Karl Jansky Biography

Karl Jansky was born in Norman, Oklahoma in 1905. He was named after physicist Karl Guthe whom his father worked under earlier on. This translated an interest in science and physics to Karl Jansky as his father taught Electrical Engineering at the University of Wisconsin. Jansky became a part of Bell labs in 1928 after graduating from University of Wisconsin and started his master's degree after undergraduate but never obtained it. 1929 Jansky began building an antenna to receive radio signals; it rotated and scanned the sky in twenty minutes. Jansky discovered three types of static: weak static from distant thunder storms, stronger static from local thunder storms, and persistent static. The last signal was thought to have unknown origins but eventually Jansky found that it comes from the center of the Milky Way, from all of the stars. His discovery was rather lucky because he scanned the sky during an 11 year period of low sunspot activity, otherwise the sun's radiation would overwhelm that of the other stars. Jansky's publications about star noise, also named "Star Noise" garnered him his Masters degree in 1936. During WWII, he worked on direction finders to locate German submarines. Jansky is considered the first person to discover the static signals that come from outer space and influenced future astronomers to develop more things that have to do with radio astronomy. Such future astronomers consist of Grote Reber who confirmed and expanded Jansky's discovery, growing the field of radio astronomy. Karl Jansky died on Valentine's Day, 1950 due to kidney failure caused by Bright's Disease. Jansky has a unit of measurement named after him, called the jansky, which is for radio-wave emission strength. Bell Labs have a monument dedicated to Jansky in 1998 at the New Jersey lab which he conducted his study. There is also a crater on the Moon called Jansky, in honor of him.

APOD 4.8

Voyager's Neptune

Voyager 2 spacecraft made it's closest approach to Neptune on August 25, 1989. This is the only spacecraft that has made a successful visit to this jovial planet. This images shows the planet, the moon Triton, and a latent system of rings. The light being shown is because that is the side of the planet that is facing the Sun. The background starfield is composed of the stars that are in the constellation Camelopardalis.

APOD 4.7

Valles Marineris: The Grand Canyon of Mars

The largest canyon in the solar system creates a wide crevice across Mars. The valley, Valles Marineris, extends over 3,000 km long, 600 km across, and 8 km deep. The origin of the valley is unknown, but a popular hypothesis claims that it started as a crack from billions of years ago as the planet cooled. Many geologic processes have been identified in the canyon.

APOD 4.6

Brisbane Sunset Moonset

The Sun and the New Moon set together over the skies of Queensland, Australia on April 29. This composite of pictures is a stack of images taken 5 minutes apart with a solar filter and telescope lens. It follows the solar eclipse in progress, approaching a western horizon where rays from the bank join the setting moon. Only a isolated part of Antarctica was able to see the eclipse in its annular phase, the entire dark ring surrounded by a ring of light. This is a really interesting and rare image that I've never seen anything like before.

Karl Jansky Sources

http://www.nrao.edu/whatisra/hist_jansky.shtml

http://www.armaghplanet.com/blog/karl-jansky-the-father-of-radio-astronomy.html

http://www.nndb.com/people/055/000204440/

http://cosmology.carnegiescience.edu/timeline/1964/karl-janskys-radio-antenna

http://www.magnet.fsu.edu/education/tutorials/pioneers/jansky.html

APOD 4.5

Hubble's Messier 5

This is an image of Messier 5 (M5) which is a globular star cluster of about 100,000 stars or more. The region is about 165 light-years in diameter and the stars are bounded by gravity. M5 is about 25,000 light years away from us and it roams the halo of our galaxy. It's one of the oldest globular clusters and it has very old stars toward the dense core and gives off a reddish hue. This is a really awesome image and gives off cool colors.

Solar Stormwatch

I worked on some of the activities in the solar stormwatch section and learned how to spot solar storms.