The Galactic Inquirer

Galactic and Extragalactic Astronomy

Contest Prize Winner: The Sky Beneath

Moneth Claire Corpuz -- Deer Valley High School, Antioch, CA, USA “The sky is fake.” Meina recalled the words of a delusional passerby near the Academy....

Multi-Spectral Imagery of the Multi-phase ISM in M33

We investigate star formation in the Sc(s) II-III galaxy M33 by analyzing eight prominent HII regions using multi-wavelength data from the Spitzer Space Telescope and optical imagery. Results indicate that dust emission is a compact tracer of high-mass star formation, while PAH and H-alpha emissions decline more slowly with galactocentric radius.

Dispatches from the Cosmos — Winter 2025

Just like the dust that stubbornly besmirches your computer monitor, bookcase, and ancestral credenza, cosmic dust is now recognized to have a multiplicity of origins.  For decades, astronomers thought that aging red giant stars produced most of the dust responsible for obscuring and reddening our views of nebulae and more distant stars ...

Sticking Close to Home #2 – Bode’s Law and Planetary Spacings

There are definite interrelations between the spacings of the planets – they are much more than giant rocks randomly flying through space.  There is order and a scheme, a cosmic dance of the planets as some romantics like to say.

Sticking Close to Home: Observing our Local Solar System

An astronomical year for me ….When I was in the third grade I suddenly became very interested in everything astronomical – especially the planets of our local solar system.  That same year we studied the Solar System in public school, and that only added to my excitement over the topic.  I began badgering my parents to buy me a telescope...

Advancing Astronomical Literacy via Student Writing Contests

It is tempting to say that any well-educated person should know what it takes to be scientifically literate.  But what does scientific literacy really involve?  Given that scientific literacy is a key goal of most science education standards and frameworks, considerable ink has been dedicated to utilizing the term in pedagogical papers.  

Astronomical Meeting in South Africa Makes History

Africa’s astronomical debut has come at an opportune time, as a multitude of facilities and projects have taken root across the continent in the service of astronomical questing. 

Why Teach Astronomy?

Astronomy encompasses the fields of Planetary Science (including Earth as a planet), Heliophysics, Astrophysics, Astrochemistry, Astrobiology, Cosmology, and Cosmogony – the study of cosmic origins.  Astronomy, in turn, is informed by the core sciences of Physics, Chemistry, and Biology.  It both depends upon and helps to advance technological innovation...

Latest news

Why We Don’t Need to Save the Planet – It’s our Biosphere that Needs Help

By now, you have probably read or heard that our polluting ways have reached a critical point, where Earth is rapidly approaching total failure as a planet.  Perhaps you have wondered how we humans could have managed to do so much damage in so little time. 

Governance in Outer Space: Future Challenges and Authoritarian Prospects [1]

Permanent settlements in space will require forms of localized government that are likely to differ from contemporary models of political order. This article thus asks a provocative question associated with the empirical record of human colonization and settlement in prior eras: What sort of authoritarian governance is most likely to form in human space settlements during the medium term?

Contest Prize Winner: Fast Radio Bursts: A Decades Long Puzzle

Abigail Serrano – Andover High School, MA, USA The First Burst When the first fast radio burst, or FRB, was found...

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GAAC Meeting, October 9 2020, with Robert Naeye and Finding Life on Other Worlds

Are we alone or do we share our solar system and galaxy with other forms of life? And how widespread are advanced civilizations with whom we could communicate? Right now we don’t have answers to these profound questions. But scientists are in hot pursuit...

Another Giant Leap for Mankind

This year, our eyes were once again redirected to our own Solar System for a just a few fleeting minutes -- from the myriad wonders of our “seeable” Universe to a small space probe called New Horizons that at 7:49 AM (EST) on July 14 th 2015 passed within 7,750 miles of little Pluto at a record-breaking speed of 30,800 miles per hour (49,600 kilometers per hour).