I wrote this image caption in the context of an application to a science journalism internship.

In 1967, astronomers at the Observatoire de Haute-Provence in the south of France discovered potassium flashes while they were observing stars. But the laws of physics that were known at the time didn’t provide any explanation as to how a star could produce these flashes. Were there aliens trying to communicate with us?

I wrote this image caption in the context of an application to a science journalism internship.

When Pluto was discovered, astronomers expected to find a planet similar to Earth in size. But as they made more observations, they realized that Pluto is actually much smaller than what they initially thought.

Between Mars and Jupiter, somewhere in the asteroid belt, you can find the dwarf planet Ceres. But this celestial object wasn’t always considered to be a dwarf planet.

In elementary school, I learned that Christopher Columbus was the only man in his time to believe that the Earth was round. This is why he wanted to sail westwards to India, to prove everyone wrong. People would tell him “You’re crazy! You’re going to reach the edge of the flat Earth!", and he would answer “Of course not, the Earth is round!". So in a way, he is painted to be this visionary genius who made it possible for Europeans to arrive on a new continent.

As I was writing a booklet for an astronomy class I was teaching, I looked for illustrations to explain various elements of celestial mechanics. But I wanted the style of all the illustrations to be coherent. So just fetching images from Wikipedia wasn’t enough.

There is a kind of small, compact galaxy in which many stars are forming. They are one tenth of the size of our own Milky Way Galaxy, and one hundred times more compact. They are called green pea galaxies.

Since the early 20th century, the International Astronomical Union or IAU – an organization that brings together astronomers from around the world – defines the names used by astronomers to talk about objects in the Solar System. In August 2006, the IAU decided a planet is an object that