Observation Jan 7

This night I observed from 8-11PM and was able to observe the first quarter moon of the year in the night sky. With the help of my stargazing app, I was able to spot: Jupiter, Canis Major, Gemini, Perseus, Cassiopeia, Sirius, Orion, Betelgeuse, Grus, Cetus, Fomalhaut, Aries, and Pisces.

Observation time: 3 hours

Observation: Jan 1

On the first night of the new year from 10PM-12AM, I was able to spot the extremely obvious supermoon due to it being so close to Earth tonight and it's super brightness. With the assistance of the star app on my phone, I was able to spot: Pegasus, Sirius, Orion, Jupiter, Ursa Minor, Perseus, and Cassiopeia.

Observation Hours: 2 hours

Observation: Christmas

Dec 25: From 8-10 PM, I used my star app on my phone and my binoculars in order to find Jupiter, Sirius, Betelguese, Rigel, Pegasus, Arcturus, and Scorpius. These were all relatively easy to find due to their brightness and the use of the star app.

Observation Hours: 2

The Tadpoles of IC 410

APOD 9 January 2014
The Tadpoles of IC 410

This is a picture of the emission nebula IC 410 in false color and was taken through narrow band filters. Narrow band image traces atoms in the nebula: sulfur in red, oxygen in blue, and hydrogen in green. The nebula surrounds a galactic cluster of stars called NGC 1893. IC 410's remarkable features are its 2 tadpoles, which are displayed in this photo. The tadpoles look very interesting because they are very distinguishable in comparison to everything else in the photo,

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.