Astronomers have spotted nearly 150 objects far out in space that are too small to be called stars, but they can’t be called planets, because they don’t orbit a star. They’re about the size of Jupiter, but given what we know about...
Jonah, a music teacher, in Baltimore, Maryland, shares a funny story about a student who misunderstood his question about the capital of his home state. That left Jonah wondering about the difference between the words capital and capitol. The former...
thumbnail moon n.— «The moon, which is about 15 per cent illuminated, or more commonly called a “thumbnail moon,” is said to be a setting moon and will move rapidly through the night sky early on making its decent...
pluton n.— «If the ideas are approved at the general meeting of the IAU in Prague next week, schoolchildren will, in future, have to learn that the solar system has 12 planets: eight classical ones that dominate the system—Mercury, Venus...
planemo n.— «He proposes a natural upper limit for a “planetary mass object” of about 13 times the mass of Jupiter, or about 4,000 Earths.…Because anything bigger, including stars and brown dwarfs, is able to fuse...