Astronomy & Space Exploration Society
On May 30th, amid stormy skies, SpaceX's Crew Dragon became the first rocket to launch American astronauts from U.S. soil since 2011, thus starting a new era of commercial space flight.
Raffle ticket drawings at the annual ASX Symposium. Here, guest speaker John Cramer draws raffles from a space helmet, in accordance with ASX tradition.
This picture is an original photograph of the Perseid meteor shower taken by ASX Chief Graphic Designer Hansen Jiang. The photo was created by superimposing two separate pictures of meteors onto each other, which is why two streaks of light can be seen.
On May 11th, ASX participated in Science Rendezvous, along with many other science departments and organizations at U of T to bring science out of the lab and onto the street. As per tradition, execs donned ceremonial ASX garb, including space suits and cosmic squid hats.
Why is there a large boulder near the center of Tycho's peak?
Tycho crater on the Moon is one of the easiest features to see, visible even to the unaided eye (inset, lower right).
But at the center of Tycho (inset, upper left) is a something unusual -- a 120-meter boulder.
University of Toronto student newspaper The Varsity recently published an article about our Star Talk with York University astronomer Paul Delany. Check it out at the link below:
https://thevarsity.ca/2021/01/31/the-possibility-and-importance-of-finding-water-on-other-planets/
Would you like to learn about astronomy?
Learn about the Mysteries of the Universe from leading astronomers in our annual symposium from February 15–17!
Astronomers from the University of Toronto to the University of Cambridge are set to improve your understanding of the universe at the ASX Society’s 17th annual symposium themed “𝗠𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲”.
Learn from research scientists including Dr. Anastasia Fialkov, senior research fellow with the Kavli Institute at the University of Cambridge; Dr. Marc Kamionkowski, professor of theoretical physics & astronomy at Johns Hopkins University; and Dr. Chris Impey, professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona. Watch 𝗴𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀, a 𝗱𝗮𝗿𝗸 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻, an 𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗵𝗼𝘁𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵𝘆 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽, and more. Discover more about black holes, dark matter, and dark energy, and ask your questions to experts in astronomy.Tickets are $5 per person, or free for post-secondary students (requires valid student number). You can join our annual raffle, with four tickets for $3.
Book your tickets at asxsociety.com
Water, water everywhere?
Our understanding of our own solar system has changed significantly since the advent of spacecraft exploration. Water was once believed very scarce in our corner of the galaxy but we now realize this is not the case.From understanding where our own planet’s water riches originated to the proliferation of the so called water worlds, this presentation will discuss the evolution of this “sea change” in thinking and its implication for the search for life on exoplanets.
𝗚𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗯𝗶𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗽𝗵𝘆: Dr. Paul Delaney is a Professor at York University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and the inaugural Carswell Chair for the Public Understanding of Astronomy. He is the coordinator of the York University Observatory, and promotes the use of its telescopes for education, research, and public outreach.Zoom link will be posted closer to the event!
“Every year, NASA hosts the Space Apps Challenge, an international hackathon designed to make use of NASA’s vast stores of data about the Earth and the far reaches of space,” writes Sarah Kronenfeld in The Varsity.
This year, the ASX Society—co-organizing Space Apps with Indus Space, RU Hacks, and SEDS-Canada—ran with thousands of submissions from across the world. Learn more about the solutions submitted to the conference, with commentary by ASX Society Vice-President Spencer Ki.
Read more in the full article linked here.
Why do radio telescopes look drastically different from optical telescopes? The answer, according to Dr. Keith Vanderlinde, is largely due to the large wavelengths of radio waves that these telescopes are designed to detect.
Dr. Vanderlinde—Associate Professor at the David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics and the Dunlap Institute—explored the design of radio telescopes and the future of radio astronomy at his October Star Talk with the Astronomy & Space Exploration Society.
Radio telescopes have typically appeared as massive structures of an antenna fixed to a parabolic dish. “There are two reasons that we make larger and larger telescopes,” he explained. “One is just to make a larger light bucket.” The larger surface area of the telescope’s dish, he continued, increases the sensitivity of the instrument.
The second reason stems from the challenge faced by radio telescopes in capturing images with high enough optical resolution. Resolution—the shortest length between two separate points in an image—is dependent on the colour (wavelength) of light (electromagnetic radiation) under observation, noted Dr. Vanderlinde.
The key measure of resolution, explained Dr. Vanderlinde, is the size of the “collecting area… in units of wavelengths.” Since radio waves have the longest wavelengths across the electromagnetic spectrum, he noted, radio telescopes must be built to large sizes for reasonable resolution.
This is why the Green Bank Telescope—a radio telescope 100 metres wide—still has a resolution around 20 times worse than the human eye, explained Dr. Vanderlinde. Historically, he added, the large size of radio telescopes have made the instruments vulnerable during natural disasters. Increased telescope size is also limited by prohibitive cost, he continued, along with physical space limitations.
In the 2000s, scientists and engineers began to address this challenge by designing aperture arrays. In this type of radio telescope, Dr. Vanderlinde explained, the integration of additional radio detectors boosts the instrument’s sensitivity as if the surface area of the telescope’s dish has increased. Contemporary radio telescopes, he noted, continue to harness the advantages of adding detectors in order to increase image resolution. This has made radio astronomy increasingly affordable.
“Previously, all the cost was in steel, [and] steel has been pretty stable in price,” he said. “Electronics are not stable in price; they drop drastically. If you can’t afford your telescope today, wait 18 months and it’ll cost half as much. If you can’t afford it, then wait another year and a half, and will be a quarter what it originally was.”
He continued: “Within a fairly small amount of time, you can afford to do almost anything. Because of this sort of digital revolution that we’re living in.”
—To learn more about the physics behind radio astronomy, along with the impact of consumer technology on radio astronomy, you can watch our recording of Dr. Vanderlinde’s Star Talk on the ASX Society’s YouTube Channel.