Astronomy Facts

Why we look up?

Rogue Planets - What Are They?

• Without Sun, they’re basically orphans, cast away, molten but frozen.

Now you may ask, what’s a planet? What defines it? And why your favorite Pluto isn’t one? Blame Neil Degrasse Tyson for figuring out.

You ask, how did the moon form or the sun form? Or how old is our galaxy or our whole universe which is believed to be 14 billion years old, is it true? What’s beyond the farthest we can go? Just generating some hype there. In this blog, I want people to know the basics of astronomy and looking up so that they can be astonished by what’s up in the sky and not take it for granted.

Stars

• You see the sun? Yeah, that giant yellow ball? Oh, It’s not yellow - the sun is white in color but we’ll come to that.
• Your beloved sun was formed after rising from the ashes of stars.
• When a giant/big star dies it creates an explosion and that’s called a “Supernova”.
• Also, a star doesn’t look like what your teacher drew you in kindergarten.
• Oxygen, carbon, calcium, iron all burned fiery in stars.
• There’s a reason we’re made of star stuff. All of this is inside us.
• Remnants of Kepler, Socrates, or even Stephen Hawking, you might just be breathing those atoms.
• You know that big star you call sun? It was formed after 7 billion years of the universe created.
• Newton Halley (the guy behind Haley’s comet) made the first star map of the sky of the southern hemisphere.
• Also, some stars are already dead by the time their light reaches us and we’re able to see. What do I mean by that?
  • Pssst. You’re seeing the past always.
  • Moon - You’re seeing 1 second into the past.
  • Sun - 8 mins into the past.
  • Neptune - 4 hours
  • A Light year is 9.46 trillion miles
  • And our nearest brightest neighbor, Proxima Centauri to the sun is 4 light years away.
  • Psst. Coming back to the stars.
• You are looking at the night sky. You look at some stars bright and some very dim.
  • It may be because some stars are closer to you or some stars are far but very bigger.
  • Or it can be 2 or more stars dancing around giving us the illusion of one bright star.
  • You just have to look closely. Get your telescopes on.
• 90% of the atoms in the universe and 2/3 of your body are Hydrogen.

Where Everything Comes From?

• Earth
  • First, Let’s Talk about our beloved planet - watch this video to see how big ;) our planet is.
• Constellations - Patterns in the sky to help understand similar patterns.
• Comet - Message from god Haha - NO. It’s mostly made of ice and rocks and if they come near the sun.
  • They lose a part and what remains after heating, is what you see. The trailing gas bcoz the sun bakes it.
  • After too much heating, evaporation happens and then comes your Fearful “Asteroid”.
• A meteoroid are small rocks that fall to the earth after the earth’s atmosphere beats it to the ground.
• How did the moon form? Turns out our planet collided with another planet and all the debris formed slowly turned into the moon over billions of years.
  • But there are multiple theories to this. Moon was 10x closer back then. Much brighter. As Moon is responsible for tidal waves. Seas formed. Tides were 1k higher than.
  • Tidal Friction pushed moon away.
• Talking about moons. We have only 1. Jupiter has 53 moons + 26 long due to be named. But Saturn beats it with its tally of 82.
• A cluster is a group of stars/galaxies together.
• The Virgo cluster contains our beloved Milky Way Galaxy and the neighboring galaxy “AndroMeda” which is only 2.5 million light years away.
  • But don’t worry they are going to meet each other one day forming the best dance the universe may ever see.
• Our Earth was formed from gas & dust from the sun. Ancient forests grew and died and sank. Then you got coal.
• Ghost Stars - Stars which are dead by the time their light reaches earth.
• Earth’s atmosphere bends the rays of sunlight like a sens so we see the image before it is actually there hence you can experience the sunrise and sunset.

What the Universe Consists of?

• 90% Hydrogen (H) as previously mentioned.
• After H, He (Helium) is the 2nd most abundant - 50x than all other elements combined.
• Helium is in the sun’s corona. And Also the Greek sun god. That’s crazy.
• Now to Lithium - 3rd largest with 3 protons in its nucleus.
• Lithium gets destroyed by all nuclear reactions.
• Carbon - Forged in the core of stars same as oxygen.
• 10% of Earth’s crust is Aluminium.
• Titanium - Military aircraft, strong metal.
• Titan - Saturn’s Largest moon.
• First atomic bomb had “Uranium” as an active ingredient.
• Plutonium in “Nagasaki” bomb.

More coming soon… Adding more in coming week. <!–

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