What is a Solar Eclipse?

March 26, 2024March 27, 2024 / Emma / 18 Comments

This post has been updated and republished from Sept 2017.

A solar eclipse is the most amazing astronomical sight you’ll ever see.

Not only is it the only time you’ll ever be able to clearly see the “new moon” phase of the moon, it’s the only time you’ll ever see the sun’s corona. And it’s the only time that, under very specific circumstances, you can actually look directly at the sun for a few moments.

But it’s not just an astronomical event. It’s an experience. You can see the moon’s shadow rushing toward you. Nature falls silent. It’s night during the day.

And there’s one coming up on April 8, 2024.

So, let me tell you a bit about what’s happening in the sky—and give you a few important safety warnings!

(If you’re wondering what happened to our unit on active galaxies, not to worry–I’m still publishing the next post this week!)

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The Annular Eclipse

October 4, 2023October 4, 2023 / Emma / 7 Comments

An annular solar eclipse is…an interesting sight, to say the least.

(I sincerely hope the photographer didn’t fry his camera taking this picture. Enough light from the sun is still reaching us to fry your retina, or damage your optics…)

The annular eclipse is not to be confused with an annual eclipse. When my dad first got excited about it back in 2012, preparing us for the spectacular sight of a solar eclipse in May, I wondered why the heck we hadn’t done this every year before. I’d just never heard the word “annular” before!

Since there’s an annular solar eclipse coming up in just over a week, I thought I’d touch up this post from back in 2017! (Don’t worry–we will soon be back to our “regularly scheduled programming” on galaxies.)

So…what exactly is an annular solar eclipse?

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Star Luminosity Classes

May 2, 2018November 23, 2022 / Emma / Leave a comment

What do you think it would mean for a star to be in a specific luminosity class? I mean…does that mean they go to school to learn how to be bright?

(Ha, ha…yeah, I know, bad astronomy pun.)

Well…not quite.

Stars can be sorted in a lot of ways—and a good thing, too, because there are literally trillions upon trillions of them. Astronomers would be lost if we couldn’t sort them into groups to study.

They can be sorted according to spectral type (composition and temperature), apparent visual magnitude (how bright they look to the naked eye from Earth), and absolute visual magnitude (how bright they would look to the naked eye from ten parsecs away).

They can also be sorted according to their absolute bolometric magnitude (how bright they would look from ten parsecs away if the human eye could see all types of radiation).

And…they can even be sorted according to their luminosity.

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The Starlight We Can’t See

April 23, 2018November 23, 2022 / Emma / 2 Comments

Find yourself a dark, unpolluted night sky on a clear night free of clouds, and you are very likely to look up into the heavens and see a sight quite like this. It’s what we see of the Milky Way, our galaxy.

When I’m at an astronomy event with a sky like the one above, I find it absolutely incredible. Do you notice how the stars don’t all look the same?

A couple are startlingly bright, there are numerous stars that are somewhat dimmer, and if you look really hard, you notice that even the dark night background is sprinkled with stars so faint they can barely be seen.

But what if I told you that you’re not even seeing the half of it?

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What Causes the Lunar Phases?

March 7, 2018November 23, 2022 / Emma / Leave a comment

all-phases-of-the-moon-on-a-clear-dark-sky-516059951-59f0f494685fbe0011fc0523.jpg

We see it almost every night of our lives. For thousands of years, the greatest philosophers and astronomers alike have watched its face change and wondered why.

Step outside and observe the moon every day for a month and you will notice something fascinating. Over the course of the entire month, the moon will go through an entire cycle of phases—no more, no less.

But why?

The phases of the moon are something I’ve talked about before, but I wanted to spend some time on a few common misconceptions this time around and show you the truth behind the lunar phases.

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The True Brightness of Stars

February 21, 2018November 23, 2022 / Emma / 13 Comments

Have you ever looked up at the night sky and noticed that while relatively bright stars outline the constellations, there are numerous other stars that are almost too faint to see with the naked eye?

If you ever noticed this, you probably guessed that the brighter stars are literally brighter, and the fainter stars truly are fainter. Or maybe you guessed that they don’t vary in brightness that much, but fainter stars are much farther away.

But that’s not really true…or, at least, it’s not the whole answer.

So what’s the real reason why some stars appear to be brighter than others—and how can we tell how bright they really are?

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The Sun’s Magnetic Show

February 7, 2018November 23, 2022 / Emma / 9 Comments

Do you recognize the name Galileo Galilei?

Galileo was the classical astronomer who made the drawing above. I have little idea what his writing actually says—it’s in Latin—but it’s clear enough what this early diagram is all about.

It’s a drawing of his observations of the sun.

And it’s proof, discovered way back in Galileo’s time but not accepted until much later, that the sun actually rotates.

How do we know that?

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Spots on the Sun

January 31, 2018November 23, 2022 / Emma / 63 Comments

Have you ever looked at the sun, and seen something like this?

Now, before you decide to look at it right now and see what you see, it’s my responsibility as an amateur astronomer to remind you of the safety risks. Focusing your eyes on the sun is dangerous—there’s a reason our eyes automatically flinch away.

How dangerous, you ask? Dangerous enough to burn and even scar your retinas, permanently damaging or even destroying your vision.

Yes, I’m serious.

Now, all this is not to turn you off solar observing entirely. There are safe—and cheap—ways to look at the sun, and see its spots.

But what exactly are sunspots?

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The Solar Neutrino

January 24, 2018November 23, 2022 / Emma / 2 Comments

Ever heard of a neutrino?

Well, I guess now you have. But what exactly is a neutrino?

Don’t worry, they’re not harmful. They’re passing through you this very second and you’ll never notice them, not in your whole life. They’ll never hurt you because they just don’t interact with matter—including you—in the way you’d expect.

I’ll bet now you’re wondering where they even come from.

Well, as the diagram illustrates, they come from the sun. They’re kind of a side-effect of the nuclear reaction that powers the sun, and they radiate out from the sun in droves. But that’s not even the coolest bit.

We know how many neutrinos should come from the sun if our theories about its power generation are right. So if we can count them, we can prove those theories correct.

That’s when we encounter a bit of a problem. We can’t actually detect neutrinos.

So how the heck do we count them?

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Energy Flow from the Sun’s Core

January 17, 2018November 23, 2022 / Emma / Leave a comment

Ask any climate scientist how we should power our world without fossil fuels, and they’re bound to tell you about wind and solar power.

You might be surprised to know that both of these come from the sun. Solar panels collect the sun’s energy directly, but we wouldn’t even have wind if not for the sun.

Why? Because in order to move, you need energy. And not just you. I’m talking about every speck of material on Planet Earth that shifts an inch. It’s because it has energy.

That energy can come from a lot of places. Earth is still a dynamic world with a hot interior, but it’s not hot enough to sustain all the life and other movement on its surface. A lot of our planet’s energy comes from the sun.

But here’s the big question. How the heck does it get here?

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