1. Introduction Radio astronomy has played an essential role in the orientation of the universe.

Our never-ending thirst for knowledge has set our journey even further into space. The known universe consists of billions of stars and a lot of them have, most likely planets orbiting around them.

The MACHO Project is a collaboration between scientists at the Mt. Stromlo & Siding Spring Observatories, the Center for Particle Astrophysics at the Santa Barbara, San Diego, & Berkeley campuses of the University of California, and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Their primary aim is to test the hypothesis that a significant fraction of the dark matter in the halo of the Milky Way is made up of objects like brown dwarfs or planets: these objects have come to be known as MACHOs, for MAssive Compact Halo Objects. The signature of these objects is the occasional amplification of the light from extragalactic stars by the gravitational lens effect. The amplification can be large, but events are extremely rare: it is necessary to monitor photometrically several million stars for a period of years in order to obtain a useful detection rate. For this purpose they must have built a two-channel system that employs eight CCDs, mounted on the 50 inch telescope at Mt. Stromlo. The high data rate (several GBytes per night) is

However, NASA’s Kepler space telescope is capable of detecting a planet-sized object orbiting a star, from dozens of lightyears away (“Search for Exoplanets”, n.d., para. 2).

In the first chapter, Coyne discusses the basic concept outline of evolution, and brings clarity to the common misconceptions thought and said about how the science works, and the large misuse of the word theory. The first chapter of this book also defines very carefully each of the main hypothesis of evolutionary theory. Which stands in dissimilarity to many other treatments of evolution, which all have a propensity to confuse some readers by integrating different meanings of the word. Coyne also divides Darwinism into six components. They are: evolution which means change over time, gradualism which is a policy of slower change rather than sudden change or a revolution, speciation which is the evolutionary process where a new biological species

In this paper I will explain how astronomers determine the composition, temperature, speed, and rotation rate of distant objects using various methods. I will explain the properties of stars. I will also summarize the complete lifecycle of the Sun and determine where the Sun is currently in its lifecycle.

Space. The final frontier. There are approximately one hundred billion galaxies in the universe with many solar systems in each galaxy and many planets within those solar systems (How do we…). The Milky Way Galaxy is close to 100,000 light years in diameter(Diep) with each light year spanning 5.87849981 x 10^12 miles . In comparison, the earth is only 7,917.5 miles in diameter(Coffey). Within and on the earth itself, there are still great mysteries, and so it comes as no surprise that a giant area such as space holds so much mystery. One of the most recent fascinations to astronomers has been asteroids, meteors, meteorites, and comets. These space rocks are found

Elizabeth Gibney discusses the history of fast radio bursts and astronomer’s strategy to finding them in the universe in her article, “Fast Radio Bursts are Astronomy’s Next Big Thing.” She begins by defining fast radio bursts as “fleeting blasts of energetic cosmic radiation of unknown cause.” (Gibney) Gibney briefly reviles that even though FBRs were discovered a decade ago, the phenomenon has just recently been accepted as genuine.

Today we have new technology that allows us to do many incredible things. One of those things is the ability to calculate the stars, where they will go and where

Batalha et al. (2011), Rowe et al. (2014), and Huber et al. (2014) validated and revised the data collected or simulated on Kepler planets. Natalie M. Batalha et al. (2011) utilized photometric and spectroscopic techniques to model the frequencies of Earth-sized planets near sun-like stars, which resulted in precise knowledge of the fundamental stellar properties, and thereby detected the nature of Kepler-10, which is the first rocky planet of Kepler and the smallest transiting exoplanet discovered to date. (Natalie M. Batalha et al 2011) Jason F. Rowe et al. (2014) used fundamental parameters to present fundamental planetary properties based on an analysis of Kepler light curves, spectroscopy based on ground analysis, imaging in high resolution, and Kepler light curves, (Jason F. Rowe et al 2014). The paper cited the research of Borucki et al. (2013) to back up the idea of effective temperatures of the stellar hosts to aid in investigations done by other researchers. Daniel Huber et al. (2014) provide revised properties of the many planetary systems the Kepler mission has discovered, using broadband photometry and asteroseismology in order to characterize 11,532 Kepler targets which were not classified in the KIC(Kepler Input Catalog)

This telescope has found over 960 planets already and is still finding more. The telescope has already found six rocky planets, one of which is Kepler-186f.

The purpose of this project was to listen for signals being directed towards Earth or signals that were unintentionally transmitted from another planet. The first observations began in February of 1995 in New South Wales, Australia. The Parkes 210 foot radio telescope was used to observe about 200 stars that are only visible from the Southern Hemisphere. Subsequently, the project began to study the northern stars at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. The 140 foot telescope operated from September of 1996 to April of 1998. In August 1998, Project Phoenix had moved to Arecibo. The world’s largest radio telescope was in such a high demand, that the project was observed twice per year for three to four weeks at a time. Operating the telescope at night solved a few issues; high radio interference and star distance from solar wind

Many scientist used telescopes to look at the planets and turned up the brightness. It helped showing how far the planet was and to show there are planets between the star and earth. Scientist started looking for pulsating stars and using them to find different planets. To find smaller planets scientist used NASA’s Kepler telescope. The telescope was very helpful for NASA and it proved that there are smaller planets. They figured out that some stars have planets. NASA’s help was very successful and they found different planets by the

The NASA Spitzer telescope is uniquely situated in space to be able to help astronomers solve the mysteries of not only this new Milky Way exoplanet, but for all of the other possible new planets, stars, and other items to be found some day in the universe. It is part of the big adventure of searching the skies to figure out how and where planets are situated in our Milky Way galaxy.

Distributed over 90 sq. deg. of the sky, they lie from 4 to 23 kpc from the Sun. The most significant group of RRLS is the Virgo Stellar Stream which is composed of at least 10 RRLS and 3 BHB stars. It has a mean distance of 19.6 kpc and a mean radial velocity Vgsr = 128 km/s, as estimated from its RRLS members. With the revised velocities reported here, there is no longer an offset in velocity between the RRLS in the VSS and the prominent peak in the velocities of main-sequence turnoff stars reported by Newberg et al in the same direction and at a similar distance. The location in phase space of two other groups suggests a possible connection with the VSS, which cannot be discarded at this point, although the turnoff colors of the VSS and group H, as identified from Newberg. Two more groups are found at mean distances of 19 and 5.7 kpc, and mean radial velocities of -94 and 32 km/s. None of our groups seems to relate to streams. The excess of stars observed in Virgo appears to be composed of several halo substructures along the same line of

For centuries, researchers have been looking for more planets in our solar system, with more public focus on the matter in the past decade after Pluto’s reclassification to “dwarf planet”. At last, astronomers have found a possible expansion to our local solar system, or at least this is what the Science News article “Shadow Planet”, written by astronomer Christopher Crockett, implies. In this article Crockett summarizes the history of the idea of a “Planet X” in our solar system, providing the necessary background to understand the rest of the article, where he discusses evidence that heavily supports the idea of a new planet far in our outer solar system.