#PlanetInktober Day 3: Venus's Clouds

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Woohoo! Day three!

I’m getting real tired of my handwriting, so soon I’ll probably explore more digital zine creation options…but for now, here’s a zine about Venus, its atmosphere, and its clouds!

The Clouds of Venus

Venus is the brightest “star” in the night sky. And that’s because it’s close, and because its clouds reflect over 75% of the sunlight that hit them.

For most of history, astronomers thought a tropical paradise lived under Venus’s perpetual clouds. But ground-based observations in the 1950s revealed a hellscape.

The hellscape was confirmed by NASA’s flyby mission, Mariner 2, and Russias’s orbiter-lander mission, Venera 9. The lander was melted/crushed after only 53 minutes.

We’ve learned a lot about Venus’s clouds since then. They’re mostly sulfuric acid. And though it’s 880ºF at the surface, up in the clouds it feels more like Earth.

Scientists recently discovered a molecule called Phosphine in Venus’s Atmosphere. This is exciting! We know phosphine is produced by life on Earth, and geophysical processes can’t account for the amount on Venus.

BUT there’s a lot we don’t know about Venus’s atmosphere. The phosphine could also be from a chemical process we don’t know about yet. Time will tell! (Also, space missions. NASA, please send a mission to Venus!)

#PlanetInktober Day 2: The Sun

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I gotta say, I’m liking this zine adventure so far.

Today’s theme was the Sun! So I made a mini zine about the Life and Death of the Sun: how it started, and how it’ll end.

I’d love to know what you think! Hit the like button below or leave a comment :)

The Life and Death of our Sun

All stars begin as giant clouds of gas and dust. Out Sun began its life the same way.

As the gas + dust swirled, it condensed under its own gravity. And as it condensed, it got hotter and hotter.

At some point, the core got hot enough to fuse hydrogen into helium.

For the last 5 billion years, out Sun has been happily fusing hydrogen in its core. But in another 5 billion years it’s going to RUN OUT of fuel.

Then the Sun’s core will start collapsing under its own weight (but not in a supernova!). The collapse will make the core hotter and the increased thermal pressure will make the Sun balloon 1000s of times in size to a RED GIANT.

Eventually, the core will get hot enough to fuse helium into carbon, which will stabilize the Sun for a short time. But the helium will run out too! And the Sun will balloon in size again.

With no fuel left, the Sun will destabilize and pulse off its outer layers, until all that’s left is a spectacular planetary nebula and a remnant white dwarf left to spend trillions of years cooling into blackness.

#PlanetInktober Day 1: Earth's Moon

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Day One, here we go!

The prompt today was Earth’s Moon, and anyone in astronomy who is also online probably thinks of Rose DF when they think of the Moon. So today’s zine is for Rose.

La Luna: a story of a girl and the Moon.

One day, a girl was born. But growing up wasn’t easy. All she wanted to do was learn, but she had no access to education, no access to science.

But every night, she looked up, and Luna was there. Every night she wondered what it was. How did it get there?

As tine passed and she grew, she never stopped loving the Moon.

Even as life continued throwing her curveballs.

Until finally, she could enroll in a physics degree. Now she can study how the world works, about the stars and yes, the Moon.

And someday soon, she’ll look from the Moon back at Earth a physicist, astronomer. Astronaut.

Attempting to improve my drawing skills.... #PlanetInktober 2020

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Hooooo boy, if you know me, you know one of my greatest weaknesses is drawing (okay, anything artsy, really).

This is going to be my attempt to improve at least a little bit!

Inktober is an annual event (usually online, I think) with a drawing prompt for every day in the month of October. I’ve been wanting to explore making zines (basically small, self-published publications that are easily copied and printed) so when I saw this prompt for a planetary science version of Inktober, I took it as a sign!

Sooo I’m going to attempt to make one zine a day for the month of October to practice both my zine skills and my drawing skills. I’m prepared to be very bad at the beginning. But that’s how you improve, right?

I’ll try to write a short blog post to accompany each zine. I’ll also post them over on Twitter and Instagram, so follow wherever’s easiest for you if you want to come along on the journey! I’m not sure what I’m getting myself into, but I’m excited ✨

New Astrobites Post: Why are Sub-Neptunes so Abundant?

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Here it is…my final new post for Astrobites…wow, how has it been two years?? What a wonderful ride it’s been. I’m so grateful for this collaboration – for the friendships and connections, for the writing experience, and for the chance to learn about astronomy in ways I might not have been able to.

This final post explores why sub-Neptune exoplanets seem to be so much more abundant than Neptune-like planets, despite being close in mass. It turns out that there are complex interactions between the gaseous envelope of these planets and their cores that weren’t being accounted for…but you’ll have to go read the post for the details!

The radius cliff for known exoplanets

The radius cliff for known exoplanets