Comet Hale-Bopp Over Indian Cove

APOD 24 November 2013
Comet Hale-Bopp Over Indian Cove

This picture was actually taken on April 6 1997, it was imaged from the Indian Cove Campground in the Joshua Tree National Park in California. They used a flashlight to illuminate the rocks in order to get the six minute exposure. The comet was visible to the nake eye for an entire year before returning to the outer solar system and fading.

From California to the Pleiades

APOD 22 November 2013
From California to the Pleiades

This is a picture of the distance between the California Nebula over to the Pleiades. These colors would be too faint for anybody to see in the night sky. The California's reddish color comes from hydrogen atoms ionized by the blue star Xi Persei to its right. The Pleiades star cluster owes its blue color to the reflection of starlight by interstellar dust. In between the nebula and star cluster are the stars of the Perseus OB2 association. I think this provides a really cool view from across the Earth's sky and shows how some nebulae get specific colors.

Heavy Black Hole Jets in 4U1630-47

Heavy Black Hole Jets in 4U1630-47
APOD 20 November 2013

This is probably one of the coolest pictures I have ever seen so far about space. Black holes are surrounded by disks of gas and plasma gravitationally pulled from a nearby binary star. This material is expelled from the star system by jets from a spinning black hole. Astronomers discovered that some of these materials are not only electrons and protons but also dense materials such as iron and nickel. This black hole is a few times larger than the mass of our Sun. This was found by a Compact Array of radio telescopes in eastern Australia and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton satellite.

The Flash Spectrum of the Sun

APOD Nov 15 2013
The Flash Spectrum of the Sun

This is the flash of the visible spectrum of the Sun during the total eclipse that occurred on November 3. This image was caught while the solar eclipse was traveling over Africa. The visible spectrum is spread by diffraction due to the moon covering the solar photosphere. The strongest emission lines are due to Hydrogen atoms that produce the red alpha emission to the right and the blue beta emission to the left. The yellow emission comes from the helium atoms. This provides an awesome insight into what the visible spectrum of the Sun would look like during a solar eclipse.

Eclipse Over New York

APOD
4 November 2013
Eclipse Over New York

On November 3, a solar eclipse occurred during the morning in much of the Eastern North America and in Africa. Parts of the Earth saw the moon as too small to cover the sun so they saw a Ring of Fire. Some other parts of the Earth were able to see the moon completely cover the Earth, thus witnessing a total solar eclipse. In this picture, due to the location on Earth, the moon is only partly covering up the Sun, making it look as if somebody had taken a bite out of the Sun. The next solar eclipse that can be visible from New York City will happen on October 23, 2014 during sunset.

A Spectre in the Eastern Veil

APOD
30 October 2013
A Spectre in the Eastern Veil

The picture shown is a close up of the eastern part of the Veil Nebula, which is a large supernova remnant. The part of the nebula in this picture is only as large as the moon. This picture was recorded through narrow band filters, with the hydrogen emissions showing up in red hues while the oxygen emissions showing up in blue/green hues. This part is opposite to the western part of the Veil Nebula, named the Witch's Broom. I think this is really awesome due to the fact that it looks somewhat like a spectral bat and just has some pretty vivid colors.

Copernicus Biography

Nicolaus Copernicus was born in 1473 and died in 1543. Copernicus is considered one of the most important astronomers of Earth's history because he put the heliocentric model of the universe into action. Around the time of Copernicus's life, the most popularly held belief about how our solar system is structured was that it was geocentric, or the belief that everything in the universe revolved around the Earth. Copernicus was not one of the first proponents of the heliocentric idea but he revived the idea once he was able to mathematically prove it. He developed a book in 1514 to his friends that expanded upon his view of the universe, one correct proposition in the book being that Earth's motion through space causes the retrograde motion of epicycles of the planets across the night sky.

This heliocentric view, although mathematically proven to be correct by Copernicus, was met with opposition by the church because it goes against everything that they teach. The reason his views were not published until 1514, when he was 41 years old, was because of how it goes against church views and he was not too fond of the idea of being labeled a heretic. Copernicus was met with mild opposition and continued to promote his ideas, later on proving (in a publication from his deathbed) that each planet in the solar system has their own orbit around the sun. This completely disproved the Ptolemaic model which was the popular model for about 1500 years. He made his observations about the universe simply by doing naked eye measurements.

Some of Copernicus's published beliefs were proven to be not true but the ones that were true, were possibly some of the greatest advancements in astronomy. His legacy was expanded upon by the works of Tycho Brahe with his great observation tools. More succession to add to the Copernican views was Johannes Kepler who formulated Kepler's laws, such as the planet's orbits are elliptical not circular. Copernicus's beliefs and views have been great points to spark interest in uncommon views of the world and have given us our view of the world today. Copernicus's proving of the heliocentric universe spoke magnitudes in shaping our modern understanding of the entirety of the universe.

Stargazing Night Observations

Observation time: 2 hours (counts as 4)

We observed a small image of Saturn through a high power telescope

We observed the Summer Triangle in the sky and Alberio in the Cygnus constellation through the telescope.

M22, the brightest globular cluster in the night sky, was observed through binoculars and the telescope.

We used Mr. Percival's technique of starhopping to observe where Cassiopeia is in the sky in relation to many other constellations.

M11 in Scutum and M13 in Hercules were both observed by the use of binoculars.

Observations from October 10

On October 10, I was able to observe Venus early on and it was inside of the Scorpius constellation. I used some binoculars and the Sky map app on my phone to assist with finding some other constellations. The moon was at perigree, the closest the moon will be to the Earth in its orbit.

Observation time: 1 hour

Sources for Copernicus Biography

Rabin, Sheila, Rabin,. "Nicolaus Copernicus." Stanford University. Stanford University, 30 Nov. 2004. Web. 13 Oct. 2013. <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/copernicus/>.

Redd, Nola Taylor. "Nicolaus Copernicus Biography: Facts & Discoveries." Space.com. Tech Media Network, 19 Feb. 2013. Web. 13 Oct. 2013. <http://www.space.com/15684-nicolaus-copernicus.html>.

M81 vs M82

Astronomy Picture of the Day
25 September 2013
M81 Versus M82

Both of these galaxies are about 12 million light-years away and are having a close encounter. This close encounter is due to their longstanding gravitational struggle. This picture was constructed by 25 hours of image data in a deep telescopic snapshot. The violent star forming in M82 (right) is so energetic that it glows in X-rays. In a few billion years, only one galaxy will remain. This picture is incredibly interesting because it shows the vastness of the universe and how far away other galaxies truly are. Plus the galaxies look really cool. 

Iron Sun



Astronomy Picture of the Day: September 29, 2001
The Iron Sun

 This picture was taken on the autumnal equinox and is green because of the UV light by 11x ionized iron at temperatures over 2 million degrees fahrenheit. It was recorded by the EIT camera on the SOHO spacecraft which constantly observes the Sun. In this picture the electrons are stripped by collisions with atoms and electrons which happen at the very high temperatures of the Solar Corona. This picture really intrigues me because I have never seen this type of view of the Sun and it honestly just looks really cool.

Jellyfish Nebula



Astronomy Picture of the Day: Jan. 9 2013
The Jellyfish Nebula

The Jellyfish Nebula, as seen in the picture, obtains its namesake because its left side is seen to be dangling tentacles. It is located near the bright star Eta Geminorum and is within the supernova remnant (debris cloud from a supernova explosion) IC 443. The Nebula's light reached the Earth over 30,000 years ago. The Jellyfish Nebula is about 5,000 light years away and shares a similar water-like name with the Crab Nebula. Both the Crab Nebula and the Jellyfish Nebula harbor a neutron star, which is a remnant of a collapsed stellar core.

This is all very cool to me because just the idea of something that came from the remnants of a supernova that had happened many years ago is intriguing. Also the nebula itself just looks really awesome.