Quantumaniac

Galilean Telescope

In 1609, Galileo Galilei revolutionized science forever with his design of a telescope - now commonly referred to as a Galilean telescope. it uses a convergent objective lens in combination with a divergent eyepiece lens in order to produce an upright image. 

At best, Galileo’s telescope magnified objects about 30 times - but the images were blurry and distorted. Despite the challenges, Galileo was still able to explore the phases of Venus, as well as the four moons of Jupiter and craters on our own moon. 

Parallel rays of light from a distant object (y) would be brought to a focus in the focal plane of the objective lens (F’ L1 / y’). The (diverging) eyepiece (L2) lens intercepts these rays and renders them parallel once more. Non-parallel rays of light from the object traveling at an angle α1 to the optical axis travel at a larger angle (α2 > α1) after they passed through the eyepiece. This leads to an increase in the apparent angular size and is responsible for the perceived magnification.

The final image (y’’) is a virtual image, located at infinity and is the same way up as the object.

Mars Parrot

The images show the south-facing slop of Mars’ Argrye Basin, which includes a formation about 1.5 miles long and 191 yards high that strikingly resembles a parrot. 

Vredefort Crater

Imagine collecting every nuclear weapon in the world and simultaneously exploding them - now examine an explosion at least ten times more powerful than this, and you’ll have a rough estimate of the force that created this crater. Located in South Africa, Vredefort Crater is the largest verified impact crater on Earth. Occasionally known as the Vredefort Dome or Vredefort Impact Strucutre, it is named after a South African town that is located at the center of the crater. Estimates say that the asteroid that formed the crater was around 10 km in diameter - the crater itself a diameter of approximately 300 km. Although is hard to estimate the original depth and diameter of the crater, dating experiments place the crater as over 2 billion years old. 

From the 1300s-1850s, tens of thousands of Tswana people lived in the mountains and hills of the crater, using the varied landscape as an effective shelter. In fact, the site has even experienced its own gold rush. 

Although the Vredefort crater is the largest verified crater on Earth, there is still Wilkes Land in Antartica - which has not been verified but is thought to be much greater. Unfortunately, it is buried under 2 km of ice, so it cannot be thoroughly examined just yet. 

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Large Body Of Water Found On Jupiter’s Moon Europa

Scientists from The University of Texas at Austin said they have discovered a body of liquid water the volume of the North American Great Lakes inside one of Jupiter’s moons.

The team said that the water could represent a potential habitat for life, and many more lakes might exist throughout the shallow regions of Europa’s shell.

The lake is covered by floating ice shelves that appear to be collapsing, which could provide a mechanism for transferring nutrients and energy between the surface and a vast ocean already inferred to exist below the thick ice shell.

“One opinion in the scientific community has been, ‘If the ice shell is thick, that’s bad for biology — that it might mean the surface isn’t communicating with the underlying ocean,’ ” lead author Britney Schmidt, a postdoctoral fellow at The University of Texas, said in a press release. “Now we see evidence that even though the ice shell is thick, it can mix vigorously. That could make Europa and its ocean more habitable.”

The scientists focused on Galileo spacecraft images of two circular, bumpy features on Europa’s surface known as chaos terrains.

The only true confirmation of the inferred lakes would come from a future spacecraft mission designed to probe the ice shell.  A mission like this was rated as the second-highest priority flagship mission by the National Research Council’s recent Planetary Decadal Survey.

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(Source: )

Giant Storm on Saturn

On its flyby of Saturn, the Cassini probe snapped these beautiful shots of a giant storm on the planet. 

A truly stunning picture of Saturn

Taken by the Cassini spacecraft in 2006, this gorgeous photo of Saturn portrays a nighttime view of Saturn; as light is reflected and glimmers off of its rings. A NASA astronomer described it as:

First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn, slightly scattering sunlight, in this exaggerated color image. Saturn’s rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the image. Seen in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn’s E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, at the left, just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.

(Source: io9.com)

Why is Pluto not considered a Planet? 

We were all heartbroken in late 2006 when Pluto’s status as a planet was officially revoked. Since childhood we were all taught that there were nine planets, and even learned clever pneumonic devices about educated mothers and pizza to remember them - and all of that was changed forever. However, most people aren’t exactly sure what happened; what caused the big change? 

Although we’ve always really taken the definition for granted, astronomers, before 2006, didn’t have an official definition for what ‘was’ and ‘was not’ a planet. However, since its discovery in 1930, Pluto hasn’t really ever fit in. 

• It’s much smaller than any other planet - it’s even smaller than Earth’s moon. In fact, one of the planet’s own moons, Charon, is nearly half Pluto’s size!
• It’s small, dense and rocky, like the terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars). However, its planetary neighbors are the Jovian planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune). On this premise, many astronomers believe that Pluto didn’t form with the rest of the solar system, and was trapped by Earth’s gravity sometime later - some even theorize that it could’ve been one of Neptune’s moons.
• Pluto’s orbit is weird. Most planets in the solar system orbit in a relatively flat, close-enough-to-perfect ellipse, but Pluto’s orbit is irregular, at an angle and even crosses over Neptune’s! 

On August 24, 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), an organization of professional astronomers, gathered together and passed a few important statements about the definition of galactic objects. The IAU passed a few requirements for any and all prospective planets: 

1. It needs to orbit the sun - Pluto’s definitely a planet!
2. It needs to have a strong enough gravitational force to have formed into a spherical shape - Close enough! 
3. It needs to have “cleared the neighborhood” of its orbit - Damn. According to this, Pluto isn’t a planet since it interferes with Neptune’s orbit, and thus hasn’t completely “cleared the neighborhood.”

Additionally, another resolution defined a dwarf planet as: 

“A celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, (c) has not cleared the neighbourhood [sic] around its orbit, and (d) is not a satellite.”

So Pluto was revoked its status, and is now classified as a dwarf planet. Sorry buddy, but you’ll always be in our hearts.