Ever see those wild, breathtaking images from the Hubble Space Telescope? The ones that look like cosmic butterflies, ethereal rings, or maybe a giant, spooky eye staring back from the void? You’re often looking at vast, swirling clouds of iridescent gas. In many cases, what you’re seeing is a planetary nebula. But… what is a planetary nebula? Right off the bat, you should know it’s one of the most confusing misnomers in all of astronomy. Here’s the problem: these things have absolutely nothing to do with planets. Not a single thing. They aren’t “planetary” in any sense of the word.…
Author: Šinko Jurica
Have you ever tried to really wrap your head around something that’s just mind-bendingly heavy? I’m not talking about a car, or a skyscraper, or even a mountain. I want you to picture this: you take a single, ordinary teaspoon, you fly it into deep space, and you find one of these strange objects called a neutron star. You dip the spoon in and scoop out a tiny bit of “star stuff.” Just that single teaspoonful would weigh over five billion tons. Let that sink in for a second. Five. Billion. Tons. That’s the weight of the entire human population,…
For as long as humanity has existed, the sun has been our one constant. It’s the engine of all life, the warm light on our face, the silent, massive anchor of our cosmic home. It feels permanent. It feels eternal. But it’s not. Our sun is a star. And like every star in the sky, it has a finite lifespan. It was born in a cloud of dust, it’s currently living its long “middle age,” and one day, it will die. This simple, cosmic fact leads straight to one of the most profound questions we can ask: What is the…
When a truly massive star decides to die, it doesn’t just flicker out. It refuses to go quietly. Instead, it rages against the dying of the light with a cosmic explosion so violent it can briefly outshine its entire home galaxy. This is a supernova. It’s the universe’s ultimate fireworks show. But the explosion, as spectacular as it is, is just the death rattle. The grand finale. The real question, the one that points us toward the most bizarre and terrifying objects in the entire cosmos, is what is left after a supernova? When the smoke clears, what remains at…
You’re outside on a crisp, clear night. You look up, and whoosh—a brilliant white streak flashes across the velvet black sky. “Shooting star!” you yell. We’ve all been there. It’s a magical, fleeting moment. But then, the next day, you hear a news report about a meteor shower peaking. Or you see a documentary about scientists hunting for meteorites in Antarctica. Or maybe you read a headline about a meteoroid that’s going to pass close to Earth. Wait. What? It’s a jumble of words that sound almost identical, and frankly, it’s one of the most common mix-ups in all of…
Look up on a clear, dark night. What do you see? If you’re lucky enough to be away from the glare of city lights, you’ll see a black velvet dome sprayed with thousands of twinkling stars. It’s overwhelming. It’s beautiful. And for as long as humans have looked up at that sprawl, we have done one, irresistible thing: we’ve connected the dots. We see patterns. We see hunters, bears, queens, and teapots. It’s a universal human impulse, this need to find order in the chaos. But in this stellar connect-the-dots game, two words get tossed around as if they’re the…
When you look up at the night sky, you see points of light. Some are stars, blazing suns billions of miles away. Others are planets, like Jupiter or Saturn, which can shine so bright they look like stars. To the naked eye, they’re all just… lights. But they’re not. The cosmos is split into two very different teams: the furnaces and the leftovers. Our solar system has a perfect example of each. We have the Sun (a star) and Jupiter (a gas giant). They’re both colossal spheres. They’re both made of the same stuff—hydrogen and helium. So why is one…
When you gaze out into the vast, dark neighborhood of our outer solar system, you find the giants. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. At a glance, they might all seem to be cut from the same cloth—massive, swirling worlds of gas, profoundly different from rocky planets like Earth or Mars. But lumping them all together as “gas giants” is a mistake. This common label actually hides one of the most fascinating divisions in our solar system. The truth is, Uranus and Neptune are a fundamentally different class of planet from Jupiter and Saturn. Understanding the difference between ice giant and…
Look up at the night sky. You’re seeing a cosmos packed with… stuff. Stars, sure. Moons and comets, too. And, of course, planets. But here’s the thing: not all planets are built the same. Some are just massive, swirling balls of gas. Others are tiny, frozen chunks of ice lurking in the dark. And then, there are the planets like ours. Rocky. Solid. Worlds you could actually stand on. This brings us to the big question: what is a terrestrial planet? It sounds formal, but it just describes a specific, incredible class of worlds. We live on one. We’re actively…
You’re outside. It’s a clear, dark night, the kind where the sky feels less like a ceiling and more like an ocean. You’re gazing up, lost in that endless, diamond-prickle of the cosmos. Suddenly—zip. A streak of light blazes across your vision. Gone in a second. “A shooting star!” you whisper. You quickly make a wish. We’ve all done it. It’s a magical, universal human experience. We’ve been seeing them for as long as we’ve had eyes to look up. But it begs the billion-dollar question: if it’s not really a star… what is it? And if science has a…