Universe

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Physical Realm
Universe Astronomical Instrument
Galaxy Milky Way, Andromeda
Planetary System Star, Brown Dwarf, Planet, Moon

Solar System Sun
Terrestrial Planet Mercury, Venus, Earth (Moon), Mars
Asteroid Belt Ceres, Vesta
Jovian Planet Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
Trans-Neptunian Object
Kuiper Belt Pluto, Haumea, Makemake
Scattered Disc Eris, Sedna, Planet X
Oort Cloud Etc. Scholz’s Star
Small Body Comet, Centaur, Asteroid

Posts

  • Halloween@NASA (10/31/2019) - The folks at NASA love Halloween, and they do something to celebrate every year. For example, the engineers at NASA Jet Propulsion Lab have been holding a pumpkin carving contest for almost a decade, and stories about their ingenuity invariably make it into the news. Here’s a video from Wired about their 2016 competition. Here’s … Continue reading Halloween@NASA
  • Milky Way Lost & Found (8/15/2018) - Have you seen the Milky Way? You may think that you have, but are you sure? Unless you live in an extremely remote area, or you’ve visited one, then you probably haven’t seen our own galaxy, the Milky Way, very well, or at all. Worse yet, you may not even realize that it’s missing. The … Continue reading Milky Way Lost & Found

Resources

These are organized by a classification scheme developed exclusively for Cosma. More…

General

Dictionary

universe : a distinct field or province of thought or reality that forms a closed system or self-inclusive and independent organization — Webster

OneLook, Free Dictionary, Wiktionary, Urban Dictionary

space : a boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction — Webster

OneLook, Free Dictionary, Wiktionary, Urban Dictionary

Thesaurus

Roget’s II (Thesaurus.com), Merriam-Webster Thesaurus, Visuwords

Encyclopedia

Universe The Universe is all of space and time and their contents, including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. While the spatial size of the entire Universe is still unknown, it is possible to measure the observable universe. — Wikipedia

Encyclopædia Britannica

Space is the boundless three-dimensional extent in which objects and events have relative position and direction. Physical space is often conceived in three linear dimensions, although modern physicists usually consider it, with time, to be part of a boundless four-dimensional continuum known as spacetime. The concept of space is considered to be of fundamental importance to an understanding of the physical universe. However, disagreement continues between philosophers over whether it is itself an entity, a relationship between entities, or part of a conceptual framework. — Wikipedia

Encyclopædia Britannica

Cosmos: SAO Encyclopedia of Astronomy (Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing)
Encyclopedia of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy (Eric Weisstein’s World of Astronomy, Wolfram Research)
Astrophysics (Eric Weisstein’s World of Physics, Wolfram Research)

Introduction


Portal

Astronomy Guide (Library of Congress)
Astronomy Selected Internet Resources (Library of Congress)
Astronomy and Astrophysics Science Tracer Bullet (Library of Congress)
Archaeoastronomy Science Tracer Bullet (Library of Congress)
Astronomy Subject Primer (National Network of Libraries of Medicine)
Astrophysics, Astronomy, Astrochemistry, Astrobiology & Cosmology Center (Martindale’s Reference Desk)
Space Portal (Wikipedia)
Astronomy Portal (Wikipedia)

Search

Space & Astronomy (Wolfram Alpha)
Astronomy (Wolfram Alpha)
Astrophysics (Wolfram Alpha)

Science


Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It applies mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in an effort to explain the origin of those objects and phenomena and their evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and comets; the phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, all phenomena that originate outside Earth’s atmosphere are within the purview of astronomy.

Astronomy is one of the oldest of the natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history, such as the Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Nubians, Iranians, Chinese, Maya, and many ancient indigenous peoples of the Americas performed methodical observations of the night sky. Historically, astronomy has included disciplines as diverse as astrometry, celestial navigation, observational astronomy, and the making of calendars, but professional astronomy is now often considered to be synonymous with astrophysics. — Wikipedia

Encyclopædia Britannica

Astrophysics is the branch of astronomy that employs the principles of physics and chemistry to ascertain the nature of the astronomical objects, rather than their positions or motions in space. Among the objects studied are the Sun, other stars, galaxies, extrasolar planets, the interstellar medium and the cosmic microwave background. Their emissions are examined across all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, and the properties examined include luminosity, density, temperature, and chemical composition. Because astrophysics is a very broad subject, astrophysicists typically apply many disciplines of physics, including mechanics, electromagnetism, statistical mechanics, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, relativity, nuclear and particle physics, and atomic and molecular physics. — Wikipedia

Britannica

Outline

Outline of Space sciences (Wikipedia)

Preservation

History

History of Astronomy (Ask an Astronomer, Cornell University)

Quotation

Quotations Page Bartlett’s

Museum

Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (YouTube Channel)

Library

WorldCat, Library of Congress, UPenn Online Books, Open Library

Participation

Education



SciShow Astronomy, Astrophysics and Space (YouTube Channel)
SciShow Space (YouTube Channel)

Teaching Astronomy Internet Resources (Library of Congress)
Educator Resources (Smithsonian Air & Space Museum)
AstroEdu (International Astronomical Union)

Universe (Space Place, NASA)
What’s in Space (Space Place, NASA)
The Universe (Cosmos4Kids)

Course



Crash Course Astronomy (YouTube)

Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (MIT Open Courseware)
Physics and Astronomy (Coursera)
OER Commons: Open Educational Resources

Community

Occupation


Careers in Astronomy (Ask an Astronomer, Cornell University)
The Universe (Ask an Astronomer, Cornell University)

Organization

International Astronomical Union (IAU)
American Astronomical Society (AAS)

Blog

The Science Geek : Astronomy, space and space travel for the non scientist
Astronomy Café

News

Space & Planetary Science EurekaAlert (American Association for the Advancement of Science)
Sky & Telescope Astronomy News
Space.com
Phys.org
ScienceDaily
Scientific American
Smithsonian Magazine

Government

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (California Institute of Technology)
International Space Agencies (NASA)

Document

USA.gov

Expression



What Space Smells Like (Megan Garber, The Atlantic)

Fun


Humor

How To Go To Space (with XKCD!)

Arts

Astronomy in the Arts (Ask an Astronomer, Cornell University)

Poem

OEDILF: The Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form

Music


Song Lyrics

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Cosma Posts

  • Dark, Deep & Spooky… (8/8/2017) - Today’s physics is “probably” not the kind of thing that you, or at least your parents and grandparents, learned about in school (unless you happen to be a Physicist). Even the most casual science buff knows that today it’s all about exotic stuff like dark matter (NASA), ghost particles (FermiLab) and “spooky action at a … Continue reading Dark, Deep & Spooky…
  • Enterprise (1/22/2017) - Star Trek fans, take notice. Here’s a cool new 360° video that takes you where you’ve never gone before… or well, at least not outside of a 2D screen. It’s a grand up-close tour of the Enterprise, and it was posted by CBS to promote the series. Check it out! (This is a 360° YouTube … Continue reading Enterprise
  • ExoMars (10/19/2016) - Oct. 21 Update: Unfortunately, the ExoMars mission’s Schiaparelli lander did not make a successful landing due to technical difficulties, and the crash site has been found. Happily, the mother ship did successfully enter orbit. Why Schiaparelli Probe’s Mars ‘Crash Land’ Is No Failure (Mason Peck, Newsweek) Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter views Schiaparelli landing site (ESA) Here’s … Continue reading ExoMars
  • Exoplanet Junket (6/2/2018) - I’m on a vacation of sorts, so it’s no surprise that stories about travel tend to catch my eye. However, it is surprising if the story happens to be about something that NASA’s done. This week NASA released a new project that they’ve dubbed the Exoplanet Travel Bureau. The core of the project consists of … Continue reading Exoplanet Junket
  • Get Lost in Space! (9/14/2018) - Way back in August, in anticipation of the start of a new school year, I set out to update the pages on this site related to space. Those pages tend to be popular among the teachers and students who use Cosma, and I happen to enjoy updating them, too. It sounded like a short, fun … Continue reading Get Lost in Space!
  • Great Views of Earth (4/22/2018) - April 22nd is Earth Day! In honor of that, here are some great ways to see the honoree. First, you can get a nice view from this neat 360° Video from Seeker. It essentially shows you what it would feel like if you could just fly straight up and see the Earth from space. National … Continue reading Great Views of Earth
  • Halloween@NASA (10/31/2019) - The folks at NASA love Halloween, and they do something to celebrate every year. For example, the engineers at NASA Jet Propulsion Lab have been holding a pumpkin carving contest for almost a decade, and stories about their ingenuity invariably make it into the news. Here’s a video from Wired about their 2016 competition. Here’s … Continue reading Halloween@NASA
  • Lunar Landings (7/19/2019) - Saturday, July 20th is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, and there’s a massive media blitz surrounding the occasion. Pretty much every major news outlet is covering it in some way, and it’s no surprise that NASA is leading the publicity frenzy. On Friday at 1 p.m. (EDT) NASA is broadcasting 50 … Continue reading Lunar Landings
  • Mars 3D (11/16/2016) - Mars is getting even more attention than usual this week, and that is “mostly” because National Geographic began airing their special six part Mars series on Monday nights (9/8c). Here’s a trailer and links about it… Virtual Trip to Mars Offers Ultimate Preview to Crewed Mission (Nadia Drake, National Geographic) Inside Nat Geo’s Incredible Documentary … Continue reading Mars 3D
  • Mars is hard! (11/25/2018) - Update 8:30 PM November 26, 2018 (EST) Touchdown! Mars InSight lander reaches red planet (Alexandra Witze, Nature) NASA’s InSight Mission Triumphantly Touches Down on Mars (Ian O’Neill, Scientific American) InSight has landed with Updates (Emily Lakdawalla, Planetary Society) Landing Replay (SciNews) Original Post If you hear a phrase like “six and a half minutes of … Continue reading Mars is hard!
  • Milky Way Lost & Found (8/15/2018) - Have you seen the Milky Way? You may think that you have, but are you sure? Unless you live in an extremely remote area, or you’ve visited one, then you probably haven’t seen our own galaxy, the Milky Way, very well, or at all. Worse yet, you may not even realize that it’s missing. The … Continue reading Milky Way Lost & Found
  • Moon+H2O=Moonbase? (7/25/2017) - One of the big science stories in the news right now is that Earth’s Moon has more water than scientists expected. This Newsy video is just one of the hundreds of stories flooding news feeds. This round of stories has been inspired by this article in Nature Geoscience. Remote detection of widespread indigenous water in … Continue reading Moon+H2O=Moonbase?
  • Octopuses from Space! (5/20/2018) - Did you hear the one about the octopuses from space? It sounds like the title of a cheesy sci-fi movie, doesn’t it? But it isn’t, this time, or at least, yet. Instead, it’s actually an oddball theory that’s been put forth in a recently published “scientific” article that’s getting quite a lot of buzz in … Continue reading Octopuses from Space!
  • Perspectives on Earth (11/23/2017) - Last week NASA released this fascinating video entitled Our Living Planet based upon 20 years of data from satellites that observe all plant life at the surface of the land and ocean. You can find out more about the video from this article. The Changing Colors of our Living Planet (NASA) Of course, releasing fantastic … Continue reading Perspectives on Earth
  • RIP Rossetta! (10/1/2016) - The “Little Mission that Could” has come to an end, but what a mission it was to watch! Rosetta Concludes Mission with a Crash (Megan Gannon, Scientific American) Rosetta Mission Ends With Spacecraft’s Dive Into Comet (Kenneth Chang, New York Times) It was such a joy to watch each historic milestone the mission passed over … Continue reading RIP Rossetta!
  • Space Rocks! (1/4/2019) - It was a fantastic holiday season for space fans! In fact, there was so much going on, it was almost impossible to keep up with it all. According to your news sources and interests, you have probably heard about at least some of the amazing things that happened, but chances are you haven’t heard about … Continue reading Space Rocks!
  • Strange Things (11/12/2016) - There’s been a ton of cool stuff going on in the 3D/360°/AR/VR hardware and software universe lately, and there’s about to be even more (more on that soon). On the other hand, the 3D/360°/AR/VR content front has been “relatively” static (unless you love Halloween’esque horror, of course). When I went looking for something interesting to … Continue reading Strange Things
  • Super Bowl of Astronomy (1/15/2018) - The annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, a.k.a. the “Super Bowl of Astronomy” was held in Washington DC last week. While it might not have as much cachet as the Consumer Electronics Show, great tidbits from the conference do slip into the mainstream media from time to time. For example, Phys.org did a nice … Continue reading Super Bowl of Astronomy
  • The waves won! (10/4/2017) - Gravitational waves that is! It has been announced that Rainer Weiss (MIT), Barry Barish (Caltech) and Kip Thorne (Caltech) have won the 2017 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for their decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the first observation of gravitational waves in 2015. Here’s a quick one minute video from Newsy and a … Continue reading The waves won!
  • Touch the Sun (12/6/2019) - Remember how Icarus wanted to touch the Sun, but met his demise instead? Well, scientists at NASA wanted to touch the Sun too, but unlike Icarus, they succeeded! Better yet, they are beginning to share what they learned by doing it! Before we get into all of that, let’s go back and start at the … Continue reading Touch the Sun
  • TRAPPIST-1 (2/23/2017) - You’ve probably heard that NASA has found a trove of “Earth-like” planets circling the TRAPPIST-1 system roughly 40 light years away, but just in case you haven’t, here’s a short 2 minute AP video about the discovery. Here’s another video from NASA/JPL with more explanation. Most entertainingly, here’s a 360° YouTube Video published by NASA/JPL … Continue reading TRAPPIST-1
  • Umbraphiles (8/20/2017) - umbraphile : One who loves eclipses, often travelling to see them. — Wiktionary Yes, this is that obligatory post about “The Solar Eclipse” (NASA, Wikipedia). Of course, there had to be one — eclipses really are just too cool to ignore. You’ve already been bombarded with explanations of the science and history of eclipses, but … Continue reading Umbraphiles
  • Visioning Spacesteads (8/8/2018) - Space, the final frontier… Humans have been imagining what it would be like to setup homesteads and live in space for about as long as they’ve been imagining how to get there, but the process didn’t really take off until after we actually got there. Back in the 1970’s NASA dedicated some resources to the … Continue reading Visioning Spacesteads

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EurekAlert! - Space and Planetary Science The premier online source for science news since 1996. A service of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

  • Here and gone: Outbound comets are likely of...
    on January 17, 2020 at 5:00 am

    (National Institutes of Natural Sciences) Astronomers at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) have analyzed the paths of two objects heading out of the Solar System forever and determined that they also most likely originated from outside of the Solar System. These results improve our understanding of the outer Solar System and beyond.

  • When David poses as Goliath
    on January 17, 2020 at 5:00 am

    (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg) Observations have shown that stellar black holes typically have masses of about ten times that of the Sun. Recently, Chinese astronomers claimed to have discovered a black hole as massive as 70 solar masses, which, if confirmed, would challenge the current view of stellar evolution. Astronomers from the Universities of Erlangen-Nürnberg and Potsdam discovered that it may not necessarily be a black hole at all, but possibly a massive neutron star or an […]

  • The core of massive dying galaxies already formed...
    on January 17, 2020 at 5:00 am

    (University of Copenhagen) The most distant dying galaxy discovered so far, more massive than our Milky Way -- with more than a trillion stars -- has revealed that the 'cores' of these systems had formed already 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, about 1 billion years earlier than previous measurements revealed. The discovery will add to our knowledge on the formation of the Universe more generally, and may cause the computer models astronomers use, one of the most fundamental tools, to be […]

  • NJIT scientists measure the evolving energy of a...
    on January 17, 2020 at 5:00 am

    (New Jersey Institute of Technology) In 2017, a massive new region of magnetic field erupted on the sun's surface next to an existing sunspot. The powerful collision of magnetic energy produced a series of solar flares, causing turbulent space weather conditions at Earth. Scientists have now pinpointed for the first time exactly when and where the explosion released the energy that heated spewing plasma to energies equivalent to 1 billion degrees in temperature.

  • NASA water vapor imagery shows Tino's heavy rain...
    on January 17, 2020 at 5:00 am

    (NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center) When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the Southern Pacific Ocean it gathered water vapor data that provided information about the intensity of Tropical Cyclone Tino.


Astronomy News – Sky & Telescope The essential guide to astronomy / All Sky & Telescope (www.skyandtelescope.com) content is copyrighted. Please contact us for reuse permissions.

  • New Mysterious Radio Flash Pinned Down; Hundreds...
    by Monica Young on January 17, 2020 at 4:23 pm

    Recent observations have pinpointed the location of a fifth fast radio burst, shedding light on the environs that create these powerful sources. The post New Mysterious Radio Flash Pinned Down; Hundreds More Being Discovered appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

  • 60-Second Astro News: Planets in Tight Quarters &...
    by Camille M. Carlisle on January 17, 2020 at 3:45 pm

    Astronomers have calculated the loss of planets around stars in globular clusters, and New Horizons returns observations of worlds in the outer solar system. The post 60-Second Astro News: Planets in Tight Quarters & Kuiper Belt Forays appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

  • After a Century, Geologists Find Crater...
    by David Dickinson on January 16, 2020 at 7:30 pm

    After a century, researchers may finally have solved a prehistoric meteorite mystery. The post After a Century, Geologists Find Crater Responsible for Meteorite Mystery appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

  • Comets to Catch in 2020
    by Bob King on January 15, 2020 at 10:18 pm

    Here's the lowdown on which comets will brighten our skies in 2020. The post Comets to Catch in 2020 appeared first on Sky & Telescope.

  • Astronomers Discover Second Planet in Nearest...
    by Julie Freydlin on January 15, 2020 at 7:39 pm

    Astronomers have announced the discovery of Proxima Centauri c, an inhospitable super-Earth just 4.3 light-years away. The post Astronomers Discover Second Planet in Nearest Star System appeared first on Sky & Telescope.


Space.com Get the latest space exploration, innovation and astronomy news. Space.com celebrates humanity's ongoing expansion across the final frontier.


Space News - Space, Astronomy, Space Exploration Phys.org provides the latest news on astronomy and space exploration.

  • Rough seas delay escape test for SpaceX crew...
    on January 18, 2020 at 8:18 pm

    Rough seas prompted SpaceX on Saturday to delay the emergency escape test of its new crew capsule by a day.

  • Scientists measure the evolving energy of a solar...
    on January 17, 2020 at 5:45 pm

    Toward the end of 2017, a massive new region of magnetic field erupted on the Sun's surface next to an existing sunspot. The powerful collision of magnetic energy produced a series of potent solar flares, causing turbulent space weather conditions at Earth. These were the first flares to be captured, in their moment-by-moment progression, by NJIT's then recently opened Expanded Owens Valley Solar Array (EOVSA) radio telescope.

  • New astronomical instrument on the hunt for...
    on January 17, 2020 at 3:30 pm

    At the highest point of the Quinlan mountains, overlooking the Sonoran Desert as it stretches across southern Arizona, NEID (pronounced like "fluid") recently collected its first observations, known colloquially by astronomers as "first light," at the Kitt Peak National Observatory.

  • Image: Hubble views galaxy from famous catalog
    on January 17, 2020 at 2:56 pm

    This bright, somewhat blob-like object—seen in this image taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope—is a galaxy named NGC 1803. It is about 200 million light-years away, in the southern constellation of Pictor (the Painter's Easel).

  • Here and gone: Outbound comets are likely of...
    on January 17, 2020 at 2:24 pm

    Astronomers at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) have analyzed the paths of two objects heading out of the Solar System forever and determined that they also most likely originated from outside of the Solar System. These results improve our understanding of the outer Solar System and beyond.


Astronomy News -- ScienceDaily Astronomy news. New! Earth-like extrasolar planet found; double helix nebula; supermassive black holes, astronomy articles, astronomy pictures. Updated daily.

  • Scientists measure the evolving energy of a solar...
    on January 17, 2020 at 5:21 pm

    In 2017, a massive new region of magnetic field erupted on the sun's surface next to an existing sunspot. The powerful collision of magnetic energy produced a series of solar flares, causing turbulent space weather conditions at Earth. Scientists have now pinpointed for the first time exactly when and where the explosion released the energy that heated spewing plasma to energies equivalent to 1 billion degrees in temperature.

  • The core of massive dying galaxies already formed...
    on January 17, 2020 at 3:47 pm

    The most distant dying galaxy discovered so far, more massive than our Milky Way -- with more than a trillion stars -- has revealed that the 'cores' of these systems had formed already 1.5 billion years after the Big Bang, about 1 billion years earlier than previous measurements revealed. The discovery will add to our knowledge on the formation of the Universe more generally, and may cause the computer models astronomers use, one of the most fundamental tools, to be revised.

  • Here and gone: Outbound comets are likely of...
    on January 17, 2020 at 2:43 pm

    Astronomers at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) have analyzed the paths of two objects heading out of the Solar System forever and determined that they also most likely originated from outside of the Solar System. These results improve our understanding of the outer Solar System and beyond.

  • Taking the temperature of dark matter
    on January 15, 2020 at 7:05 pm

    Warm, cold, just right? Physicists are using gravitational lensing to take the temperature of dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up about a quarter of our universe.

  • Astronomers discover class of strange objects...
    on January 15, 2020 at 6:23 pm

    Astronomers have discovered a new class of bizarre objects at the center of our galaxy, not far from the supermassive black hole called Sagittarius A*.