Vast volcanic eruptions may have turned Venus from paradise (68 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit) into hell. The surface temperature is a sweltering 867 degrees Fahrenheit (464 degrees Celsius), hot enough to melt lead, and there’s a crushing pressure of 90 atmospheres underneath the dense clouds of carbon dioxide laced with corroding sulfuric acid. Venus is […]
Since 2009, the names of planets…
Since 2009, the names of planets from the Dune novels have been adopted for the real-world nomenclature of plains and other features on Saturn’s moon Titan, like Arrakis Planitia.
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson…
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson received large amounts of hate mail from children after declassifying Pluto as a planet.
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There are planets considered more…
There are planets considered more habitable than Earth, based on potential for biodiversity. Scientists have identified 24 such planets so far.
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while the Americans sent space probes…
While the Americans sent space probes to Mars, the Soviets sent many probes to Venus, of which 8 of them successfully landed on the Venusian surface and took the first measurements and pictures of the planet’s surface, showing Venus to be a hot, hellish wasteland.
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In 1977 Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus…
In 1977 Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune were entering a rare alignment that occurs every 175 years. This happened to be when humans were first attempting space exploration so we were coincidentally able to send Voyager 2 on a flyby of all four planets on its way out of the solar system.
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Jupiter protects the Earth…
Jupiter protects the Earth by “eating up” any asteroid or comet that ventures near thanks to its gravitational pull, earning the nickname “vacuum cleaner of the solar system.”
A Teenager Discovered a Planet on the Third Day of His NASA Internship
These kids today…are pretty great, as it turns out!
At least, some of them are.
On only the third day into his internship at NASA, a 17-year-old named Wolf Cukier (awesome name) discovered a new planet that is being called “TOI 1338 b”. The planet is 6.9 times larger than Earth, and the folks at NASA believe the planet will be in a stable orbit for at least the next 10 million years. It is located roughly 1,300 light-years away from Earth.
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The teenager discovered the planet while looking at “variations in star brightness” in images captured by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS).
Cukier is from Scarsdale, New York, and he completed a two-month internship last summer with NASA at their Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
17-year-old high school student discovers rare new planet 3 days into NASA internship https://t.co/cUlDKsHgeU pic.twitter.com/ujR6H3hYBR
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 11, 2020
Cukier said, “I was looking through the data for everything the volunteers had flagged as an eclipsing binary, a system where two stars circle around each other and from our view eclipse each other every orbit. About three days into my internship, I saw a signal from a system called TOI 1338. At first I thought it was a stellar eclipse, but the timing was wrong. It turned out to be a planet.”
NASA just recently confirmed Cukier’s findings, and they submitted a paper co-written by the teenager about the discovery of the new planet.
Let’s get to meet this whiz kid, shall we?
Cukier also confirmed that he is indeed now looking for other new planets. Keep up the great work!
As the saying goes, the kids are alright.
The post A Teenager Discovered a Planet on the Third Day of His NASA Internship appeared first on UberFacts.
This Is How to Tell the Difference Between Stars and Planets Just by Looking
This seems like it would be difficult – until, that is, you remember that classic lullaby that put us all to sleep.
Remember “Twinkle, twinkle little star”?
Yep. Stars twinkle, and planets don’t.
With the exception of our solar system’s sun, stars are all so far away that astronomers talk about their distance from Earth in terms of lightyears, or the distance light can go in one Earth year.
Considering light moves at about 186,000 miles per second, a lightyear is pretty freaking far.
The closest star to our sun is called the Alpha Centauri, and it’s 4 lightyears away from our planet. Because it takes a star’s light several lightyears to get to Earth, we see it as a small point in space.
But before we can see it from the surface of Earth, starlight is refracted. This refraction is influenced by every change in density and temperature in every media that the light passes through.
Photo Credit: Wikipedia
Planets are much closer to us than stars. A planet’s light (which is really sunlight reflected back to us) gets refracted to a much lesser degree because it travel a much shorter distance. Planets usually appear bigger (because they’re closer), and their light twinkles significantly less.
Actually, planetary light looks basically steady.
Of course, if you catch a planet a bit lower in the sky – maybe so you’re looking at it through the horizon – you’ll have a harder time telling it apart from a star. If light is traveling through the horizon, that means it’s going through a lot more atmosphere before it reaches your eyes than if it were directly overhead. That causes more light refraction, and, thus, more twinkling.
Photo Credit: Wikipedia
It’s easier to tell stars and planets apart later because there’s less light refraction when you’re looking directly up.
If this trick gives you trouble at the beginning, keep practicing and tou’ll be able to tell the planets and stars apart in no time.
Are you going to try this simple trick? Share your results with us in the comment area, if you’d like.
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There are “lone planets” that roam endlessly through space without ever going…
There are “lone planets” that roam endlessly through space without ever going into orbit. They are actually predicted to be more common than stars.