Weekly Science Picks
FollowI hope everyone’s enjoying a nice weekend! It’s my turn again for the weekly science picks, and this week is the 44th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. On July 20th 44 years ago, human beings took their first small steps onto the surface of an object in the solar system other than the Earth. While we may not have returned to the Moon since NASA’s Apollo program, it’s important to realise the leaps and bounds which human technology and scientific knowledge have made since then.
And speaking of those leaps and bounds…
Astronomers have managed to determine the colour an exoplanet would appear if were able to see it with our own eyes. Planet HD 189733b, one of the most well studied worlds out there in our galaxy, is a beautiful azure blue planet. But don’t let the similarity to our own planet’s colour fool you. The blue colour of HD 189733b is because it’s a hot jupiter, orbiting scorchingly close to its parent star, and that colour is because the rain on this world is made of glass!
Exoplanet HD 189733b Appears to be Azure Blue
“This planet has been studied well in the past, both by ourselves and other teams,
Cite this article:
Hammonds M (2013-07-21 07:56:55). Weekly Science Picks. Australian Science. Retrieved: Apr 16, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/news/weekly-science-picks-38/