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esiegel | October 17, 2013"It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters." -Friedrich Nietzsche
Although the innermost planets, from Mercury through Saturn, were known since ancient times, it's only since the advent of the telescope that we've discovered what really lives in our Solar System. Over the past four centuries, the wonders of not only the distant Universe, but also our nearby neighborhood, have been uncovered in spectacular detail.
Image credit: NASA and – I believe – G. Bacon (STScI).
The third and fourth largest planets were…
esiegel | September 12, 2013"The great oak of Astronomy has been felled, and we are lost without its shadow." -Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, on the passing of Jan Oort
In our new semi-regular series, readers from all over the world (and in low-Earth orbit, too, because why not!) are invited to send in their questions and suggestions for a chance to have them answered here on this blog! Today, our question comes from Robert Meegan, who asks,
Have any Oort Cloud objects been detected in situ, as opposed to when they whipped through the inner solar system as comets? I would presume that any detection would need to be…