. I wanted to take a concept in science and put it to music, making it funny, catchy, memorable, and educational. I wrote out the majority of the lyrics but left it alone for a few months, until I connected with the right friend. My good friend Bob Wegner is a very talented guitarist and audio engineer, and as we spoke about the idea he wanted to be the guy to record it. We spent an afternoon doing the vocals and guitars, and he cleaned it up and made...
Mercury, the smallest planet in the solar system, and closest to the Sun, is only a little bit bigger than Earth’s Moon. But the Moon is comparatively reflective object. Mercury is thought to be made of the same rock as the Moon, so what is the difference? Why do objects in our Solar system have different brightnesses? The key is in a property called albedo. It’s basically how much light an object reflects, measured as a fraction. For example, the Moon reflects 12% of the light the Sun shines on it, so it has an albedo of 0.12. The albedo...
It’s difficult to determine the history of the Solar System. The planets have been in their current orbits for Billions of years, and any signs of prior activity or configuration has to come from leftover geologies of smaller, rocky worlds. It makes it especially difficult when the Billions of interloper asteroids and comets throughout history have to be accounted for, adding to the already complex task. But if there is one thing humanity has going for us it’s the ability to theorize, model, simulate, and test scenarios here on Earth. We can try new ideas and see if they match...
With all the talk of the large geomagnetic storm of the past few days, it’s important to understand that other worlds have beautiful auroral activity as well. Being on Earth and seeing the gorgeous displays that result from our magnetic field protecting us from harmful solar radiation, the best views come from Earth. But there are several other places in our own solar system that have aurora. Jupiter has a massive magnetic field, and its gigantic aurora are visible here. Jupiter’s moon Ganymede is the only moon in the solar system that has auroral activity. Saturn has its own, discovered...
After reaching a deeper understanding of the subsurface ocean of Enceladus just yesterday, a stunning discovery has just been made about the largest Moon in the solar system. The largest moon of Jupiter, Ganymede, contains a subsurface ocean of it’s own. The discovery was made with the Hubble space telescope and a careful study of aurora on the giant moon. That’s right Ganymede has auroral activity. This is because it is the only moon in the solar system with a magnetic field. The magnetic field funnels radiation from the Sun toward the north and south poles, where it ionizes molecules...
With the MESSENGER probe set to crash into Mercury this month, it’s nice to look back on some of the finest data that it gathered during its tenure orbiting the smallest planet of the solar system. The image shows the Caloris Basin, the largest impact basin on Mercury and one of the largest in the solar system. The result of a massive asteroid impact during the early days of the solar system, the 1,500 Km wide crater was filled with lava aeons ago when Mercury was geologically active (seen in orange). Large impacts have punctured the surface of the basin since...
