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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy@ngttg.bsky.social |
3512 followers 117 following 924 posts
I love space!
PhD, Astrophysics
🌌✨✨🌌
come explore our galaxy with me
🔗: galaxy.nora-bailey.com/linktree
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 237/365🛰️🧪🔭 There are at least 5500 galaxies in the area covered by a grain of rice held at arm's length, as revealed by the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, which stared at a patch of sky for a total of 22.5 days over 10 years to see galaxies as faint as magnitude 31! Image: NASA/ESA
2 replies 12 reposts 54 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 237/365🛰️🧪🔭 There are at least 5500 galaxies in the area covered by a grain of rice held at arm's length, as revealed by the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, which stared at a patch of sky for a total of 22.5 days over 10 years to see galaxies as faint as magnitude 31! Image: NASA/ESA
2 replies 12 reposts 54 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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gorgeous!
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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Rømer delay still is used to account for observational light delays due to the Earth's position in its orbit!
0 replies 2 reposts 16 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 236/365🛰️🧪🔭 You can see the effect of the finite speed of light from the orbits of Jupiter’s moons! In fact this was how the very first measurement of the speed of light was ever taken, by the astronomer Ole Rømer, from the delay of Io's eclipses by Jupiter.
2 replies 7 reposts 51 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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Me: I should finish this script in another 30 minutes and have plenty of time to record! Me 4 hours later: *crying and drawing out these stupid angles yet again* the sky is confuuuuuuuuuuuusing
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 235/365🧪🔭🛰️ Back when the entire universe was a dense sea of plasma, dark matter halos created sound waves in the plasma called Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations. We can see their echoes in both the Cosmic Microwave Background and the present-day clustering of galaxies in the universe!
1 replies 12 reposts 53 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 235/365🧪🔭🛰️ Back when the entire universe was a dense sea of plasma, dark matter halos created sound waves in the plasma called Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations. We can see their echoes in both the Cosmic Microwave Background and the present-day clustering of galaxies in the universe!
1 replies 12 reposts 53 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 234/365🧪🛰️🔭 The sun doesn't just have cool dark spots—it also has hot bright spots called faculae, which vary on the same cycle as spots. The effect of faculae is a bit more than that of sunspots, making the sun a smidge brighter at sunspot maximum vs sunspot minimum. Image: NASA
1 replies 13 reposts 58 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 234/365🧪🛰️🔭 The sun doesn't just have cool dark spots—it also has hot bright spots called faculae, which vary on the same cycle as spots. The effect of faculae is a bit more than that of sunspots, making the sun a smidge brighter at sunspot maximum vs sunspot minimum. Image: NASA
1 replies 13 reposts 58 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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Had fun attempting to capture my eclipse experience last week! Impossible to do it justice, of course, and a missing tripod piece led to some very questionable videography, but fun nonetheless! 🔭
youtu.be/zKNA25LMEQw
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 233/365🔭🛰️🧪 Quasars are named from the term "quasi-stellar radio sources". Quasi-stellar means that they appear as single points in the sky, like stars, unlike galaxies. They are some of the brightest objects in the universe, powered by accretion disks of supermassive black holes!
3 replies 6 reposts 52 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 233/365🔭🛰️🧪 Quasars are named from the term "quasi-stellar radio sources". Quasi-stellar means that they appear as single points in the sky, like stars, unlike galaxies. They are some of the brightest objects in the universe, powered by accretion disks of supermassive black holes!
3 replies 6 reposts 52 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 232/365🧪🔭🛰️ When objects orbit further away from their sun, their orbits take a lot longer. The orbital period increases with the 3/2 power of the orbital distance. E.g., Earth orbits at 1 AU in 1 year, Neptune orbits at ~30 AU in 165 years. (This is Kepler's Third Law!)
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 232/365🧪🔭🛰️ When objects orbit further away from their sun, their orbits take a lot longer. The orbital period increases with the 3/2 power of the orbital distance. E.g., Earth orbits at 1 AU in 1 year, Neptune orbits at ~30 AU in 165 years. (This is Kepler's Third Law!)
1 replies 7 reposts 24 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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Same for us in Dripping Springs! Hell of a timing for the clouds to break and I was so glad
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 231/365🔭🧪🛰️ Bright lines radiating away from sources in space pictures are called diffraction spikes, caused by the optics of the telescopes (commonly from struts or edges). The patterns can be quite recognizable, e.g., the 8-pointed spikes in Webb images. Image: NASA/ESA/CSA
2 replies 9 reposts 36 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 231/365🔭🧪🛰️ Bright lines radiating away from sources in space pictures are called diffraction spikes, caused by the optics of the telescopes (commonly from struts or edges). The patterns can be quite recognizable, e.g., the 8-pointed spikes in Webb images. Image: NASA/ESA/CSA
2 replies 9 reposts 36 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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It's complicated! There's actually a lot of diversity in pre-collapse stars, and not all of them go through WR phase. Some are entirely stripped of their envelopes by winds or companions but not all!
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 230/365🔭🛰️🧪 Fusion can happen outside of the core of evolved stars. A very massive star at the end of its life can be fusing silicon in its core surrounded by shells of oxygen-burning, neon-burning, carbon-burning, helium-burning shell, and hydrogen-burning!
4 replies 20 reposts 79 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 230/365🔭🛰️🧪 Fusion can happen outside of the core of evolved stars. A very massive star at the end of its life can be fusing silicon in its core surrounded by shells of oxygen-burning, neon-burning, carbon-burning, helium-burning shell, and hydrogen-burning!
4 replies 20 reposts 79 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 229/365🔭🛰️🧪 Sometimes, a point on the sky will shine brilliantly in radio waves for a tiny fraction of a second. These Fast Radio Bursts were first discovered in 2007 and are thought to be emitted by rapidly rotating compact objects (exact cause TBD).
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 229/365🔭🛰️🧪 Sometimes, a point on the sky will shine brilliantly in radio waves for a tiny fraction of a second. These Fast Radio Bursts were first discovered in 2007 and are thought to be emitted by rapidly rotating compact objects (exact cause TBD).
1 replies 5 reposts 43 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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I may have girlbossed a bit too close to the sun as it turns out working full time and running what basically amounts to a part time science communication business does not leave one very much time to relax 🫠
4 replies 0 reposts 31 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 228/365🛰️🧪🔭 Uranus spins on its side! Most of the planets spin almost vertically compared to their orbits, like Earth's 23.5° axial tilt or only 3° for Jupiter. But Uranus's axial tilt is 98°! It likely got knocked into this orientation by a huge collision in the early solar system.
1 replies 8 reposts 49 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 228/365🛰️🧪🔭 Uranus spins on its side! Most of the planets spin almost vertically compared to their orbits, like Earth's 23.5° axial tilt or only 3° for Jupiter. But Uranus's axial tilt is 98°! It likely got knocked into this orientation by a huge collision in the early solar system.
1 replies 8 reposts 49 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 227/365🔭🛰️🧪 Sometimes super just isn't enough to describe the power of a collapsing star—so we call them hypernovae! Thought to be from the collapse of a very massive, rapidly rotating star, a hypernova ejects material with about ten times the kinetic energy of a regular supernova.
1 replies 3 reposts 34 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 227/365🔭🛰️🧪 Sometimes super just isn't enough to describe the power of a collapsing star—so we call them hypernovae! Thought to be from the collapse of a very massive, rapidly rotating star, a hypernova ejects material with about ten times the kinetic energy of a regular supernova.
1 replies 3 reposts 34 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 226/365🧪🔭🛰️ Nowadays, the IAU (not the discoverer) has final say on the naming of a new celestial body, based on input including from the discoverers but also by historical trends and themes, e.g., satellites of Jupiter are named for lovers or descendants of Jupiter/Zeus.
1 replies 3 reposts 30 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 226/365🧪🔭🛰️ Nowadays, the IAU (not the discoverer) has final say on the naming of a new celestial body, based on input including from the discoverers but also by historical trends and themes, e.g., satellites of Jupiter are named for lovers or descendants of Jupiter/Zeus.
1 replies 3 reposts 30 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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Over on my channel we're talking about the record-setting exoplanets as a bonus for the Exoplanets 101 series! youtu.be/C5diSsLiPCU?... 🧪🔭🛰️
0 replies 5 reposts 18 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 225/365🛰️🧪🔭 Our sun isn't the only star that has flares. In fact, quite the opposite! The stars that have the most frequent flares are young and low-mass stars, like M dwarfs, while older and more massive stars flare less often.
2 replies 6 reposts 46 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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You only need a few observations! 3 is the minimum needed to use Gauss's method of orbit determination 🙂
0 replies 0 reposts 11 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 225/365🛰️🧪🔭 Our sun isn't the only star that has flares. In fact, quite the opposite! The stars that have the most frequent flares are young and low-mass stars, like M dwarfs, while older and more massive stars flare less often.
2 replies 6 reposts 46 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 224/365🧪🛰️🔭 While asteroids are classified by their composition, comets are classified by their orbits: short-period comets, orbits <200 years; long-period comets, can be orbits lasting millions of years; or unbound comets, which pass through the solar system and do not return.
2 replies 10 reposts 54 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 224/365🧪🛰️🔭 While asteroids are classified by their composition, comets are classified by their orbits: short-period comets, orbits <200 years; long-period comets, can be orbits lasting millions of years; or unbound comets, which pass through the solar system and do not return.
2 replies 10 reposts 54 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 223/365🛰️🔭🧪 Fusion in (very massive) stars doesn't end after all the carbon is used up. Next, neon is the fusion fuel, then oxygen, then the final fusion stage is silicon burning! Each stage is faster and shorter than the last, with silicon burning only happening for about a day.
4 replies 10 reposts 54 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 223/365🛰️🔭🧪 Fusion in (very massive) stars doesn't end after all the carbon is used up. Next, neon is the fusion fuel, then oxygen, then the final fusion stage is silicon burning! Each stage is faster and shorter than the last, with silicon burning only happening for about a day.
4 replies 10 reposts 54 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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It's been a wild time over on my YT channel this month! Making me feel even worse about how long it's taking to make more long videos 🙈 BUT there is a new one coming this Sunday!! (Normally I post Mondays, but I ain't posting a real science-related video on April 1 😅)
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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I've seen it described as being more like soot than dust, really.
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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Different composition and formation than household dust—a lot less dead skin cells in space!
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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Well for some dust in the solar system we have measured it directly! But in general of course we don't have direct access to interstellar dust, so we have to rely on how the dust interacts with light at different wavelengths, between absorption, scattering, and emission.
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 222/365🔭🛰️🧪 There's a lot of dust in space, but it's not like dust on a bookshelf. In general the grains are much smaller than the grains of household dust. Astronomical dust is typically a micron in size or less, while household dust can be as large as 100 microns!
7 replies 16 reposts 73 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 222/365🔭🛰️🧪 There's a lot of dust in space, but it's not like dust on a bookshelf. In general the grains are much smaller than the grains of household dust. Astronomical dust is typically a micron in size or less, while household dust can be as large as 100 microns!
7 replies 16 reposts 73 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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exoplanets 💪
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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Using longer wavelengths, like infrared and radio, helps alleviate but does not fully solve the challenge of exploring the Zone of Avoidance.
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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SPACE FACTS: DAY 221/365🛰️🧪🔭 The "Zone of Avoidance" is a swath covering about 20% of the sky that appears devoid of other galaxies. But it's not because they're not there; it's because our view of them is blocked by the dust, gas, and stars of our own galaxy! Image: 2MASS
4 replies 14 reposts 90 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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Dynamical friction!
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
@ngttg.bsky.social
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*blows off dust* is this thing still on?? 🙈 I've been shamelessly neglecting my bsky!
1 replies 0 reposts 42 likes
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Nora's Guide to the Galaxy
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I've been coding in Python for 7 years and I don't think I've ever written a class 😅 They scare me
2 replies 0 reposts 4 likes