Science
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Friday, May 2nd, 2008What is this question doing in the middle of my Week of Astronomy? Well, stay with me and you’ll find out! Kathleen of Virginia asked this one, maybe as a hint to her husband?
Kathleen – Black diamonds, also known as Carbonado, are indeed rare in the same sense that any gem is relatively rare compared […]
What is a solar system?
Friday, May 2nd, 2008With all this talk about stars, planets and moons in previous posts, it’s about high time I mentioned a solar system. A solar system is exactly what the name implies - the system associated with a sun (star). Our own solar system contains 8 planets. We once had nine but the planet Pluto was downgraded […]
What is the biggest planet in our solar system?
Friday, May 2nd, 2008Mighty Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system with a mass 318 times that of the Earth. In fact, its mass is more than twice that of all the other planets in the solar system combined. Aside from mass, the planet also takes up a lot of space. It is 88,736 miles in […]
There were 9 planets. What happened to Pluto?
Thursday, May 1st, 2008Poor Pluto. Discovered in 1930 by Cylde W. Tombaugh, Pluto was thought to be the missing planet theorized to exist based on inaccurate calculations. It was added as our ninth planet and actually sparked quite a fan following with its popularity, even inspiring the name of a famous Disney character. For 36 years, humble little […]
How many planets are there in our solar system and what are their names?
Thursday, May 1st, 2008There’s a lot more to our solar system than the planets. I’ll cover some of the less known objects and phenomenon such as the Oort Cloud, Kuiper Belt and other strange stuff in a future post, but when people think solar system, they usually think of the planets in orbit around the Sun. Our solar […]
How big is the Earth?
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008There are several things in our solar system bigger than the Earth; the Sun and all the gas giants like Jupiter. But of the four terrestrial planets - the rocky worlds you could actually walk on if appropriately attired (Venus has a strict jacket and tie requirement) - the Earth is the largest. You have […]
How far away is the Earth from the Sun?
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008The Earth circles peacefully around the Sun at about 149 million kilometers or 92.75 million miles on average. Our orbit is slightly elliptical so our distance swings from anywhere as far as 94.5 million miles and as close as 91 million miles. There are a lot of interesting facts about the Earth I’ll save for […]
What is a planet?
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008Our solar system has an interesting and diverse cast of characters. We even have a black sheep in our solar family in the form of Pluto and at the center of all the recent controversy about its status has been one surprisingly difficult question to answer - what is a planet?
You’d think that pretty much any […]
How many times would the Earth fit in the Sun?
Monday, April 28th, 2008I considered answering this in my previous post - How big is the Sun - but found the question so well answered elsewhere that I’ll give it its own post. The short answer is - 1 million. As explained by Ask an Astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center - Imagine the Universe, it helps […]
How big is the Sun?
Monday, April 28th, 2008The Sun is about 1,392,000 kilometers or 875,000 miles across. If you wanted to put a belt on the sun to hold up its pants you would want to know its circumference and for that you just apply a little math. The circumference of a sphere is determined by multiplying 2 times pi (3.14) times […]
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