APOD 2.3

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101117.html

What a striking photograph! I love how the light reflected off of the ice crystals on the leaf mirrors the light of the stars in the background. Easily recognizable in that background are the three stars of Orion's belt, the red giant, Betelguese, the star cluster of Pleiades, and Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. This photograph was taken in Japan earlier this month, but one can see a similar view of the sky throughout the next couple of months in the northern hemisphere. Following the link on the apod page about Japan, I learned that Japan is an archipelago comprised of 6,852 islands! Among other very interesting historical tidbits about the island nation.  



The Night Sky 11/09/10

Where? Blackburn Point
When? 6:30-8:00

We had a truly splendid stargaze last night! The night was clear and despite a few rowdy parkgoers (who knew so many people launched kayaks at eight o clock?) we were able to see a great number of interesting sights. On the top of my list was the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters, Suburu, M45 etc. etc. open star cluster. Pleiades is the second cluster nearest to us behind the Hyades, which we also saw with the naked eye and then with binoculars. We took another look at the Andromeda galaxy, this time with our fancy telescope, who took it upon itself to tell us which direction it was pointing all night long. We saw M11, the Wild Duck Cluster, the open cluster found in Scutum. I was also a big fan of this one. We looked at the waxing crescent moon with our fancy telescope and it was soooo cooool. All sorts of craters and mountains were absolutely enthralling. I could look at the moon all day. Or all night... So anyway, we did the Great Worldwide Star Count and got a limiting magnitude of five for the constellation Cygnus. Very fun stuff.

APOD 2.2

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100527.html

Week after week I've known that M13 goes in the miscellaneous category for the constellation Hercules on our COTW quizzes. Yet, I hadn't a clue what M13 really was or looked like. Here it is! The Great Globular Cluster of Hercules! Noted by English astronomer Edmund Halley, "This is but a little Patch, but it shews itself to the naked Eye, when the Sky is serene and the Moon absent." This cluster is composed of highly concentrated, oddly close together stars, hundreds of thousands of them, in a region just 150 light years in diameter. Stunning in its clarity, this image reveals the mystery behind Hercules' very own M13.

APOD 2.1

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101023.html

I've always liked how recognizable Orion is. Where else in the sky does one fine three bright stars perfectly aligned to form Orion's belt? No where. Those three stars are wonderfully distinguishable. I'm a big fan. This photo gives us Orion the Hunter in a way that I find incredibly enticing. It's too bad that when you look up at the sky you don't see all of this, the cosmic dust and nebula action, I mean. Or maybe it's a good thing because it shows that you should never take things at face value; there could be a whole lot more to that constellation than three stars that rather resemble a belt. The hilt of Orion's sword, for instance, is a stellar nursery known as the Great Nebula of Orion. Or the bright star  Beteleguese is the cool, red giant in the bottom left, which takes on a yellowish tint. I'll have to get my binocs out soon and try to look for the intricacies of this constellation which I had previously taken for granted.

APOD 1.8

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101006.html

Well, it's another post about aurora borealis. There's no doubt that the aurora makes for a good picture. This one was photographed about two weeks ago at Willow Lake in Eastern Alaska. The exposure time was two hours and sixteen minutes. The photographer included a video of the time elapsed which is really really sweet, http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmalsop/5031146657/, and at about 55 seconds a shooting star is visible. So cool so cool so cool. The aurora occurs a few days after a powerful magnetic event on the Sun when charged particles from the magnetosphere collide with air molecules in the Earth's atmosphere. I just love the coloration of this image.

APOD 1.7

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101015.html

I chose this photo as it seemed very relevant due to our recent studies of the electromagnetic spectrum and infrared telescopic instruments. This image was taken very near infrared in an attempt to get past the dust of NGC 2170 and see the formation of stars and newborn stars that would have otherwise been hidden. This active star forming region is called Monoceros R2 and is about 2700 lightyears distant. This picture shows the importance of infared and radio wave technology so that we can see through the interstellar dust that is opaque to visible light. With only visible light telescopes, we would have little information about the early stages of stellar formation. I'm pretty excited for ESO's current plans for a 42-metre E-ELT, the European Extremely Large Telescope, which will classify as optical/near infrared, to be built in the Atacama desert in Chile. Astronomers really know how to get crazy naming their telescopes, don't they?

APOD 1.6

 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101016.html

This image was the astronomy picture of the day on October 16th and it depicts the large cloud of Magellan. Unfortunately, this cloud and its brother the Small Cloud of Magellan are visible to the Southern hemisphere only. The Large Magellan Cloud is a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way named after who but Ferdinand Magellan, the Spanish explorer who discovered it during his trip around the world in 1519. The LMC is about 180,000 lightyears distant and resides in the constellation, Dorado. Also depicted in this photo in the top left is the Tarantula Nebula, a vast star forming region that spans 1,000 lightyeas across.  

Quarter 1 Astronomer Post -- Galileo Galilei

Astronomer Project: Galileo Galilei

    He’s the father of modern observational astronomy and probably the first scientific figure that one studies in their pursuit of knowledge. He is one of the prominent figures to come out of the Scientific Revolution in Italy. A physicist,  mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher, his observations and discoveries provide the groundwork for modern astronomy as we know it. He was born into a noble family iin Pisa, Italy on February 15, 1564, to Vincenzo Galilei. His father was a proficient musician who contributed greatly to the theory and practice of music. Galileo went to school at the University of Pisa to study medicine, but was quickly captivated by mathematics and philosophy and switched to make the study of Aristotelian philosophy his profession, despite his father’s wishes that he pursue medicine. In and out of his university career, Galileo’s work in the study of motion, his hydrostatic balance design, the invention of the pump and many gravitational theorems won him respect throughout the scientific community and a patron, Guidobaldo de Monte.
    While sitting as the chair of mathematics at the University of Pisa, Galileo made the major discovery that we all know him for. He dropped bodies of different weights from the top of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, demonstrating that the speed at which they fell was not proportional to its weight. This discovery was in complete contradiction of Aristotle’s widely accepted claim that the falling speed of an object was entirely proportional to its weight. This blatant deviation from the status quo and his blatant disregard of the entire Aristotlean school of thought lost Galileo his position at the University of Pisa and many of his colleagues turned against him. He was picked up by the University of Padua. Upon hearing of the invention of the telescope in the Netherlands, Galileo quickly began work on creating his own telescope. Not only did he create his own telescope using spyglass lenses from a spectacle maker’s shop, but he also improved the instrument. He presented his creation to the Venetian Senate, gaining him a life tenure and doubling his salary.
    It was in 1609 that Galileo began to observe the heavens from an instrument that magnified 20x. It was with the telescope that Galileo made his biggest contributions to science. He observed and drew the phases of the moon and observed the craters and imperfections of the moon’s surface. In January of 1610, he discovered four moons revolving around Jupiter, Io, Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede. He observed the rings of Jupiter and the phases of Venus, and the sun spots and solar flares that make the sun the imperfect entity that it is. Each of these groundbreaking observations led to further support of the Copernican heliocentric theory. After publicly submitting to the Copernican theory, Galileo encountered opposition on all fronts. The Church and the Inquisitors of the time saw the Copernican theory as a blatant rejection of the Bible and silenced Galileo with threats. Upon receiving approval from Pope Urban VIII, Galilei was able to publish Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Ptolemaic & Copernican, which was to maintain the Copernican theory strictly as a hypothetical possibility. The Romans did not think it was objective enough and charged him of heresy and sentenced him to a life of imprisonment. He continued to work even during his comfortable stint at the home of a Vatican ambassador. It was not untill about 1700, more than fifty years after his death in 1642 that the heliocentric universe was finally accepted, but the effects Galileo Galilei’s work in modern science and mathematics have been felt through out the ages.

APOD 1.5

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101002.html



Hello. This one looks sort of like the one I featured last week. But it's so prettttyyy. Meet Messier 8, your average star forming region coming in at about 5,000 lightyears distant from Sagittarius. M8 is commonly known as the Lagoon nebula. This is another image from our good friend Hubble. The dust clouds reflect the bright light emitted from the newborn stars to create this beautiful effect.

The Night Sky 09/30/10

Where? Blackburn point
When? 8:20-9:30

Holy smokes! I attended the stargaze last night at Blackburn point, and it was better than I ever could have imagined. I have finally seen proof that the constellations we study each week actually exist. The patterns on our star charts mirror the patterns in the sky. No really. Last night, my mind was blown. We had stationary binoculars set up to see some really awesome clusters of the Milky Way. With the telescope we viewed Venus before it set and Jupiter and its moons. Jupiter was so big and lovely. With binoculars we could see the Andromeda galaxy. It looked like a little smudge, but it was cool nonetheless. So there we all are, minding our own business when a large meteor just fell right out of the sky. I made a wish. But even if my wish doesn't come true, at least I got to share a beautiful night of stargazin' with my buds.

The works pertaining to Galileo that I intend to use to research my astonomer project.

Galilei, Galileo. Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo. New York, NY: Anchor, 1957. Print.

Dictionary of Science Biography. C. Gillispie, editor Charles Scribner's Sons. 1981.

APOD 1.4

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100925.html

Well! Isn't this pretty! It's the Melotte 15 in the Heart, of course. Actually, Melotte 15 is a newborn star cluster, clocking in at 1.5 million years young. This photo depicts a very attractive skyscape composed of dust clouds and stellar winds combined with the radiation from the newborn stars. Hues of red, green, and blue correspond with the emissions of sulfer, hydrogen, and oxygen atoms. The Hubble Palette refers to the method of color enhancement that better reveals the detail of an image. Cool!

APOD 1.3

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100917.html

It's no wonder that the Alaskan Inuits have a culture so full of enchantment and mystique. Imagine venturing out in the deep, dark night for salmon fishing, only to be greeted by a spectacle such as the Aurora Borealis! Spirits! Legends! They were the only ways to explain such magical phenomena. These days, however, we've made some strides and have determined that the auroras are visible as a result of the interaction of engergized particles and solar wind. Protons and electrons are energized in the magnetosphere, merely the space around the Earth. The Earth's magnetic field acts as an obstacle for the solar wind/charged particles and are forced to bend around it via the northernmost or southernmost points of Earth. The time around the equinox is prime time to see the Northern lights. During the summer, the night is not dark enough to see the auroras. I'm pretty darn excited to see the Arurora Borealis. I have so much to look forward to! From total solar eclipses to light shows in the sky to being able to point out constellations other than the Big Dipper...

APOD 1.2

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap100909.

Yikes! 1.2 is late. 1.3 tonight.This photo was the photo of the day on September ninth. I chose it for a shallow, superficial reason. Because it's real pretty. Well two reasons, when you scroll over it, annotations pop up, and who doesn't like annotations? The photo depicts star clusters and the cloudy remnants of stellar explosionslol. The cloud on the left is commonly known as "The Elephant's Trunk." I don't see an elephant's trunk, but there are a lot of things I don't see that astronomers do. I was very comforted in star lab yesterday when Mr. Percicval said that practice makes for a better astronomer, that recognizing patterns in the sky comes with experience, and that there is still hope for me to become the avid astronomer I so desperately want to become. Maybe people who name constellations or elephan'ts trunks just have better imaginations than I. But then again, it doesn't take much to assign a number series in the Sharpless or Barnard catalougues. Musing.

The Night Sky 9/14/10

Where? My driveway
When? 10:00-10:30

Finally a night that was clear enough to see anything! I hadn't realized how frustrating it is to have to depend on the cooperation of the clouds. I saw the Summer Triangle, which was directly overhead as promised. That was cute. With binoculars, I believe I saw some of the constellation Cygnus near Deneb. The moon is nearing first quarter, research says that tomorrow is the day. With binoculars, I could see a faint Antares right below the moon. The brightness of the moon sort of interfered with seeing the rest of Scorpius. Was that Jupiter hanging out in the East? I think it was. Good stuff. I would have stayed out longer, but the mosquitos told me I must go inside. I want to drive somewhere with even less light pollution. East of 75 is already better than my peers who live in Sarasota, but if I could get out to Myakka this weekend... Wouldn't that be nice.

APOD 1.1

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100714.html

       This photo was the Astronomy Picture of the Day on July 14th 2010. It depicts the total solar eclipse that occured on July 11th, as seen from the Isla de Pascua (Easter Island) in the Pacific Ocean. Every day I go to astronomy class I am inspired, but particularly so the day we discussed solar eclipses. Mr. Percival showed us a two minute clip of a solar eclipse witnessed in Hungary and I became so fascinated with the idea that the day could go dark and back in a matter of moments. Needless to say I look forward to making the drive to South Carolina on August 21, 2017 to see it firsthand.

       There are upwards of 800 of these mysterious statues on Easter Island and they appear to have been there for over five hundred year and depict the leaders of a lost civilization. I was drawn to this picture because it shows two of the world's greatest mysteries in the same frame- a solar eclipse and the Chilean statues of Moai. The image shows the beauty of the solar corona, which I find to be absolutely fascinating. I had no idea that the Sun's atmosphere could be so enchanting. The link that one follows when they click "solar corona" is just wonderful. Only 2,536 days until my first solar eclipse!