Omg Particles Are Such Players - JUST CHOOSE ONE!!!

Poor, poor moon :(

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“boy, girl, time for dinner!”

Wow, that’s gorgeous :o

That’s gotta be one of the most beautiful nebulae I’ve laid eyes on! And, it looks like a heart too!

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IC 1805: The Heart Nebula : What energizes the Heart Nebula? First, the large emission nebula dubbed IC 1805 looks, in whole, like a human heart. The nebula glows brightly in red light emitted by its most prominent element: hydrogen. The red glow and the larger shape are all powered by a small group of stars near the nebula’s center. In the center of the Heart Nebula are young stars from the open star cluster Melotte 15 that are eroding away several picturesque dust pillars with their energetic light and winds. The open cluster of stars contains a few bright stars nearly 50 times the mass of our Sun, many dim stars only a fraction of the mass of our Sun, and an absent microquasar that was expelled millions of years ago. The Heart Nebula is located about 7,500 light years away toward the constellation of Cassiopeia. Coincidentally, a small meteor was captured in the foreground during imaging and is visible above the dust pillars. At the top right is the companion Fishhead Nebula. via NASA

Woah :O

COOOOOLLL

I’ve never gotten to see a full solar eclipse, just a partial one that happened a few years ago. 

Maybe I’ll have better luck in the future?

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Traveling for 4 days, Just to See 30 Seconds of The Full Annular Eclipse! It Was worth All the Effort!

via reddit

They’re so lonely :(

Wait I guess that means I’m an electron since I’m #foreveralone. I feel like I should be sad about this but electrons are cool so I can’t really be lol.

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Poor electrons

Woah :o

That is soooooooo cool!

I don’t do excess research into exoplanets - like I do stars - but wow. Isn’t it just amazing how much information we can get from such a far object??? Science has really come so far, it brings a single tear to my eye ;)

I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more info!

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YALE’S EXPRES LOOKS TO THE SKIES OF A SCORCHING, DISTANT PLANET

Yale technology is giving astronomers a closer look at the atmosphere of a distant planet where it’s so hot the air contains vaporized metals.

The planet, MASCARA-2 b, is 140 parsecs from Earth – or roughly 2.68 quadrillion miles. It’s a gas giant, like Jupiter. However, its orbit is 100 times closer to its star than Jupiter’s orbit is to our Sun.

The atmosphere of MASCARA-2 b reaches temperatures of more than 3,140 degrees Fahrenheit, putting it on the extreme end of a class of planets known as hot Jupiters. Astronomers are keenly interested in hot Jupiters because their existence had been unknown until 25 years ago and they may offer new information about the formation of planetary systems.

“Hot Jupiters provide the best laboratories for developing analysis techniques that will one day be used to search for biosignatures on potentially habitable worlds,” said Yale astronomer Debra Fischer, the Eugene Higgins Professor of Astronomy and co-author of a new study that has been accepted by the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Fischer is the guiding force behind the instrument that made the discovery possible: the Extreme PREcision Spectrometer (EXPRES), which was built at Yale and installed on the 4.3-meter Lowell Discovery Telescope near Flagstaff, Ariz.

The primary mission of EXPRES is finding Earth-like planets based on the slight gravitational influence they have on their stars. This precision also comes in handy when looking for atmospheric details of far-away planets, the researchers said.

Here’s how it works.

As MASCARA-2 b crosses the direct line of sight between its host star and Earth, elements in the planet’s atmosphere absorb starlight at specific wavelengths – leaving a chemical fingerprint. EXPRES is able to pick up those fingerprints.

Using EXPRES, Yale astronomers and colleagues from the Geneva Observatory and Bern University in Switzerland, as well as the Technical University of Denmark, found gaseous iron, magnesium, and chromium in MASCARA-2 b’s atmosphere.

“Atmospheric signatures are very faint and difficult to detect,” said co-author Sam Cabot, a graduate student in astronomy at Yale and leader of the study’s data analysis. “Serendipitously, EXPRES offers this capability, since you need very high-fidelity instruments to find planets outside our own solar system.”

The study’s lead author, astronomer Jens Hoeijmakers of the Geneva Observatory, said EXPRES also found evidence of different chemistry between the “morning” and “evening” sides of MASCARA-2 b.

“These chemical detections may not only teach us about the elemental composition of the atmosphere, but also about the efficiency of atmospheric circulation patterns,” Hoeijmakers said.

Along with other advanced spectrometers such as ESPRESSO, built by Swiss astronomers in Chile, EXPRES is expected to collect a wealth of new data that may dramatically advance the search for exoplanets – planets orbiting stars other than our own Sun.

“The detection of vaporized metals in the atmosphere of MASCARA-2 b is one of the first exciting science results to emerge from EXPRES,” Fischer said. “More results are on the way.”

Looks like I’m getting a new wallpaper

It’s so beautiful ;(

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Sunset in the Kananaskis Valley, Alberta. [2853 x 3566] [oc] - Author: ProjectOxide on reddit

It’s alive ALIVE!!!!!

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Hubble Takes Closer Look at Not-So-‘Dead’ Neighbor : Because they lack stellar nurseries and contain mostly old stars, elliptical galaxies — Like Messier 110 — are often considered “dead” when compared to their spiral relatives. But scientists have spotted signs of a population of young, blue stars at Messier 110’s center, hinting that this neighbor of our Milky Way may not be so “dead” after all. (via NASA)

This is why I’m so excited for the supernova chapter ehehe

It’s so amazing that this little dot growing a bit but still being little is a supernova! 

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This is the galaxy Messier 85! 🌌🌌🌌

Just last month, scientists found a supernova taking place! The event is named SN 2020nlb and has been continuously getting brighter. It is classified as a Type Ia supernova, which results from a white dwarf exploding within a binary star system. The brightness of this supernova can be used to calculate the distance to the galaxy! 🤩🤩🤩

Taken by me (Michelle Park) using the Slooh Canary Two telescope.

THE LIFE OF A STAR: CLASSIFICATION

In order to understand the life of a star, we must understand star classification.

        And there are SO many different ways to classify a star.

        In star classification, understanding the relationship between color and temperature is crucial. The greater the temperature of the star, the bluer they are (at their hottest, around 50,000 degrees Celcius), while red stars are cooler (at their coolest, around 3,000 degrees Celcius). This occurs on a wide range (fun fact: stars only come in red, orange, yellow, white, and blue, because stars are approximately something called a "black body"). For example, our Sun is a yellow star with a surface temperature of 5,500 degrees Celcius (The Life of a Star).

        But why is this so? In order to understand that, I'm going to tell you about how stars live at all. This is what will determine the entire life of a star - something we'll be focusing on throughout this series. Two words: nuclear fusion.

        Nuclear fusion is "a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles (neutrons or protons). The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the release or absorption of energy." (Wikipedia) And this is where nuclear fusion gets REALLY important to stars. Throughout their lives, stars undergo nuclear fusion in their core. This is mostly in the form of fusing two or more hydrogen atoms into one or more helium atoms. This releases energy in the form of light (the pressure of nuclear fusion in the core also prevents the star from collapsing under the weight of gravity, something we'll get to later). The energy transports to the surface of the star and then radiates at an "effective temperature." (Britannica) 

        Stars are different colors due to differing amounts of energy. This is best explained by Einstein's e=mc2 or the mass-energy equivalence. In other words, the more mass something has, the more energy, and vice versa. Stars with greater mass undergo more nuclear fusion - and as such - emit more energy/temperature. And so, the bigger the star, the greater the temperature, the bluer the star; and the smaller the star, the lower the temperature, the redder the star (Universe Today). Another way to think about this is this: the hotter something is, the shorter frequency of energy it emits. Blue light has a shorter frequency than red light, and so, higher energy/temperature stars are bluer.

        Another important classification of a star is its luminosity (or the brightness, or the magnitude of the star). (The Life of a Star)

        The most famous diagram classifying stars is the Herzsprung Russell Diagram, shown in this article's picture. The x-axis of the diagram shows surface temperature, hottest left, and coolest right. The y-axis shows brightness, brighter higher, and dimmer lower. There are main groups on the diagram. 

        Most stars fall in a long band stretching diagonally, starting in the upper left corner and ending in the right lower corner, this is called the main sequence. The main sequence shows stars which mostly use their life going through nuclear fusion. This process takes up most of a star's life. Most stars which are hotter and more luminous fall in the upper left corner of the main sequence and are blue in color. Most stars that have lower-masses are cooler, and redder falls in the lower right. Yellow stars like our Sun fall in the middle. 

         The group located in the lower-left corner are smaller, fainter, and bluer (hotter) and are called White Dwarfs. These stars are a result of a star like our Sun one day running out of Hydrogen.

          The group located right above the righter's main sequence is larger, cooler, brighter, and a more orange-red or red, are called Red Giants. They are also part of the dying process of a star like our sun. Above them in the upper right corner are Red Super Giants, massive, bright, cooler, and much more luminous. To the left of the Red Super Giants are similar stars which are just hotter and bluer and are called the Blue Super Giants.

        That explains the most famous star classifying diagram. The important thing to remember is the data on the chart is not what a star will be like it's whole life. A star's position on the chart will change like our Sun will one day do.

        In a ThoughtCo. article on the Hertzsprung Russell Diagram, Carolyn Collins Petersen wrote: "One thing to keep in mind is that the H-R diagram is not an evolutionary chart. At its heart, the diagram is simply a chart of stellar characteristics at a given time in their lives (and when we observed them). It can show us what stellar type a star can become, but it doesn't necessarily predict the changes in a star." ( The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram and the Lives of Stars)

        And this will continue to be important in the next chapters. Stars don't just stay in the same position their entire lives: they change in their color, luminosity, and temperature. In this series, we'll be tracking how stars form, live and die - all dependent on these three factors - and nuclear fusion - again - super important :)

Previous -  Chapter 1: An Introduction

Next -  Chapter 3: Star Nurseries

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I love Schrodinger’s Cat memes

I might write something on quantum mechanics in the future, so I’ll probably dedicate an entire chapter to this cat. Maybe with a week’s worth of SC memes? Who knows!

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Erwin doesn’t like that.