Quarter 4 Biography - Bart Bok

          Bart Bok was born on April 28, 1906 in the Netherlands. He spent much of his childhood in the then Dutch East Indies, currently Indonesia.He studied at the Universities at Leiden (1924-27) and Groningen (1927-29) Universities in the Netherlands. He moved to the United States in 1929 and became naturalized in 1938. In 1929, he married fellow astronomer Dr. Priscilla Fairfield Bok. From the years 1929 to 1957 he worked at Harvard University, holding the position of director of astronomy from 1947 onward. Bok spent the period 1957–66 in Australia as director of the Mount Stromlo Observatory, Canberra, and professor of astronomy at the Australian National University. He returned to America in 1966 to become director of the Steward Observatory, Arizona, until 1970 and professor of astronomy (from 1974 emeritus professor) at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

          Bok's major interest was the structure of our galaxy, the Milky Way. With his wife, Priscilla, he published a survey of the subject: The Milky Way (1941). Although it had been long assumed that the Milky Way had a spiral structure it was not until Walter Baade identified in the 1940s the hot young O and B stars of the Andromeda galaxy as spiral markers that such a conjecture could be confirmed. The actual structure was first worked out in some detail by William Morgan. The existence of 21-centimeter radio signals from clouds of neutral hydrogen in the galaxy was predicted by Hendrik van de Hulst and their discovery in 1951 provided a second tracer. It was clear to Bok by the late 1950s that the radio data, which were expected to support the optical picture, instead contradicted it. He consequently attempted to harmonize the two structures by modifying Morgan's somewhat elliptical arms, making them much more spherical, and giving more emphasis to the Carina–Centaurus arm.
          Bok's name is also associated with his discovery in 1947 of small dark circular clouds visible against a background of stars or luminous gas and since known as Bok globules. Since they are thought to be precursors of stars, as Bok himself conjectured, they have received considerable attention in recent years.

Zooniverse 4/30/11

I tried a new thing today called "Old Weather." This one was really nice because I felt like it would be very difficult to mess this one up. Basically, you just decipher some cursive and keep track of weather and times and stuff. I looked at old ship's logs from like 1913! That's awesome. I might just stick with this weather watcher...

APOD 4.2

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110413.html

In this picture, radio telescopes from the Australian Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) are seen in front of a full moon and the radio image of Centauri A is superimposed in the background. Centaurus A is an active galaxy that is presumably the result of the collision of two galaxies. The debris are being consumed by a black hole. It is this black hole that produces the fast moving radio jets this long exposure photograph captures. What I had assumed were stars are actually the glow of other radio bright galaxies in the far distant future. How crazy is that!

APOD 4.1

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110414.html

Depicted here are some baby stars in the Rho Ophiuchi Cloud along with some dust clouds at the infared wavelength. Rho Ophiuchi is one of the nearest star forming regions at 400 light years distant. The stars form against a cold hydorgen cloud and then in turn heat the dust around them, creating the infared glow. Something I didn't know! Stars in the process of formation have their own name, YSO's! young stellar objects are seen in the light pinkish nebula. The average age of these babes is 300,000 years. The redder region in the lower right corner surrounds the star Sigma Scorpii. Impressive. I like these stellar nurseries.

Zooniverse 4/24/11

So, I did some more solar storm watchin' today. I finished my training or what have you and moved on to bigger and better things. They had me watch videos and tag the ones I thought depicted a storm. I used the scan button to view the video at double speed. This made it easier to differentiate stuff.

Zooniverse 4/14/11

Today, I did the SOLAR STORMWATCH. It was sweet. They showed images of the sun and I had to tell if the solar outbursts were either light bulb shaped solar storm and it was fun. Then, I identified comets, particles, and optical effects.

The Night Sky 3/18/11

So I was out the other night with my buddy and we were kind of looking for something to do. I remembered that I had my star charts in my vehicle as they always are and we brought them out and.... looked up. I'm so glad it happened to be a clear night. Very lucky indeed. We saw Orion of course. His belt as distinct as ever. We saw some planes. We saw the moon, waxing crescent, you see. We saw Taurus the Bull and the Hyades and the Pleiades. We saw Monoceros, I think. And Auriga. It was really nice.

APOD 3.8

Hey, I reeeaaalllllyyyy like Boston. I like to think of my dear friend who is living there right now. He was looking at this exact moon rise! And what a moon rise it is! On March 19, the moon was at its perigee. It was 14% larger and 30% brighter than a normal moon. I too happened to see the moon on this night and it was quite impressive. The "Supermoon" as it was affectionately termed was very big. The shot was taken from Prospect Hill in Waltham, Massachusetts, roughly 10 miles from the Boston skyline. Just to the left of the orange lunar disk is the distinctive control tower at Boston's Logan International Airport. Topped by lights, the tall, twin towers of the cable-stayed Zakim Bridge spanning the Charles River are also included in the scene

APOD 3.7

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110328.html

Time-Lapse Auroras Over Norway
So, Norway is very lucky to get to experience all these auroras. I have done many-a post about auroras in the past. They're quite inspiring. Many times the auroras are green, as high energy particles strike the Earth's atmosphere, causing the air to glow as electrons recombine with their oxygen hosts. Other colors are occasionally noticeable as atmospheric nitrogen also becomes affected. In later sequences the Moon and rising stars are also visible. This time lapse was sweeeettt.

APOD 3.6

Yeah! Mercury and Jupiter! How cool! NASA reports that there will probably become good views of Mercury this spring as it approaches the northern hemisphere where the ecliptic plane makes a steep angle with the western horizon. This photo was taken off of Froson, an island in Northern Sweden. I'm enjoying looking up at Venus every morning. Planets are so bright and cool.

APOD 3.5

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100302.html

This image makes me think of a Star Wars paraphenalia tee shirt. That's why I chose it. I like Star Wars. All right, so it's not a tee shirt design. It's actually M78 being reflected by some clouds. The dust absorbs light and also reflects it. M78 is about five lightyears across and belongs to the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex. The cloud itself is between 1,500 and 1,600 light-years away and is hundreds of light-years across. The nebula is important because of the sheer size as it spreads several degrees from Orion's Belt to his sword. That's the hilt of Orion's sword! Neat-o!

Quarter 3 Astronomer Project -- Henrietta Leavitt

Astronomer Project -- Henrietta Leavitt

Hennrietta Swan Leavitt was born on July 4, 1868 in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Congregational church minister George Roswell Leavitt and his wife Henrietta Swan (Kendrick). As a young girl, her family moved to Cleveland, Ohio. She attended Oberlin College and then graduated in 1892 from the Society for the Collegiate Instruction for Women, now known as Radcliffe College. In her senior year of college, Leavitt took her first astronomy course, earning an A- and cementing her interest in the subject. Pursuing the subject, she began graduate work at Harvard University, accepting a position as one of Edward Charles Pickering's computers in the Harvard College Observatory, working for $0.30 an hour. Pickering hired a number of women to measure and catalog the brightness of stars in the observatory's photographic plate collection. Tedious and menial work, Pickering sought to fill the role with women, thus earning his observatory the name "Pickering's Harem." Women in the early 1900's were not allowed to look through telescopes and were not given freedom to work theory. So, even though Henrietta Leavitt had the potential and the knowledge, she was not permitted to maximize her full possibilites.

She was chiefly in charge of cataloguing variable stars, stars whose brightness weakens and strengthens in a recognizable pattern. Studying the Magellanic Clouds, neighbor galaxies to the Milky Way, she discovered 1,777 variable stars. In 1908 she published her results in the Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College, noting that a few of the variables showed a pattern: brighter ones appeared to have longer periods. After further investigation, Leavitt was able to classify certain stars as Cepheid variables, stars with a well defined relationship between luminosity and pulsation period.  "A straight line can be readily drawn among each of the two series of points corresponding to maxima and minima," Leavitt wrote of her study "thus showing that there is a simple relation between the brightness of the variable and their periods". Based on the period-luminosity variable, Leavitt determined Cepheid Scale Distances which have been used to determine absolute magnitude beyond the realm of parallax measurements. Prior to her discovery, it was not known that there were other galaxies outside of the Milky Way, because the distances were to great for parallax. Upon her discovery, Edwin Hubble detected the Andromeda Galaxy and the scientific community confirmed that the universe was much bigger than just the Milky Way.

Had Henrietta been allowed the opportunity to pursue her discovery further and had she not died of cancer in 1921, she surely would have contributed greatly to the measurement of the cosmos. Paperwork for her Nobel Prize began in 1924 without knowledge that she had died three years earlier. Hubble himself posits that Leavitt deserved a Nobel. Leavitt was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the American Association of University Women, the American Astronomical and Astrophysical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an honorary member of the American Association of Variable Star Observers. Her early passing was seen as a tragedy by her colleagues for reasons that went beyond her scientific achievements.

The Works Pertaining to Henrietta Leavitt that I Intend to Use on my Quarter 3 Astronomer Project

"A Science Odyssey: People and Discoveries: Henrietta Leavitt." PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. Web. 19 Feb. 2011. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/baleav.html.

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

"Henrietta Leavitt Biography | BookRags.com." BookRags.com | Study Guides, Lesson Plans, Book Summaries and More. Web. 19 Feb. 2011. <http://www.bookrags.com/biography/henrietta-leavitt-wop/>.

APOD 3.4

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110125.html

Apparently, I'm impressed by supernova remnants, because here we have yet another post about supernova remnants. Let us become aquainted with SNR 0509-67.5. SNR 0509 spans about 23 light years and lies about 160,000 light years away toward the constellation of the Dorado. The red coloration is attributed to Hubble's filter allowing only light emitted by energetic hydrogen, in red saturation, to be seen. We're not really sure the precise reason for the ripples you see here, but we know the story behind the broader, red glowing ring. The expansion speeds and light echoes relate it to an Type Ia supernova, the explosion of a white dwarf star, that occured 400 years ago.

APOD 3.3

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110212.html

Simeis 147: Supernova Remnant
This supernova remnant has an estimated age of about 40,000 years - meaning light from the massive stellar explosion first reached Earth 40,000 years ago. It is in the direction of Taurus and spans nearly three degrees of the sky (six full moons). Meaning that at a distance of 3,000 lightyears, the width of this debris cloud is about 150 light years wide. The cosmic catastrophe that left behind this remnant also left a pulsar, which is the still spinning core of the original star. The thought of the core still spinning is kind of eerie to me...





The Night Sky 2/10/11

Twas about 9:00 when I ventured into the cold night, star chart in hand, to observe the happenings of the sky. I am pleased to report that my experience was successful. My fears that I wouldn't be able to locate anything were silly and proven no longer viable soon after I gained my bearings and realized that my fears of the winter sky were irrational, and that hey, the winter sky isn't so bad! Immediately, I saw Orion. He doesn't take much effort to find. And I looked at M42, the stellar nursery in the hilt of his sword with binoculars and was very impressed. There were a bunch of stars concentrated in that one area and I thought it was really cool. Near Orion is Taurus, the bull with its signature V shape. I viewed with binocs the Pleaides and the Hyades, even though I've seen them plenty before. I looked for Mr. Percival's tried and true G shape in the winter sky and it turned out pretty well. Castor and Pollux in Gemini? Saw it. Capella in Auriga? Saw it. Sirius in Canis Major? Saw it. It was a good time, but I really want to go to a class stargaze soon so I can get even more comfortable with the winter sky.

APOD 3.2

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110202.html

Wait, is this real? Or is it something from a dream. Well, I think it's both. This entrancing image was taken just before sunrise on a snowy slope in Switzerland. You've got blankets of clouds covering the small town of Balzers, Liechtenstein. The peaks of the Alps pop far to the right, along with a crescent moon and bright Venus. I'm just imagining the majesty of being the there the moment this photograph was taken. It'd be a truly beautiful experience. I guess this post isn't entirely astronomy related, but it sure is pretty.

APOD 3.1

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110204.html

Let us begin this ode to a runaway star by noting the size of this stellar juggernaut. Zeta Oph clocks in at 20 times more massive than the sun and 65,000 times more luminous. Zeta Oph would be one of the brighter stars in the sky if it weren't for the obscuration of it by the surrounding interstellar dust. So what makes Zeta Oph so cool, is that it's actually being propelled through space at a speed of 24 kilometers per second. Probably once a star in a binary system, its partner exploded in a supernova thus jetting Zeta Oph onto a never ending path into empty space. The interstellar gas and dust that surrounds this star, though a slight hindrance to our ability to view it in visible light, makes for a very awesome picture in the infrared. The calm green clouds on the outsides of the star, the brighter, hotter red clouds are seen due to teh amounts of ultraviolet radiaion emitted that heats up the clouds, and the yellow clouds of the bow shock. As the stellar wind pushes through all kinds of other interstellar stuff, it compress it causing it to glow so brightly in the infrared.

APOD 2.8

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110110.html

Ah, Stockholm. I have never been, but the progressiveness and much amplified awesomeness of Sweden has made me quite a big fan. The halo around the sun depicted in this image is actually the sun's light being reflected off of ice chrystals. Water that freezes in the upper atmosphere forms small, six-sided ice chrystals which are falling to the ground. They fall with their faces flat, or parallel to the Earth. An Earthly observer may pass through the same plane as the falling ice chrystals at sunrise or sunset. When this occurs, the ice chrystals act as a miniature lens and refract the light creating "sundogs". Neat-o!

APOD 2.7

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110111.html

The Cosmic Web of the Tarantula Nebula. I mean... I guess it looks spidery? Whether or not this nebula is indeed deserving of its arachnidan classification, it's still the largest star forming region in the entire galactic neighborhood. Doesn't that diction make it sound like the National Aeronautic Space Association is calling this nebula the 'big kid on the block'. Well, it is. It's located in the Large Magellenic Cloud which is merely a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way. It spans about 1.000 lightyears across. From NASA's description of the photo, "Were it placed at the distance of Milky Way's Orion Nebula, only 1,500 light-years distant and the nearest stellar nursery to Earth, it would appear to cover about 30 degrees (60 full moons) on the sky." So good, I had to include it.



Views of the Sun and stuff

http://www.solarviews.com/eng/sun.htm

http://nineplanets.org/pxsol.html

http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/photos/sun-gallery/#/glowing-sun-prominence_6594_600x450.jpg

http://www.spaceimages.com/sun.html

http://space.about.com/od/sunsol/ig/Sun-Pictures-Gallery.--ry/STEREO-Ultraviolet-3D-Images.--sF.htm

Quarter 2 Astronomer Post -- William "Eagle Eye" Rutter Dawes

Astronomer Project: William Rutter Dawes

            Dawes was born in West Sussex, London in 1799. His mother died when he was very young and his father was a very accomplished man who was often called away from the home. William Rutter Dawes’ father, William Dawes, was an Officer of the Royal Marines, an astronomer, engineer, botanist, surveyor, explorer, abolitionist and colonial administrator. Needless to say, our William Rutter Dawes was not always cared for by his immediate nuclear family, entrusted instead to relatives and friends. His father wished that he would become a clergyman, but Dawes had other intentions. He studied medicine at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital and then opened a country practice in Berkshire. When his sister died in 1826, he moved to Liverpool and took control of a small congregation in Ormskirk. It was in Liverpool that Dawes found his lifelong friend and companion, William Lassell. Dawes began documenting his observations of the sky in 1829, specifically the study of binary stars. According to Lassell’s notebooks, they had been studying together for some time.

            Dawes had been interested in astronomy as a boy, so by striking a friendship with astronomer William Lassell, Dawes’ fate was secured. He started out using a small refracting telescope to make his observations. In a letter to Sir John Herschel, he recalls how he obtained a copy of Rees’s Encyclopedia and copied from it Sir William Herschel’s catalogue of double stars and sat down each night to locate them and diagram them. He soon began work on a small observatory at Ormskirk. With his five foot Dolland refractor set at an aperture of 3.8 inches, Dawes was able to make extremely precise measurements of the binary stars that fascinated him so much. Between the period of 1830 and 1833, he measured 121 double stars, published in 135. Between 1834 and 1839 he measured 100 more, which were published in 1851. The discoveries helped to christen him William “Eagle Eyes” Dawes. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1830, but in 1839 with the death of his wife, ill health had caught up with him and he was forced to give up pastoral work and move to London.

            Friend George Bishop had amassed a large fortune from the production of wine and had become a patron of science, thus erecting a large private observatory with a seven inch refractor in London. Bishop allowed Dawes to continue his astronomical study until 1844. Studying at Bishop’s he measured and published 250 binaries in 1852 in Bishop’s Astronomical Observations at South Villa. Dawes married again in 1842 to a wealthy woman and was able to erect an observatory of his own, installing a 6.5 inch Merz refractor. With it, he co-discovered Saturn’s crepe ring. WC Bond had also found the ring at the Harvard Observatory, but before news had crossed the Atlantic, Dawes had made his claim. Dawes had established himself as a leader in the observation of Saturn, carefully studying the planet and its rings.

            He received the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1855. He moved in 1857 to Haddenham where he continued observations despite rapidly deteriorating health, especially worsened when his second wife died in 1860. His extensive drawings of Mars during its 1864 opposition helped Richard Anthony Proctor’s mapping of Mars in 1867. He died at Haddenham on February 15, 1868. Dawes lends his name to certain craters on the Moon and Mars as well as a gap in Saturn’s C Ring. The Dawes limit is a formula discovered by W. R. Dawes used to describe the optical phenomenon that expresses the maximum resolving power of microscope or telescope.

The Works Pertaining to Sir William "Eagle Eye" Rutter Dawes that I Intend to Use to Research my Astronomer Project

"Dawes, William Rutter." Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 2008. Encyclopedia.com. 9 Jan. 2011 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

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

Oates, Michael. "William Rutter Dawes (1799 - 1868)." The Home of Amateur Astronomy in the UK. 30 Nov. 2009. Web. 9 Jan. 2011. <http://www.mikeoates.org/astro-history/dawes.htm>.

APOD 2.6

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110103.html

I am so glad to have stumbled upon this APOD. With the changing of seasons, summer to fall to winter, Alex and I observed with remorse as the Summer Triangle rose lower and lower in the sky. The Summer Triangle was the basis for everything. It was the compass to my rose and now I look at the night sky with confusion. "Oh, there's Orion." That's it. That's all I got. But wait! All hope is not lost! The Winter Hexagon exists. I once again have some sort of direction in my life. The six stars of the Winter Hexagon are Aldebaran, Capella, Castor Pollux, Procyon, Sirius, and Rigel. Armed with this knowledge I will be much more prepared to take on the Winter Sky!

The Night Sky 12/21/10

Well! Wasn't that fun! The lunar eclipse watch a Pine View was a grand success. My parents were pretty convinced that I was crazy to stay up until five, but hey, it's educational. Besides it's not like the moon is eclipsed every night. Speaking of the eclipse, I thought that it would be a brief moment's fun, but it wasn't. The gradual shadowing and reddening of the moon leading up to the peak was absolutely as good as the total eclipse! The night was very cold, I spent much of it under blankets and just looking at the stars. I braved removing myself from the blankets only twice, once to see a star cluster that I can no longer remember the name of (hence why we post as soon after observing as possible) and again to see Saturn's rings. Well worth the few minutes of freezing. The Pleaides continues to inspire, especially with binoculars and the Hyades is cool as well. Saw some constellations, Orion of course, Taurus, Canis Major, Pegasus, and Triangulum. Well, maybe I saw Triangulum, but it's very easy to pick any three stars and call it Triangulum. Life. Anyway, it was a good time for sure.

APOD 2.5

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101215.html

Okay, okay. You got me. This isn't actually an APOD post. It's an AVOD post. An Astronomy Video of the Day! Our friends at NASA rarely feature videos for their APOD so when they do, you know it's got to be good. Well, it is. The thirteen second video features a solar prominence which happened on December 6th and is really really cool. The prominence was almost a million km long. Astronomers note that this particular filament had been seen hovering above the Sun's surface for over a week before it exploded. A filament is a large region of dense, cool gas that is held in the chromosphere by magnetic fields. This image sequence was taken by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, an orbiter launched February last year to observe the sun for five years. The plasma cloud emitted by this coronal mass eruption missed the Earth and thus did not cause any auroras. But the sun is nearing Solar Maximum Activity so we'll being seeing more auroras and cool stuff like that soon enough.

APOD 2.4

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101217.html

This is a photograph, exposed 1.5 minutes, taken in Iran in the Karkas mountains during the annual Geminid Meteor Shower. It makes me highly regret not waking up to see the meteor shower from my own home. The Geminids originate from a 3200 Phaethon, which is a large rocky object. This makes the Geminid meteors different from your average meteors as they originate from a comet. The arching trails of the meteroids reflect the Earth's rotation on its axis. This meteor changed color as it burned through the sky. You can see in the middle of the path a reddish glow that marks the change in hue.