Star Party
9/29/19 I have tried so hard to write the live post a while ago that my laptop even was broken down during my writing, lol. So, my dear experts audience, here I am again 😀
The weather was not that great for the stars lately. So I have not managed to see any nebula or galaxies, and I did see ISS (international space station) fly over on top of my head though. It was so bright and fast!
It is a very amazing experience to see so big moon. Craters, mountains …are very clear. Some fun facts about the moon: we only can see the same side of the moon (this effect is called tidal lock); the moon is not completely round; the moon is moving away from the earth at the rate of 4cm per year; the moon had volcanoes but are no longer active, there were asteroids that hit the moon and then the moon rocks (lunar meteorite) landed on the earth. You can touch them in the Adler Planetarium in Chicago (one of them is soccer size, really that big?, and arrived on earth 1000 years ago, found in Southern Morocco in 2007, the earth also has Martian rocks like this). What if one day the moon disappears and is broken into pieces?! This is the book I am reading called Seveneves. Check it out to see if it aligns with what you think 😉
I also saw Jupiter with 3 moons. Jupiter has white and orange colors, but I have not yet seen its great red spot. Jupiter is hot and is called a gas giant. Then there is this Saturn —- I can see its ring! The same brightness as Saturn itself. It quietly lays in the dark space. Can’t describe how touching it is when I saw it! My first thought is that the text book did not cheat us 🙂 The Saturn ring is consisting of icicles with some rocky materials. These particles come in different sizes. It is predicted that the ring can exist only for hundreds of millions of years, then it overlaps with human beings’ existence!
What’s cool about our universe? (a themed party and a casual presentation @ Cafe B-612)
The solar system: the scientists predicted that there are more planets in the solar system than we currently know. Pluto was discovered in 1930s, and its first image was seen in 2015. Pluto is currently called a dwarf planet. To be a planet, it has to have its own clear orbit. Pluto is spinning with many other objects (asteroids?). We have sent the probe to Venus, but it was malfunctioned after x minutes because of the heat. Juno is the probe NASA launched last year for Jupiter and its moons.
The exoplanets: NASA has a team of scientists whose daily life is looking for exoplanets. The exoplanets were confirmed in 1990s. Lately, we found an exoplanet called K2-18b that contains water in its atmosphere. Is this K2-18b habitable for life?!
The universe: as for the origin of the universe, we mostly use the “big bang” theory proposed by Hawking. One of the evidences for the big bang is called the “red shift”; that is, the stars that are more far away from us are more “red”. They are moving faster away from us then the stars located closer. Besides the black holes, there are also the “black matters” in the universe– the scientists are not always able to explain what they observed from what they computed so they believe that there are other things that have gravitational forces in the darkness that affect the orbits, which they called the “black matters”.
Space technologies: The Hubble has sent back many cool space pictures. It is going to retire and off the orbit soon. James Webb Space Telescope will be launched to the orbit in 2021. Very recently, we have put together the first image of the black hole.
The following pictures are taken from the real Gemini module. The Gemini project is before Apollo and exercised the technologies to prepare the moon landing mission. This module is located on top of the rocket and had sent two astronauts safely back to the earth.
I was always very amazed by these units we invented:
