Corson ⛧

About me:

Hello! You can call me Corson. I am 20 years old, use he/they, and really like the green and black. I live in the northeast US. I speak English and a bit of German. I like music, especially metal, psychedelic rock, goth, and 2010's white girl dance music. I am also half Ukrainian and I'm proud of my heritage :]

I am currently doing my undergrad for physics and astronomy and I hope to one day get a PhD in astronomy or astrophysics. I'm hoping to be able to share some stuff relating to both of those, like photos, my projects, and just cool facts!

By the way, if you have any questions about space, feel free to ask! I love to teach others and I think that astronomy isn't taught as much as it should.

Some of my Art:

Here are some bands I like:

Bands that I couldn't find stamps for: Psychedelic Porn Crumpets, Lantlôs, and Zeal and Ardor

Who I'd like to meet:

I love pretty much everything about astronomy (besides the very beginnings because fuck that, it's too weird and has too much quantum), but I especially love stellar evolution, galactic evolution, planetary studies, and how humans used astronomy throughout history. I'll give one cool fact pertaining to those four:

Planets:

Planets are cool as fuck. Each planet is unique and even the most mundane ones, like Mercury, have at least a few interesting characteristics. Besides Earth, my favorite planet is Jupiter.

Jupiter is both the largest planet and the most massive planet in the Solar System. It has more than twice the mass of all of the other planets in the Solar System combined. It can also fit 11 Earths across its diameter. Despite its large size, it spins once about every 10 hours. This fast rotation causes massive jet streams, which are the stripes on Jupiter, and the storms. The big one is called the "Great Red Spot" (creative, I know), but the smaller storms right below it are referred to as the "Pearls of Jupiter".

Stellar Evolution::

Red dwarf stars are a lot more common than people think. We usually don't think of them as common because they are very cool and dim. We cannot see any red dwarf stars with the naked eye from here on Earth (any red stars you might see are most likely red giants). About 73% of all stars are red dwarfs! This is because of their size. They are super small, and are super cold. This causes their lifespan to be a lot longer than an "average" star like the Sun. A star like our Sun lives for around 10 billion years, but red dwarfs live for an estimated 10 trillion years. This is longer than how long the Universe has been around for, so that means that every single red dwarf that formed at the very beginning of the Universe is still alive!

(This is a photo of our Sun lol)

There's evidence that the Milky Way Galaxy (the galaxy we're in) had "cannibalized" a smaller galaxy. Essentially, a smaller galaxy was ripped apart by the gravity of the Milky Way. We can see some evidence of this from the movement of stars in the halo (a "cloud" of stars surrounding the disk of the Milky Way) and their chemical composition. In about 4.5 billion years, the Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxy will collide, or the Andromeda galaxy will "cannibalize" the Milky Way. This collision is more of a meshing as the stars will pass by each other. But the combination of interstellar gas will form a lot of new stars. After this, the new galaxy called Milkdromeda (hot take: I hate that name) will form into an elliptical galaxy.

Some colliding galaxies :O

History of Astronomy:

The first recorded use of astronomy is cave art that is 12,000 to 40,000 years old, but humans have probably been using astronomy far before this. We used the night sky for three main things: time keeping, navigation, and storytelling.

Drawings of Orion and Taurus juxaposed on a bull painting from Lascaux caves

The zodiac constellations are some of the oldest. The names of the zodiac constellations that the ancient Babylonians used are very similar to the names we still use today (i.e. the great twins, the crab, the lion, which are Gemini, Cancer, and Leo). The word zodiac means the "circle of animals", but they are defined by being constellations that lie on an imaginary line called the ecliptic. The ecliptic is the projection of the Earth's orbital plane onto the sky. So, the Sun and planets appear on this line. This is why you hear shit like "Venus is in Libra" or "it's a Pisces Moon".

Very slowly, the ecliptic moves in the sky as the Earth's axis moves in a circle. So the constellation that the Sun is in at a given times changes. If you follow astrology, your Sun sign is most likely based on where the Sun would be on your birthday if you were born 2000 years ago. (Note: this isn't be dunking on astrology, you guys do whatevs lol)

I am planning on making blog posts where I go a bit more in depth about all of these, but I wanted something before I set my blogs up.

Quick note: while I do study astronomy in college, I'm not officially an expert yet lol. I checked my sources, but please let me know if I got something wrong. Last thing I want to do is to spread misinformation

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!