Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. In the previous vlog we saw how the cyclical formation and destruction of stars leads to a metal rich Intergalactic Medium, and that the presence of metals in the Intergalactic Medium is paramount to the formation of planets. Planetary formation is still for the most part terra incognita, but…
6th of March – Dawn arrives at Ceres. The space probe Dawn, which recently took some stunning pictures of the asteroid Vesta, will encounter Ceres in March. Ceres is the largest object in the Asteroid Belt and the only dwarf planet in the inner solar system. It has a diameter of 950 km and a…
What does it actually look like in the asteroid belt? Is it anything like as dense as is shown in films? Or is it more like you can see one or two rocks in the distance? Matthew, Amsterdam Contrary to popular belief, the asteroid belt is mostly empty and it’s not the crammed zone of…
A pulsar is a highly magnetised fastly rotating neutron star which formed during a supernova explosion. The name pulsar is a portmanteau for pulsating star, because it emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation usually in radio, x-ray or gamma-ray light. They were first discovered by Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Antony Hewish in 1967, when they…
The Astroholic 