What are solar prominences? Solar prominence is a large, bright structure of plasma that follows magnetic fields and loops out from the surface of the sun. You may have seen images of solar prominence when you look at pictures of the sun. They are long twisting swirls that loop out from the sun and usually […]
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Who discovered that the Milky Way isn’t the only galaxy? Edwin Hubble was the first person to discover that there were other galaxies in space. When we are at school we learn that our Milky Way Galaxy is one galaxy in a possible infinite number of galaxies. We learn that the closest large galaxy to
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Why do stars twinkle but planets don’t? Stars twinkle and planets don’t because of how far away they are and the atmosphere. I live in a city and you can’t see that many stars because of light pollution. A while ago I was staying at my brother’s house, and he lives in the countryside. I
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How did we discover Neptune? Neptune is the only planet in the Solar System whose existence was predicted by mathematics before it was observed. Neptune is the furthest planet in our solar system. It has about 17 times the mass of the Earth and is a gas giant. There is a lot of methane in
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What was the brightest supernova? It depends on what we mean by “brightest”. The brightest supernova that records exist for was SN 1006, which was visible from April 30 to May 1, 1006 (hence its name). The SN stands for supernova. There have been far more massive supernova that we couldn’t see from Earth. A
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What are the differences between a brown, red, orange, yellow, blue, white, and black dwarf? The main difference between them is their state of stage of life. Red, orange, and yellow dwarf stars are living stars. Brown dwarfs are failed stars. White and black dwarfs are dead stars. Blue and black dwarfs are theoretical because
What is the Local Bubble? The Local Bubble is an enormous cavity 1,000 light years across that our solar system is currently traveling through. We might think that space between the stars and planets is completely empty, but it isn’t. Depending on where it is, most of interstellar space has about 0.3 to 0.5 atoms
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What is Olbers’ Paradox? Olbers’ Paradox says that if the universe is infinite, eternal, static, and the same in every direction, the night sky should be completely illuminated and very bright, all the time. The Olbers behind Olbers’ Paradox was a German astronomer called Heinrich Olbers. In 1823, he was thinking about the size of
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Why do all the planets orbit in the same plane? All of the planets orbit in the same plane because they were all formed out of the same spinning cloud of gas, and because any planets that orbited at a different angle would have been less stable and could have been destroyed in collisions. The
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What is the Roche limit? The Roche limit is the minimum distance that one planetary body can approach another planetary body without being torn to pieces. The Roche limit is named after Edouard Roche, the French astronomer who first calculated it in 1848. He came up with his theory while he was studying the rings
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