This week’s cosmic quiz question was submitted by Daniel Wallace, who asked, “How do astronomers figure out the size of planets orbiting other stars (and even what their atmosphere is made of)?”
What? You don’t know what the Day of Lammas is?
Lammas is traditionally recognized as August 1st each year, and is celebrated by baking loaves of bread from the first wheat harvests. But there is a strong astronomical connection to this date as well.
This week 6-year-old Kambreigh Schooley asked us why she can sometimes see the moon during the daytime…What a great question!
To answer this question you need to first remember that one half of the moon is always illuminated by the Sun.
The longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century occurs on July 22nd, 2009…in the eastern hemisphere. The eclipse totality path passes through India, Tibet, China
Stand on the sidewalk and listen to the sound of a car as it approaches and passes by. You will notice that the pitch of the sound is higher as the car approaches and then becomes lower as it moves away. That change in pitch is the result of the Doppler Effect.
How does it happen? [...]
The night of May 5 through the early morning hours of May 6th will be the best time to see the Eta Aquarid meteor shower. This meteor shower results from none other than Halley’s comet, last seen passing by in 1986.
First of all, the North Star is not the brightest star in the sky–not even close. Its formal name is Polaris and at magnitude +2, it barely makes the top 50 brightest stars in the sky (#48, not including the Sun).
Secondly, Polaris is not the closest star to the Sun, being 430 light years away.
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