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Astro-Chat: Juno at Jupiter

Science views

an astro-chat with

Professor Don Kurtz

Visiting Professor, School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Lincoln, UK

Friday, 24 September 2021

7:00-8:00 pm

Live online

Book a place

Jupiter is big. Really Big. (Apologies to Douglas Adams). It is the beautiful, bright planet that is visible all night now, rising in the east just after sunset, then travelling across the sky to set around sunrise. It will be with us through the end of the year. In our solar system, this is the big one. Jupiter has more mass than all the other planets, asteroids, comets and moons added together. In Roman mythology Jupiter is god of the sky and king of the gods. His wife, Juno, is the daughter of Saturn and mother of Mars. This is an illustrious family. Ten years ago, NASA launched a mission to Jupiter, naming it after Juno. It is a long way to…

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Astro-Chat: Venus – Earth’s Evil Twin

Science views

an astro-chat with

Professor Don Kurtz

Visiting Professor, School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Lincoln, UK

Friday, 30 July 2021

7:00-8:00 pm

Live online

Book a place

Venus is the beautiful, bright “evening star” I can see now from South Africa. It is more difficult for those of you in Lincoln at high northern latitudes. Venus is not a star. It is a rocky planet that is a near twin to our Earth in size. But it is 30% closer to the Sun, and therein lies all the difference. Venus’s atmosphere is 96% Carbon Dioxide (CO2), the potent greenhouse gas that is causing climate change here on Earth, where it makes up only 0.04% of the atmosphere. Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system – 460 C! The thick atmosphere has a surface pressure 90 times that here on Earth at sea level. The clouds…

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How To Derive The Roche Limit

The Roche Limit is the distance that a moon or satellite can be to a planet before the gravitational tides pull it apart. At the Roche limit the gravitational tides from the planet are balanced by the self gravity of the satellite. At closer distances the satellite is pulled apart. When further away from the Roche limit the satellite can hold itself together under its own gravitational forces.

In this video we balance these two forces and find an expression for the distance at which objects would be pulled apart by the planets tides.

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How To Use Supernovas For Distance Measurements

Dr Phil Sutton

When discussing the brightness of stars we typically refer to apparent and absolute magnitude. Apparent magnitude of a star how bright we observe a star from Earth compared to the star Vega. Stars bright than Vega have a lower magnitude, while stars dimmer have higher magnitude than Vega. Stars that are further away will have a lower apparent magnitude. Therefore, we can use this relationship to calculate how far away a star is, if we know its absolute magnitude. The absolute magnitude is how bright a star would be from some standard distance, which is 10 parsecs. Knowing the spectral type of the star can help identify its absolute magnitude.

Type 1a supernovas occur when white dwarf stars pull material of a nearby red giant star. Once the white dwarf hits the upper mass limit of 1.4 solar masses it approaches the ignition temperature for carbon. This causes a runway…

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How To Calculate Jupiter’s Mass With A Telescope And The Galilean Moons

Have a telescope that you don’t know what to do with? If you are able to observe Jupiter you can also observe the largest four moons, known as the Galilean moons. By making a note of the relative position of each moon (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto) you can very easily calculate the mass of Jupiter using Kepler’s 3rd law. The moons closest to Jupiter will have shorter orbital periods than those further away.

This short video shows you that by creating a plot of the moons movement over a number of weeks you can get enough information to measure the mass of the Solar System’s largest planet.

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Fantastic Worlds and Where to Find Them by Phil Sutton: Lincoln Maths & Physics Week 2021

As part of British Science Week the School of Mathematics and Physics ran a series of public lectures relating to the research done within the school. Phil Sutton gave a talk that introduces how we discover planets orbiting other stars, known as exoplanets. It then finished by taking a brief look at some of the more unusual planets and systems found to date.

The recorded lecture can be found below.

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