Solar System Moon Facts
In this article, we will be discussing some facts about moons of the solar system, including the number of moons each planet has, the naming convention for the planetary body moons, and which planet reigns…
General
Holiday Celebrations In Space
As we enter the holiday season, let’s see how the astronauts celebrate them on the ISS and How some historical missions have celebrated these holidays. One of the most famous space missions to occur during…
Messier 23
Messier 23 is a bright, large open star cluster located in the constellation Sagittarius. M23 has an estimated age of at least 220 million years, which makes it one of the older known open clusters in…
Black Holes: An Introduction
Black holes are a region of spacetime that exhibits gravitational acceleration so strong that nothing, including light itself, can escape. The boundary of the black hole from which no light can escape is called the event horizon. Although the…
Top 5 Most Reliable Winter Astronomical Targets
Winter can always be a tough time in the Pacific Northwest with cold temperatures, cloudy and wet weather, and the potential for some light snow thrown in to make things interesting. With the shorter days…
Messier 22 Sagittarius Cluster
With a visual magnitude of 5.5, M22 is the brightest globular cluster visible from the mid-northern latitudes. However, as it lies in the southern constellation Sagittarius, M22 never rises very high in the sky and…
What Is Dark Energy?
In the standard model of cosmology, the total mass–energy of the universe is said to contain 5% of ordinary matter and energy, 27% of dark matter, and 68% of what is known as dark energy. In this article, we will be taking a…
The Conjunction Of Saturn And Jupiter
On the Winter Solstice, December 21st, 2020, Saturn and Jupiter will conjoin in the southwest sky 45 minutes after sunset. The 2 largest planets in the solar system will look like one large star. The…
Messier 21
Messier 21 is an open cluster that consists mainly of small, faint stars, but is also home to a few blue giants. The cluster contains about 57 confirmed members, but is pretty densely packed. It…
Supernovas
The celestial object known today as supernovas has undergone some evolution. The first version of the term was “supernovae”, which is thought to have been coined during 1931 Caltech lectures by Walter Baade and Fritz Zwicky. The term…