Astrophysics

Editor's Note - I know it's the summer but I swear I've been very, very busy with an auxiliary side project. Blogs will increase in frequency after this, I swear!

Save for its name, Uranus isn't really the most memorable planet out there. Being far enough away from Earth that any amateur observer would barely be able to make out coherent details of its surface, let alone the very faint bands and storms that any self-respecting gas giant would have. As a result, astronomical focus has typically been on its...

We're going back to Jupiter! JUICE, or the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer, has launched this Friday and is now headed towards Jupiter. There, it'll collect and survey the three icy and large moons for show - Ganymede, Callisto and Europa, each with its own subsurface ocean to explore. This'll probably be done through scanning the surfaces for the...

Being as rare as they are, Carbon Stars are incredibly mysterious.

These days, red supergiants captivate the public eye, stars like Betelgeuse or Antares the subject of intense debate or false 'supernova timer' videos. However, there is one (two, actually, counting the WR stars) class of star which far exceeds the luminance of a Red Supergiant, that being the Luminous Blue Variable, or LBV (which you may sometimes...

As someone who interests themselves with Astrophysics, I often have to choose which brick to dislodge first, and that brick has been Stellar Science. As a result, I have stumbled upon "WR" stars, many of which possess interesting properties that have piqued my interest. WR Stars are absolute beasts to study, for one!

Moving on, we now reach the fifth planet in the TRAPPIST-1 system, TRAPPIST-1e.

TRAPPIST-1d is the third planet in the TRAPPIST-1 planetary system, orbiting in the inner edge of the star's habitable zone. Key word: Habitable Zone. As a result, this planet has become one of the most famous in the system (right behind TRAPPIST-1e, which is even more analogous to our own Earth).

Continuing on with our TRAPPIST-1 series, we now move on to TRAPPIST-1c, the second-closest planet to the star TRAPPIST-1.

So, as mentioned before, this will be part one of a seven-part series on the planets orbiting TRAPPIST-1.