Last week we talked about Mercury, so this week our planetary parade proceeds to Venus. It’s the brightest object in the sky, the hottest object in the solar system, and it’s probably one of the most deadly places to go and visit.
Today we start our survey of the solar system with Mercury. What mysteries is it hiding from us? How similar is Mercury to the other rocky planets? How much do we really know about this first rock from the Sun?
Time to debunk some of the pseudoscience that people mistake for astronomy with Dr Steven Novella Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe.
When you think of the Moon, you think of craters. Here you go, the week we drove the show into a crater. Wait… there’s got to be a better way to describe this.
It’s time once again for Astronomy Cast to go on hiatus. You’ve got a couple months on your own to explore the night sky. But before we say goodbye, we’d like to make a few suggestions.
This week, lets pointed our telescopes at the Moon? What would we see? The Lunar “X” will be visible this Friday, June 26th! So go out with binoculars or a telescope and enjoy!
We imagine the asteroid belt as a place where all the rocks hang out in the solar system. But there are 2 huge bands of asteroids that orbit the Sun with Jupiter called the Trojans. And soon we may actually get a chance to see them up close!
Not only have astronomers discovered thousands of exoplanets, but they’re even starting to study the atmospheres of worlds thousands of light years away. What can we learn about these other worlds and maybe even signs of life.
We’re all looking to the next generation of exoplanetary research where we get planets directly. But astronomers are already making great strides in directly observing newly forming planets help us understand how our solar system might have formed
We’re familiar with regular binary stars. Two stars orbiting each other. Of course the Universe has come up with every combination of things orbiting other things, and we will look at some extreme examples.