Astronomy
Astroholic Vlog: Dyson Spheres
In this Astroholic Vlog I will be talking about Dyson Spheres. Dyson Spheres are hypothetical megastructures purposely built around stars to absorb most or all of the stellar electromagnetic output.
Astronomy
Astronomy
AstroNews
A new planetary type has been found by Kepler
The exoplanet finder extraordinaire that is the Kepler telescope significantly changed our understanding of the type of planets that can exist in our galaxy. We only find two types of planets in our solar system: small rocky planets (like the Earth) and giant gassy planets (like Uranus). The scie...
AstroNews
A Dance of Black Holes
When galaxies collide, the supermassive black holes (SMBH) at their centre merge after a long spiralling dance around each other. Several studies have been conducted to underpin everything that happens from the beginning of the galaxy mergers to the SMBHs becoming one; the final details of this p...
AstroNews
The first measurement of an exoplanet day.
Dutch Astronomers using ESO’s Very Large Telescope were able to measure the rotational speed of a planet outside the Solar System for the first time. Ignas Snellen and his colleagues at Leiden University in the Netherlands used infrared light and its absorption in the planet atmosphere to calcula...
AstroNews
We have discovered a brown dwarf colder than ice
Associate Professor Kevin Luhman of Penn State University has discovered the coldest brown dwarf yet using the NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. A brown dwarf is a massive gaseous object which is on the low end of the stellar mass and temperature scale. There’s an heated (pardon the pun...
AstroNews
Is Saturn forming a new Moon?
Exactly one year ago, astronomer Carl Murray a scientist from Queen Mary University of London discovered a curious disturbance in the A ring of Saturn. Analysing the data of the Cassini probe which was keeping an eye on the moon Prometheus (the bright white dot in the picture), Murray noticed tha...
AstroNews
Extraordinary video of a Solar Flare
The Associate Press has released a video from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory of a flare erupting from the Sun. Solar Flares are sudden brightening of the Sun’s surface. They occur when the strong magnetic field of the Sun (in a yet poorly understood mechanism) accelerates charged particles to ...
AstroNews
Rulers of the Oort Cloud
A new dwarf planet has recently been discovered in the solar system, orbiting at about 10 light hours from our Star. This is the furthest object belonging to our planetary system that we have been able to observe.
AstroNews
The first concrete evidence of Cosmic Inflation?
It was announced on Monday that the Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarisation 2 (BICEP2 – don’t you love projects acronyms?) experiment at the South Pole found a special pattern in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The pattern they found is the B-mode polarisation signal in the...
Astronomy
Colliding stars
I know that likelihood of stars colliding is very low, but have there been papers describing the theoretical process of star collision? James, London I think we can divide star-collision into three classes; Stellar Mergers, Binary Collisions and Stellar Collision.
Asteroid
All about the Asteroid Belt
What does it actually look like in the asteroid belt? Is it anything like as dense as is shown in films? Or is it more like you can see one or two rocks in the distance? Contrary to popular belief, the asteroid belt is mostly empty.
Andromeda
How big is the biggest galaxy in the Universe?
If by big we mean physical dimension, the largest known galaxy is most likely IC1101. IC1101 is gargantuan even among galaxies; it’s a super elliptical galaxy with a diffuse stellar halo that to extends to at least 1.4 million light years. The Milky Way’s halo by comparison extends to about 100.0...