Astronomy

Fall 2022 Stargazing: JWST Photos and Jupiter Opposition
Columns Stargazing

Fall 2022 Stargazing: JWST Photos and Jupiter Opposition

Karen Masters

Karen Masters shares her seasonal guide to stargazing, including her favorite JWST photos, Jupiter’s Opposition this September, and a calendar of major stargazing events this Fall.

Karen Masters shares her seasonal guide to stargazing, including her favorite JWST photos, Jupiter's Opposition this September, and a calendar of major stargazing events this Fall. Karen Masters is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Chair of Physics and Astronomy, and KINSC Director at Haverford College. JWST Images JWST, the “Just Wonderful Space Telescope” (here I am deliberately avoiding the official full name due to the ongoing name controversy, and instead amplifying Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s excellent renaming suggestion), has been wowing astronomers all over the world with its images of the cosmos since it achieved first light in February of this...
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Marking the Passage of Time: Spring 2022 Stargazing
Columns Stargazing

Marking the Passage of Time: Spring 2022 Stargazing

Karen Masters

While it may feel like we’re stuck in a repeating loop of Spring 2020, watching the night skies can remind us that the seasons do actually keep passing by. Here is your stargazing guide for Spring 2022.

While it may feel like we’re stuck in a repeating loop of Spring 2020, watching the night skies can remind us that the seasons do actually keep passing by. Indeed many cultures throughout history have used the night skies to mark the passing of time. In my home country of England, ancient peoples built Stonehenge, probably to track the motion of the Sun (the brightest star in the sky!) and mark the year. In New Zealand, the Maori used the first sighting of Matariki (also known as the Pleiades) to set the start of the new year. The hottest part...
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Autumnal Nights: The Full Moon and Evening Star
Columns Stargazing

Autumnal Nights: The Full Moon and Evening Star

Karen Masters

Read Haverford Physics and Astronomy Professor Karen Masters’ seasonal guide to stargazing. What’s in store this fall: full moons, eclipses, and Venus, bright in the night sky.

A photo of the moon and Venus in the sky. Photo by Sean Rozekrans via Wikimedia Commons. As the evenings draw in, the Full Moon is a beautiful and accessible stargazing object. As is the case in the Spring, many cultures have festivals during the Fall that are set by the Lunar Calendar, and so they are explicitly or implicitly tied to the Autumnal Moons. For example, the date of Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur is set by the “lunisolar” Hebrew calendar, which means it (usually) starts on the date of the closest New Moon to the Autumnal Equinox (the date when...
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What is Dark Matter?
Features

What is Dark Matter?

Hannah James

Dark matter is mysterious to many, and exploring this phenomenon usually leads to more questions than answers. Professors Dr. Karen Masters, associate professor of Physics and Astronomy, and Dr. Daniel Grin, assistant professor of Physics and Astronomy, provide key answers and explanations.

Dr. Karen Masters, Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy (left), Dr. Daniel Grin, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy (right). Dark matter is mysterious to many, and exploring this phenomenon usually leads to more questions than answers. Professors Dr. Karen Masters, associate professor of Physics and Astronomy, and Dr. Daniel Grin, assistant professor of Physics and Astronomy, provide key answers and explanations.  This NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the distribution of dark matter in the center of the giant galaxy cluster Abell 1689, containing about 1,000 galaxies and trillions of stars. Dark matter is an invisible form of matter...
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Russia’s Neutrino Detector: A New Realm of High-Energy Particle Physics
News

Russia’s Neutrino Detector: A New Realm of High-Energy Particle Physics

Lydia Guertin

Scientists in Russia recently launched a new telescope designed to detect heavy particles coming from all across the galaxy, moving us closer than ever to understanding extreme astrophysics.

Setup view of the Antares Neutrino Telescope, François Montanet Via Wikimedia Commons Some of the biggest mysteries in modern astronomy involve the emission of neutrinos, including high-energy astrophysical events like supernovae and black hole formation that also emit high-energy light in the form of gamma rays. These neutrinos are subatomic particles that interact very weakly with their surroundings, so they can only be observed using very sensitive telescopes, complicating the process to observe them. To further the studies of extreme phenomena like black holes, rapidly-rotating neutron stars called pulsars, and galaxy merger events, where two galaxies collide, scientists in Russia...
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Ingenuity: The First Powered Flight on Mars
News

Ingenuity: The First Powered Flight on Mars

Hannah James

Ingenuity, which landed on Mars in February 2021, is the first powered aircraft to take place on Mars. Exploring Mars from the air gives scientists a unique perspective: they will be able to survey Mars’ geology in ways never attempted before.

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter on the belly of the Perseverance rover, ready to be dropped off at the helicopter’s deployment location. Photo by NASA. Ingenuity, which landed on Mars in February 2021, is the first powered aircraft to take place on Mars. Exploring Mars from the air gives scientists a unique perspective: they will be able to survey Mars’ geology in ways never attempted before. The Perseverance Rover has recently made headlines as the most recent rover to be sent to the red planet. Its main objective is to detect signs of life and to collect rock and soil samples....
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Summer Stargazing: Black Holes and Shooting Stars
Columns Stargazing

Summer Stargazing: Black Holes and Shooting Stars

Karen Masters

Summer nights are short but warm, and many people spend time camping — an ideal activity to mix with stargazing. Try looking for Sagittarius, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, meteor showers, and even a partial eclipse of the sun this summer.

Scroll to the bottom of this article for a stargazing and astronomy calendar for Summer 2021. The summer is one of my favorite times for stargazing. The nights are short but warm, and many people spend time camping — an ideal activity to mix with stargazing. Try looking for Sagittarius, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, meteor showers, and even a partial eclipse of the sun this summer. You can see almost everything I suggest below without any equipment. Sagittarius is one of my favorite summer constellations to look for. Greek astronomers saw a centaur firing an arrow, but I always look for...
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What We’ve Learned from Juno’s Latest Laps Around Jupiter
News

What We’ve Learned from Juno’s Latest Laps Around Jupiter

Lydia Guertin

You may have seen the gorgeous pictures of Jupiter floating around your twitter feed, but they only scratch the surface of the incredible discoveries the Juno spacecraft has sent back to Earth.

Jupiter’s (cyclonic) south pole, taken by the Juno spacecraft. NASA, 2017. You may have seen the gorgeous pictures of Jupiter floating around your twitter feed, but they only scratch the surface of the incredible discoveries the Juno spacecraft has sent back to Earth. “Every 53 days, we go screaming by Jupiter, get doused by a fire hose of Jovian [pertaining to Jupiter] science, and there is always something new,” says Scott Bolton of his experience as principal investigator aboard the 10-year-old Juno mission.  Since July 4, 2016, when the Juno spacecraft was close enough to Jupiter to complete one orbit...
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News

Four New Exoplanets Discovered

Hannah James

The discovery of four new exoplanets gives insight into how scientists search for habitable or previously inhabited exoplanets.

An artist’s rendering of five planets orbiting TOI-1233, four of which were discovered using the Transiting Exoplanet Satellite Survey (TESS), an MIT-led NASA mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The discovery of four new exoplanets gives insight into how scientists search for habitable or previously inhabited exoplanets. Exoplanets are just like the planets in our very own solar system, but with one key difference: They orbit around other stars instead of the Sun. Because exoplanets orbit bright stars, they are very difficult to detect with telescopes, so the discovery of an exoplanet is a very big deal. MIT researchers recently discovered four new...
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Spring Skies: Martian Fever
Columns Stargazing

Spring Skies: Martian Fever

Karen Masters

Let Karen Masters, Associate Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Haverford, lead you on a stargazing journey through Spring 2021.

Photo by Sky Xe, via Wikimedia Commons. If you plan to go stargazing just once this spring, you should find the planet Mars. You cannot have missed how missions to Mars have been in the news recently, with three missions arriving at the planet in mid-February. The orbits of Mars and Earth line up every two years, creating a window of favorable conditions to send spacecrafts. During the last window which opened in July 2020, three separate spacecraft were launched: the “Hope” spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), China’s Tianwen-1 spacecraft, and a mission from NASA which includes both...
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