Pythagorean Astronomy: Proxima b

Posted on 26 August 2016 by Chris North

After a few weeks of rumours, the announcement of the discovery of an Earth-size (maybe!) planet around the Sun’s nearest neighbour has caused quite a stir. The planet is more massive than the Earth, but probably not by much, and sits in a location where liquid water could (at least in principle), exist on it’s
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Pythagorean Astronomy: Mission Juno

Posted on 28 July 2016 by Chris North

In July 2016 NASA’s Juno spacecraft completed its five year journey to the planet Jupiter. On board is a suite of instruments and experiments that will provide exquisite insight into the history of our Solar System’s largest planet. The process of Jupiter’s formation is a long-standing mystery that planetary scientists have been trying to answer for decades. As the University
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Pythagorean Astronomy: The Origins of Black Holes

Posted on 30 June 2016 by Chris North

On 15th June 2016 the LIGO collaboration released more detections of gravitational waves. As with the first detection, announced back in February, these gravitational waves were emitted by pairs of black holes, spiralling together and merging, But of course, those black holes need to come from somewhere, and in this case it’s thought to be the deaths of
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Pythagorean Astronomy: New worlds

Posted on 26 May 2016 by Chris North

This month’s focus is on two different stories, but both involving the same spacecraft: Kepler. Edward Gomez and I discuss a result from the outer edge of our Solar System, regarding the icy world that goes by the catchy name of “2007 OR10”. By combining information from the Kepler Spacecraft, now in the second phase
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Pythagorean Astronomy: Interplanetary explorers

Posted on 29 April 2016 by Chris North

In this month’s instalment, Edward Gomez and I chat about interplanetary explorers to the icy worlds of Pluto and Ceres, and Cassini’s capture of interstellar dust as it passed through the Saturn system. And, of course, we look ahead to May’s Transit of Mercury, which we’ll be viewing with members of the public and school groups here
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Pythagorean Astronomy: to Mars – and Beyond!

Posted on 31 March 2016 by Chris North

March 2016 saw the launch of the first part of Europe’s two-part mission to Mars. The mission, called ExoMars, comprises the “Trace Gas Orbiter” – the part that’s just launched – and a large rover, which launches in 2018. The orbiter will sniff the atmosphere to test for evidence of past  – or maybe even present – life. Elsewhere
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