The Young Astronomers Newsletter

  • Earth Day 2020

    Young Astronomers Blog, Volume 28, Number 9. On April 22, 1970, a senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson, proposed the idea of a “national teach-in on the environment.”  He recruited a young Denis Hayes as the national coordinator.  The focus of the event was to raise people’s awareness of critical issues facing the planet.  The first…

  • Houston, we’ve had a problem

    Young Astronomers Blog, Volume 28, Number 8. Something happened on April 13, 1970 – fifty years ago this month.  A spacecraft was heading for a landing on the Moon.  If successful, it would be humankind’s third landing on another object in space.  Part way to the Moon, there was a problem. Apollo oxygen tank 10024X-TA0009…

  • Harvard Computers

    Young Astronomers Blog, Volume 28, Number 7. Stars come in all sizes, colors and temperatures. They also have a spectrum consisting of dark (absorption) lines, which identify the elements in the star’s atmosphere. March is Women’s History Month. So, let’s recognize some of the prominent women astronomers of the early 20th century who played a…

  • Happy Pi Day and The Hierarchy of Numbers

    Young Astronomers Blog, Volume 28, Number 6. It’s March 14, 2020. So, HAPPY PI DAY! Yes, Pi = 3.14, get it? Anyway, Pi is a number. It’s one of many numbers. Pi is actually a calculated number. It is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Check it out – it…

  • The Great Observatories

    Young Astronomers Blog, Volume 28, Number 5. Light is all around us. When we look at the world, we can see incredible colors. However, visible light is only a very small part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Light is a particle and a wave. Light waves can be measured in terms of its wavelength and frequency.…

  • Discovering Pluto

    Young Astronomers Blog, Volume 28, Number 4. Remember Pluto? Yes, Pluto. It was a planet for a long time, then it wasn’t. Pluto was discovered ninety years ago on February 18, 1930. This is the story. Shortly before the turn of the century, that is the turn of the 19th century, there were five planets,…

  • Gravitational Waves

    Young Astronomers Blog, Volume 28, Number 3. In 1915, Albert Einstein overturned Newton’s theory of gravity. He published his General Theory of Relativity which said that gravity is the result of the warping of space/time rather than a force that extends across space. Einstein’s theory was based on his equivalence principle, which states that the…

  • Betelgeuse is Dimming

    Young Astronomers Blog, Volume 28, Number 2. Astronomers measure the magnitude of a star in a bit of a strange way that dates to Hipparchus. A negative magnitude is brighter than a positive magnitude. A difference of one magnitude is actually a 2.5 times difference in brightness. A star’s apparent magnitude is the perceived magnitude…

  • Underground Oceans

    Young Astronomers Blog, Volume 28, Number 1. Two of the most interesting moons in the solar system, other than Titan, are Enceladus and Europa. Enceladus is one of the smaller spherical moons of Saturn. Europa is one of the Galilean moons of Jupiter. Both moons are covered with water ice and astronomers believe they both…