HS-ESS1-4
Use mathematical or computational representations to predict the motion of orbiting objects in the solar system.
- Climate
Explainer: Understanding ice ages
Earth slowly wobbles, tilts and stretches (or contracts) as it orbits the sun. These changes may be fairly small and subtle. Still, their cumulative impacts can be huge — sometimes triggering the slow onset of an ice age or an abrupt thaw.
- Planets
Explainer: What are asteroids?
Leftovers from the creation of the solar system, asteroids are space rocks that orbit the sun. Let’s hope the big ones never become meteorites.
- Space
Monster collision in space
The smashup of four clusters of galaxies has sent a super-hot jet of charged particles spewing 2.5 million light-years into space!
- Planets
First mega-Earth found
Astronomers are puzzled by Kepler-10c. This exoplanet is rocky like Earth — but as massive as Neptune. And that challenges their accepted ideas about how planets form.
- Space
Sun sibling spotted
Separated at birth: Astronomers find a star 110 light-years away. It was born at the same time as our sun and from the same cloud of gas and dust.
- Planets
Distant planet may boast the longest year
On a planet far, far away, a single pass around its sun may seem to last forever.
- Planets
Heavenly research
Groundbreaking research in astronomy landed four high school seniors spots as finalists in the 2014 Intel Science Talent Search.
- Planets
Surprising rings circle comet-asteroid hybrid
It’s too small to be a planet. Yet this planet wannabe still resembles Saturn-like giants. It’s the smallest solar system inhabitant to, like them, host rings of orbiting ice.
- Space
Galaxy drags trail of newborn stars
Distant galaxy plows through cluster of others, with baby stars in tow
- Space
Star cluster rockets through space
It’s the first time astronomers have ever detected a cluster of stars moving collectively at such speed.
- Planets
Double sunsets on a distant world
Astronomers discover for the first time a planet circling two stars.
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