Saturday, October 25, 2014

Asteroids

                                                               Asteroids
     Asteroids are big space rocks. There are millions if not billions 
of asteroids in space. If they have the size of a planet, they are called planetoids. They are found in the inner and outer solar systems and  all throughout space. The first spotted asteroid is called Ceres. It was founded by an astronomer by the name of  Giuseppe Piazzi, and since it had the size of a planet, he thought that it was one. Later, astronomers found similar objects and they didn't classify them as planets. Instead, they called them the term "asteroids".
     The asteroid belt is a ring of clustered asteroids located between Mars and Jupiter, separating the inner and the outer planets. There is another belt known as the Kuiper Belt. It's near Pluto, and it contains of icy materials unlike the asteroid belt.
    There has been a lot of misunderstandings and I just wanted to clear it up. Meteoroids are small particles of asteroids. (Most of the time, they come from comets.) If they come close to the Earth's atmosphere, they are called meteors. Meteorites are the remains of the meteor that survived the Earth's atmosphere and are, later, found on Earth. Many people have trouble figuring out the difference between these terms, and I just wanted to tell you guys about it. (No idea who would debate about these things, but there are billions of people out there. There just has to be somebody. XD)       If you see tons of meteors going in "one direction" in the sky, it is possible that you have seen a meteor shower. They are caused by comets when they go near the sun. Bits of their icy material falls off causing the particles to float in space. If, by chance, a group of the particles are near the Earth, a meteor shower occurs.

Saturday, October 18, 2014

Comets

                                Comets
     Comets are huge chunks of dusty ice in space. They have their own orbit course and it's very rare for humans to see one. Their orbit course is very long and it would usually be around the sun, because of the star's strong gravitational pull. Comets are basically made of ice, dust, and gases. Comets have a carbon-filled layer on the outside that protects the inside. You can call them dusty snowballs if you want. If one was ever to appear in our solar system at night, than, with telescopes, we could see a tail, called a coma, at its end. That's because of the sun's radiation on the comet, heating up its gases and ice, making it evaporate. Chunks of rock and dust close to the surface of the comet, begins to detach from its place and falls out. Vapor, dust, and the rocks cloud behind the nucleus, the comet, and follows it in its path. 
     Astronomers believe that comets come from the Oort Cloud and the scattered disc. Long term orbit comets, comets whose orbit period is 200 years or more, come from the Oort Cloud (the name was named after the Danish astronomer named Jan Oort) and short term orbit comets, comets whose orbit period is 200 years or less, come from the scattered disc. Jan Oort hypothesized that there is a cloud of ice way beyond Pluto and it contains millions if not billions of comets. The scattered disc is a place where many icy dwarf planets, such as Pluto, populate. Astronomers believe that comets originated from the scattered disc due to all of the icy materials and substances in that place.
Halley's Comet
    There is a comet known as the Halley's Comet. (I'm sure you all know this comet.) This comet travels for a short time in a short orbit around this galaxy. It only takes about 75-76 years for it to be visible to the people on Earth to see it with the naked eye. If your lucky, you can see it twice in your lifetime. Many people feel that this comet is very unlucky and it can cause many horrible things to happen. I, for one, feels very sorry for Halley. I mean, it's not its fault that you had a bad day. The only thing you can blame is yourself.

Saturday, October 11, 2014

Stars

                                                  Stars  
    If you went online and searched up "stars" the articles that pop up will be filled with words and sentences that a normal grade and/or middle school-er wouldn't understand. Now I'm going to try and change that. 
     On Earth, in the city, we can see very little stars in the sky. The reason behind this is that we have a ton of city lights that block our eyesight from seeing the bright stars. If we go into the country-side, we would see numerous amounts of stars since there is not a lot of light in the rural areas. 
    Stars can be born in several different types of nebulae. One type of nebulae is called an emission nebula. It's the most brightest and colorful nebula due to its different color gases and dust. 
Binary Stars
    Stars are made with the gases and dust in the nebulae. With a sudden jolt, the gases and dust begins to crash into each other making the center of the collision heat up. The hot center is called a protostar, and someday, it will become a star. Now , you may all think that the shining stars are just alone and individual. But that is not true. During the collision of the gases and dust, they sometimes divide into 2 - 4 stars. These groups are called binary stars. So when you look up in the sky and you see a star, think that maybe it's not just one, but multiples of stars grouped together. (Sometimes the separated parts, when forming the star, can actually become a planet, comet, or an asteroid.)
     Stars are made of mostly hydrogen and helium. In the core of our sun, scientists predicted that it has something known as plasma, this mixture of electrons and protons that were pulled apart by the hydrogen atoms. Astronomers think that the plasma is about 15 million degrees Celsius.
     According to astronomers, the stars brightness depends on  the surface temperature of the star. The hottest star is the blue star and the coolest is the red dwarf star. 
     As time passes, the stars become old and they become white dwarfs. White dwarfs are about the size of Earth. It, the white dwarf, keeps itself intact, unbroken, and from collapsing by high speed electrons moving all around it. Our sun will become one, billions of years from now.
Supernova
     The bigger the star, the faster it will die; However, the stars still live for a very long time. Stars die in a super huge explosion called supernova which is when the star's core collapses and explodes. 
    After the explosion, a neutron star or a black hole may appear. If the core of a supernova is about 1.4 to 3 solar masses, weight of the star, the protons and electrons continues and forms into neutrons. This process creates neutron stars. If the solar mass of the core is more than 3, then the core becomes a black hole.
     After the supernova, the gases and dust remains gets reused and the process of forming a star begins again.