Off World

If Europa were our moon, would we have a water world teeming with alien life just next door?

What if Europa Was Our Moon?

Classifying Supernovae: The ‘Earth-shattering’ Kabooms

FromQuarkstoQuasars

We’ve all heard the story… Giant molecular cloud meets gravity, gravity makes star, star meets gravity and makes fusion. Fusion is the sum of hydrogen meets hydrogen (at its most basic form) and makes helium. Eventually hydrogen runs out of more hydrogen and BAM, helium meets helium to make carbon and oxygen… And so on […]

Can a Star Explode without Leaving any Remnant?

Light pollution and astronomy really don’t go hand in hand at all. Since a majority of the world’s population lives in built up areas, light pollution is becoming more and more of an issue, especially as the built up areas expand farther and farther out into the countryside. Light pollution may not be noticed quite […]

Light Pollution: Tips For Seeing The Stars

Throughout the universe, there are several underlying principles that we consider to be constants; for example, the speed of light in a vacuum. So many different aspects of our understanding of the universe comes from this one constant. If the speed of light wasn’t constant, GPS systems wouldn’t work, and we wouldn’t be able to […]

Is The Gravitational Constant Really Constant?

One of the most important things in astronomy – being able to determine the age of galaxies in the distant universe. Galaxies are good, they’re large and produce a bright light source for us to detect billions of years later. When finding the distance to objects closer to us, we use techniques such as parallax […]

Determining Distance Through The Lyman Limit

“Can a Star Explode without Leaving any Remnant? – The Explanation.” — Futurism

Supernova, something that we’ve all heard about at one time or another, are simply amazing celestial events. The type that we’re going to be looking at is today is Type II supernova. These occur when a neutron star or a black hole is left behind after the death of the star ie., after the supernova […]

What is a Type II Supernova?

Galaxy Classifications: From Dwarfs to Spirals and Beyond

Recently we published an article in regards to the trend of slowing star formation as the universe progresses towards its maturity. In 2012, a research study involving the Subaru Telescope (NAOJ), Very Large Telescope (VLT) and United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) discovered that the universe hit its star formation peak 11 billion years ago, and that it […]

Discussing The Trend of Slowing Star-Formation Rates:

The Milky Way is the galaxy in which we currently reside. It is classed as a barred spiral galaxy, although this is actually fairly difficult to determine from within the galaxy. It’s sort of like trying to determine what a house looks like from the outside by looking out of a window when you are […]

Infographic of the Most Astounding Facts About The Milky Way:

How Do We Know What Planets Are Made Of?

What is the Smallest Possible Size for a Star?

Question(s): “Is there a theoretical limit to how big can a star get, or would it collapse from gravity before? If no, then in theory could we get a star as big as a mini-galaxy?” Asked By: Théo De Freitas Neto The main determining factor in all of this is the mass of the star. The […]

Is There a Limit to How Large a Star Can Be?

We all like hearing about the biggest and the smallest, the heaviest and the lightest, as these categories represent the extremes of the universe…and they usually they are great for comparisons. Meet the heaviest of all the leptons, the Tauon (also known as the Tau Lepton or Tau Particle). The Tau lepton has a mass […]

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Colin Robson