Science and News Journals by Daniel Barlow

Week 1: Teeny Supermassive Black Holes: A team of astronomers in Chile found the
smallest black hole found in a galaxy's nucleus , its mass is about 50,000 suns. its too
big to have formed from a collapsing star and its too small to have been formed like
supermassive black holes do. I found this article to be decent at best, it was informative
but nothing really caught my eye honestly.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/teeny-supermassive-black-hole0814201523/
Week 2: Scientist find ancient lake on mars: Back in 2010, astronomers founds salt
deposits on Mars There was water found on Mars, infact a lake and it's about as old as
3.6 billion years old. The lake is about 8% as salty as earth's oceans so it's extremely
habitable. the salt deposits are mostly sodium chloride potassium chloride and table salt
which is like the seas and oceans on earth The Planet may have some sort of life form
on it! I found this article very interesting, I think that its crazy that mars could have been
habitable at a time or maybe can be habitable one day!
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/scientists-discover-ancient-lakebedon-mars-0826201534/
Week 3: Septembers Sky Lunar Eclipse: The Lunar Eclipse takes place around
September 23rd at around 4:20 eastern standard, what happens is the sun will shine
directly on the sun's equator, apparently there won't be another visible lunar eclipse until
2018. I found the article to be informative and well on topic. This lunar eclipse is
something I don't want to miss, it sounds pretty awesome.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/observing-news/stargazing-inseptember-08312015/
Week 4: New Horizons views of Pluto: The New Horizon space telescope passed by
Pluto and its moons and took some really good pictures of them, unfortunately it
stopped sending the new images for weeks. But we got the pictures later these are the
best pictures of pluto we have to date.
I found this article pretty awesome, the pictures of pluto are incredible and have
amazing detail I am quite impressed.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/dramatic-new-horizons-views-ofpluto-and-charon-091120155/

Week 5: Resonant Waves Might Heat up Corona: Corona is a super hot halo found on
the sun made of basically different solar waves. these Solar waves act like plucked
guitar strings which twist with the other solar waves making them into eddies. eddies
are larger scale turbulences which these waves are colliding moving particles which will
make it hotter.
This article I found to be a bit boring, it had an interesting header that caught my eye
but it was kind of bland to read.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/resonant-waves-might-heat-corona0915201523/
Week 6: Astronomy Day: Astronomy day happens twice a year, one time in fall and
spring and is celebrated worldwide. 2015 Fall is doing a international observe the moon
night. Most Astronomy clubs are using this a warm up for the lunar eclipse that's
happening in Sept 25.
I never knew there was an Astronomy Day, I guess theres two of them that's pretty
cool! our Astronomy class should go and do this for a field trip assignment or extra
credit.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/fall-astronomy-day-international-observethe-moon-night-weekend-full-of-fun091720151709/
Week 7: New Mid-size Black Hole: Its quite rare to find an intermediate black hole which
they may think that an x ray they found in the central starburst galaxy (NGC 1313) I
dont have a clew where that is. but how they determine if its a black hole or a false one
by using QPS which stands for quasi periodic oscillation. using the QPS they found out
this black holes mass is between 3,700 - 6,700 Suns.
I found it interesting that they find black holes with X Rays! and I find it kind of freaky
how big just an intermediate black hole is. Its terrifying.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/new-mid-size-black-hole2209201523/
Week 8: Ready for the total Lunar Eclipses?: As the title says, there will be a total Lunar
Eclipse on 27th of September. it will be the last one we can see until somewhere in
2018. The Eastern half of North america will be able to see the full eclipse. but no
matter where you are in the world you will be able to see it via sky/telescope.
I found this Article pretty informative on the Lunar Eclipse in September, I thought that
it's pretty cool no matter where you on the earth you can see the Eclipse happening. I
actually saw this eclipse. it was pretty awesome if I do say so myself.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/observing-news/get-ready-forseptembers-total-lunar-eclipse-091420155/

Week 9: Hubbles Stunning New Pictures of Jupiter: as the Hubble telescope makes its
rounds taking pictures of planets its putting its fantastic pictures in some sort of Planet
YearBook (Is what the article is calling it) this Planet yearbook is called the Outer
Planet Atmosphere Legacy or OPAL for short, its holding images of Jupiter, Neptune,
Uranus, Etc. and its taking picture fo 2 full orbits of the planets. The newest pictures of
Jupiter, it seems that the red spots on Jupiter are shrinking about 225 km per year. They
also managed to get pictures of a rare Wave North of Jupiter's Equator.
I really liked the pictures of Jupiter in the article, they are quite stunning. I think they
went a little on the Hubble Telescope in the article. for a minute I thought I was reading
an article on the Hubble telecope and not actually Jupiter.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/hubbles-stunning-pictures-of-jupiter10152015/
Week 10: White House Host Second Astronomy Night: President Barack Obama
Hosted his Second Astronomy Night or Star party on October 19th it was featured on
the South lawn at the White House, it brought Astronomers and Scientists from all
around. Barack Obama seemed to have a really good time saying that he loved
astronomy night and its one of the fun parts of his job.
I thought the article was interesting, I didnt know presidents did this kind of stuff it
caught my eye for sure when it I saw Obama hosted it at the white house. and
apparently a astronomer is trying to conceive President Obama and his family to go to
the U.S. Naval Observatory.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/white-house-astronomy-night10202015/
Week 11: Closest Star-shredding Black Hole: if a star comes too close to a
supermassive black hole it will be completely ripped into shreds (Well, yeah.) the
process is known as called a Tidal disruption event or a TDE for short. it says what the
Black hole is doing is like an intense version of when the moon is making tides happen
on earth. So as the Stars gas goes into the blackhole, Blueshifted X Rays emitted out
of the black hole.
The title caught my eye but it wasnt as interesting as I thought it might be, I was
expecting violent detail of the star being destroyed and there would be very little bits of
star left. but Blue X Rays are cool I guess.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/closest-star-shredding-black-hole2210201523/

Week 12: White Dwarf Eats Mini Planet?: an Astronomer from Harvard named Andrew
Vanderburg and his colleagues discovered a strange light pattern in a white dwarf and
debris disks of heavy elements which are not found on the surface of White Dwarfs.The
White Dwarf went 40% dimmer for five minutes while the tiny planet was being
engulfed.
I found this article kind of bland and short. The title sounded great but wishing I read
another article.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/white-dwarf-eats-planet2610201523/
Week 13: DSCOVR Earth: Nasa, NOAA and the US air force launched a satellite called,
DSCOVR. (DSCOVR stands for Deep Space Climate Observatory) which was
supposed to be named GoreSat after President Al Gore for backing the project.
DSCOVR is a satellite that revolves around earth. its about 1 million miles away from
earth and gives an amazing view of our home planet. there is a website so you can see
the satellite monitoring the earth it says the moon sometimes photobombs earth.
I liked this article, very informative and I enjoyed reading it. also, I remember hearing
about this a long while ago being pulled for political reasons on global warming. glad to
see its finally released.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/dscovring-earth-1027201533/
Week 14: How a Black Hole Flares: Dan Wilkins an Astronomer from Saint Marys
University and his Colleagues explain how they believe a Black Holes flares, the group
of astronomers thinks that before the flare the coronal spreads out across the disk
surface then retracts to collect itself s back together, then contracts into a vertical jet
like structure that compacts the corona then launches it at 20% speed of light. a corona
is a haze of energy which hovers over black holes and the accretion disk.
I found the article to be pretty interesting, but irritating because feel what all of the
articles I have read have in common is their title while exclaim they know how
something is or works and then they just say, this is how it might work/ be. we aren't for
sure but I guess its that's astronomy, as long as we can get an understand I guess.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/how-black-holes-flare-0511201523/

Week 15: How to Choose Your First Telescope: This Article explains how to pick out a
good first time telescope saying the price may range somewhere to 250-400$ and two
important essentials while looking for a telescope is how sturdy the telescope is, and
how good of quality the optics are. a very important characteristic of an amazing
telescope is its aperture, which is the diameter of its light gathering lens or mirrors,

which a large aperture lets you see fainter objects and finer details than a small
aperture. for a good first starter size its saying to look for an aperture with about 70 mm
or preferably more. also to stay away from telescopes that say a high magnification like
for example 600x because youd need a 12 inch telescope to a decent image in the sky.
The to pick between types of telescopes such as reflectors, refractors, or a compound
which is a mix of both.
I found this article pretty cool and helpful if I wanted to buy a telescope, which I think
they are kinda pricey, my mom got a telescope for her birthday and its not very good,
wish I could have linked this article to her at least picked it out. But I think there should
be a website linked where you can buy the recommended telescopes.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/types-of-telescopes/
Week:16: Will Phobos Create a Ring around Mars?: Phobos, which is one of two of
mars's moons, is orbiting closer to mars which means it might eventually be destroyed.
once Phobos gets close enough in marss atmosphere, its going to create strong tides
which will end up destroying Phobos, a dusty ring will end up being around mars in a
weeks, as for the big chunks of phobos that will turn into a ring is looking to stick around
some time between 1-100 million years. which will leave Mars with just the one moon
Deimos.
This was one of my favorite articles Ive read, I enjoy hear all of the new things that are
happening with Mars, which is easily the most interesting planet we discovered there's
a lake and now there's going to be a ring around it? awesome stuff. Rest in peace
Phobos.
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/will-phobos-create-a-ring-112720155/