Astronomie Category

It’s the question that man has asked himself since the dawn of time. Is there life out there? Green men walking around, or at least some form of life on a distant planet? Let’s take a look at why we haven’t found any extraterrestrial life yet, and how big the chances are we’re going to find it. If you’ve ever looked outside on a bright night, you probably wondered about that age old question at least once: is there someone out there, perhaps at this very moment looking at me?Read More

The continent is ravaged with civil wars, disease, poverty and starvation, but Africa is using space programs more and more to combat those problems. Several countries have launched initiatives to use satellite technology and have set up astronomy programs. Let’s take a look at all space initiatives of ‘the forgotten continent’. South Africa By far the country with the largest space program on the continent. South Africa has a large and active space sector which is both government and privately funded. The country utilizes several satellites for remote sensing purposesRead More

Trappist-1, a small star pretty close to Earth, has no less than 7 exoplanets orbiting it. The discovery is another new milestone in a series of many successful exoplanetary discoveries, but what exactly makes the Trappist-1 research so exciting? 4 questions about the big news. A team of Belgian and American scientists made made a big announcement yesterday: a star was found 7 exoplanets orbiting it, the largest amount of exoplanets ever discovered around a single star. This is exciting for a few reasons. Not in the least place, it’sRead More

Astronomen zeggen een negende planeet in het zonnestelsel te hebben ontdekt, de mysterieuze ‘Planeet X’. Als dat echt waar is, is het één van de grootste astronomische ontwikkelingen in decennia – maar dat is een heel grote ‘misschien’… Wat is ‘Planeet X’ precies, en bestaat ‘ie nou wel of niet? ‘Planeet X’, of ‘Planeet 9’ zoals astronomen hem ook wel noemen, is alleen ontdekt via zwaartekrachtsafwijkingen van dwergplaneten en asteroiden aan het einde van het zonnestelsel. De vondst daarvan werd gedaan door een team astronomen van de Caltech Universiteit inRead More

Has the infamous 'Planet X' really been discovered? The mysterious planet at the end of the Solar System has alluded astronomers for years, but new evidence suggests it might just exist. What's the deal?Read More

So maybe you received a star for Christmas. It’s possible, because googling ‘how to buy a star’ returns thousands of results of online stores that tell you a certain dot in the sky is now ‘your star’. The same goes for craters on Mars or patches of land on the moon. Unfortunately though, all these gifts are fake. There’s no difficulty in choosing a cheap company that can buy a star for you. A package will usually consist of a piece of paper, a ‘certificate’ written in nice cursive charactersRead More

Exactly one year ago, ESA did something that had never been done before: It landed a small probe on a comet. The landing didn’t go exactly as planned, but hey, who cares? Philae taught us many things about comets, and about 67P/Churyumov/Geramisenko in general. What have we learned in those 12 months since that nail biting moment? 1. Landing on a comet is way harder than it looks Ok, maybe landing on a comet does look very hard, but Philae’s landing was far from ideal. The lander barely even madeRead More

NASA has (again) found water on Mars. And (again) it is a unique discovery that (again) transforms what we know about the Red Planet. So what’s different now? Hasn’t water been found on Mars many times in the past? Let’s look at the history of water on Mars. In science fiction The first time people started speaking of water on Mars was way, way before NASA ever landed a probe on the planet. In fact, it happened decades before humanity even came close to getting into space or even offRead More

Liquid water has been found on Mars, but what does that actually mean in practice? Let’s take a look at what has really been discovered, what that means for our understanding about Mars and water in the universe. Klik hier om dit artikel in het Nederlands te lezen. What exactly has been discovered now? Astronomers used the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to show that certain areas on Mars are briny (meaning salty) – and that is pretty odd. The brine can only appear when salt water evaporates. The salt minerals showRead More

Our first encounter with intelligent aliens is an interesting subject for many science-fiction movies. Are we going to use music to communicate? Or would They have some magical Babel Fish? The truth is, the question of what our first message to the Visitors will be is quite controversial. Humanity started to seriously think about sending messages into space in the early 70s, at about the same time when the SETI institute (‘Search for Extra Terrastrial Intelligence’) was founded. Massive telescopes searched the skies for that elusive beacon the ET’s might’veRead More