超新星コンデンセート
Supernova Condensate is a blog about our place in the Universe. Of astronomy, chemistry and life in the big bad bubble of academia.
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Invader Xan is a molecular astrophysicist and part-time alien invader, who spends life looking at very small things on very large scales, and trying to better understand the chemistry of interstellar space.
DFTBA ♥
すべての我々は星で作られています。
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Writing this blog is a labour of love, and one which I evidently need a little encouragement towards on occasion. If you like what I write, the best way to show your gratitude would be to fuel my caffeine addiction and buy me a coffee to say thank you. All coffee donations are gratefully accepted!
Category Archives: astronomy
木星
So here’s an interesting little fact. In Chinese and Japanese, Jupiter is known as 木星 which means “wood star” – and I think that’s a wonderful name for it! Interestingly, the name is pure coincidence. Just as our name for the … Continue reading
Lurking Giant
Well this is quite interesting. There’s some latest news about the possibility of a giant planet lurking on the outskirts of our solar system. The near mythological “planet X” which astronomers have been hunting for for decades. This latest study … Continue reading
Postcards from Pluto
New Horizons passed Pluto some time ago, but it’s still slowly dripping data back to us. The tiny craft wasn’t optimised for data transfer, so its hard drives are still packed to the gills with exciting discoveries which we’ll all … Continue reading
Twilight on Pluto
It turns out, Pluto has blue skies. And water ice on its surface. Which, at a cursory glance might make it seem a little bit like home. But only a little bit. Some notable experts were a little puzzled to … Continue reading
Meteor Chemistry
Have you ever noticed that not all meteors you see falling are the same colour? Growing up in the dark countryside away from city lights, I saw them sometimes, and their colour occasionally seemed to be an unusual and striking … Continue reading
What’s your favourite kind of rain…?
Cosmic Funnies is an adorable little comic made by Jaqueline Moliner, and this one caught my eye in particular. Planetary Rain. All about the different kinds of rain that falls on different planets. There are even a couple of exoplanets … Continue reading
The Star in the Sky
Discovered courtesy of Tumblr once more, are a set of pretty amazing visualisations originally from Halcyon Maps showing how drastically the sizes of stars can vary. These show how the view would appear from Earth if you replaced the Sun with a different … Continue reading
Discovered on Tumblr. The Milky Way is around 100000 light years in diameter, meaning that 200 light years makes about 0.002% of the Milky Way’s diameter. Perhaps the answer to Fermi’s Paradox is simply that others are out there, but … Continue reading
Twinkle twinkle little star…
A very interesting thing has been reported this week, provoking a lot of discussion and speculation on Twitter and elsewhere. A star in the Kepler catalog, designated KIC 8462852, appears to be orbited by a bizarre swarm of objects and no one … Continue reading
Starception
The interesting thing about the Universe is that it’s big. Really big.★ With enough space and time, even the rarest events can find time to happen, with bizarre and unusual things happening as a result. And some rather good evidence for … Continue reading
Posted in astronomy
Tagged neutron stars, stars
