APOD 3.8

7 March 2014

 

This is Venus and the Milky Way rising in the early morning hours of March 1st. This picture was taken on the skyline of the beach at Sea Isle City, New Jersey. Venus lies just beyond the inner boundary of the habitable zone. Earth orbits well within the habitable zone of the solar system. The watery reflection of light from Venus is seen along the beach. This is a nice, serene photo that is just very peaceful about Venus rising in the morning.

James H. Jeans Biography

Sir James Hopwood Jeans, born on September 11th 1877 and died on September 16th 1946, was an English physicist and mathematician who was the first person to propose that matter is continually formulated throughout the universe. He studied at many grammar schools throughout his childhood and Trinity College in Cambridge. He was elected as a Fellow of Trinity College in 1901 and taught at Cambridge. He moved on to teach at Princeton University in 1904 as a professor of applied mathematics but returned to Cambridge in 1910. He provided many positive contributions to physics and astronomy such as quantum theory, stellar evolution, and the theory of radiation. Sir Jeans proposed the idea that the planets condensed from material drawn out of the Sun by a hypothetical near-collision with a passing star; this idea is not accepted in the modern world. Jeans is one of the founders of cosmology, which is the study of the origin, evolution, and fate of the universe. Much of his work included investigations of star systems, dwarf stars, sources of stellar energy and the deconstruction of rapidly spinning bodies. He published many scientific works that launched his scientific reputation such as The Dynamical Theory of Gases (1904), Theoretical Mechanics (1906), and Mathematical Theory of Electricity and Magnetism (1908). One of his major discoveries is the Jeans length, which is a critical radius of an interstellar cloud in space. He created an alternate to the equation called the Jeans instability which solves for the critical mass a cloud must attain before collapsing. Another law that he helped in creating is the Rayleigh--Jeans Law, which relates the energy density of blackbody radiation the an emission source's temperature. Jeans garnered multiple awards for his scientific achievements such as the Royal Medal of the Royal Society in 1919 and being a Member of the Order of Merit in 1939. Sir James Hopwood Jeans has had a lasting impact on the scientific realm with his publications in physics, astronomy, and applied mathematics.

APOD 3.7

February 27, 2014

Venus now appears as our planet's morning star above the horizon before dawn. The lunar crescent passed in front of Venus in West Africa during the sunrise. This image was captured right before the occultation began under the skies of Yunnan Province. This is easily visible to the naked eye in the Earth's sky. This looks very awesome because it looks as if the moon looks incredibly large in comparison to Venus and the Moon covers Venus in some parts of the Earth sky.

Q3 Astronomer Sources: James H. Jeans

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/302187/Sir-James-Jeans

http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Biographies/Jeans.html

http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/people/jeans-sir-james-hopwood.html

http://biography.yourdictionary.com/sir-james-hopwood-jeans

APOD 3.6

The long jet of the lighthouse nebula

Lighthouse nebula was formed by the wind of a pulsar, which is a magnetized neutron star. Energetic particles generated by the pulsar are swept back into the wind's tail that trails up to the left. This image was taken by the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Both pulsar and expanding remnant debris field are the aftermath of the core-collapse-explosion of a massive star, with the pulsar moved out by the supernova explosion. This is really cool because it shows the image through an x-ray telescope and clearly shows what is going on in the picture.

APOD 3.5

IC 1805: Light From the Heart

 

 

 

 

Emission nebula IC 1805 is a mix of interstellar gas and dark dust clouds about 7500 light years away in the Perseus spiral arm. This region's nickname is the Heart Nebula, and derives its name from its heart shape. The clouds are shaped by stellar winds and radiation from massive hot stars in the star cluster Melotte 15. This image maps the light of narrow emission lines from the atoms in the nebula. The heart shape is really cool looking and pretty coincidental that this apod was put out on Valentine's Day.

APOD 3.4

February 5, 2014
NGC 2683: Edge-On Spiral Galaxy

The spiral galaxy NGC 2683 is very like our own Milky Way Galaxy. This galaxy lies 20 million light-years in the Lynx constellation. NGC 2683 is seen from data and images combined from the Subaru telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope. Other galaxies are littered throughout the background. The galactic core is blended light from a large amount of old yellow stars. The blue glow in the galaxy are young star clusters. This is a very interesting image because it is nearly identical to our own Milky Way Galaxy and just looks super cool.