Friday, January 28, 2011

APOD 3.2

The Whirlpool Galaxy in Infrared Dust
2011, January 26th

This is a picture of M51, which is nearby, through the infared spectrum.  The dust that are highlighted when you move over the picture are what help to form stars. Also, much of the optical light was digitally removed.  The resulting pattern is a creation of swirls all across the picture which is extremely aesthetic and appealing to the human eye.  This M object lies about 30 million light years away.

Friday, January 21, 2011

APOD 3.1

2011 January 21: Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka

Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka are three bright bluish stars that scatter across the sky and shine extremely brightly.  You can't miss them.  They are captured beautifully in this picture as is shown.  The thing that really suprises me about this picture are all the other bright objects in the sky.  They are impossible to count they are so numerous.  This picture has a lot of great color and brightness. I like it.  The three major stars make up the belt of Orion which are very visible from Earth.  They are all much brighter and much more massive than the sun itself. The famous Orion nebula is located at the bottom of the solar system.

Friday, January 14, 2011

APOD 2.8

The Seagull Nebula: January 12th, 2011

Pretty.  This is probably the coolest looking nebula I've seen on Astronomy Picture of the Day's site.  It occurs in the night sky near Sirius and spans 1.6 angular degrees across the sky.  It's very close to the alpha star Canis Major.  The birds head is formed by a dusty emission region with an embedded massive star.    It is dominated by hydrogen which explains why it has a reddish tint from top to bottom.   It spans over 100 light years and is approximately 3,800 light years away.

APOD 2.7

Skylights Over Libya: 2010 December 28

I really enjoyed this picture for a lot of reasons.  One, it makes spotting the constellations very easy and I was capable of orienting myself quickly which is very hard to do under a blank night sky.  Actually being able to locate all of these constellations which I've heard about, but not seen, was really great.  However, my favorite part of this picture is the bright planet of Jupiter in the top left of the picture.  It's crazy how much brighter Jupiter is than everything else in the sky (besides the city lights in the distance.)  Also, the sheer size difference is incredible.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

The Sun

http://www.nrl.navy.mil/content_images/sun.jpg

This picture is fascinating because it shows in great detail a large solar prominence extending from the surface adding almost half of its diameter to it. 

http://naturalorder.info/now/images/sunspots.gif

This picture illustrates the number of sunspots there are on out sun.  Every lighter part of the sun is part of a sunspot or the light given off by a sunspot which is significantly less than the surrounding areas.

http://wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/objects/679/695937/sunflip.gif

This picture shows a graph for the predictions, although outdated, of sunspot activity and formation.

http://thegalaxyguide.com/galaxy/sun/ultra_violet_sun.gif

This is the Sun seen through the ultraviolet wavelength.

http://hea-www.harvard.edu/CHAMP/EDUCATION/PUBLIC/ICONS/sun_infrared.gif

This is the Sun seen through the infrared wavelength.  As you can see, sun spots are easily spotted when viewing the sun through this wavelength.

http://www.solarviews.com/raw/sun/xsun.gif

This is the sun seen through the x ray wavelength.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqHegaPYDq8wWnUnzd64KKa2rdv-OnFmRJNETA7bEQRVeB5im3aUUGz8asttgAv_dtgEAUyJX9N4QRkNBWmjrXgZVenyFx1IXhE4qXE4RvhOja4By9UaI9u2IpU0tPwy-thjFanVKeJhyphenhyphenI/s400/Arcturus+Pollux+Sirius+Sun+Jupiter+Earth.jpg

This picture is interesting because it puts our sun into size comparison with other large stars.  It is infinitesimally smaller than Arcturus.  It also mentions that in this scale Earth is not visible it is so small.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Johann Madler Biography


Johann Madler was born in Berlin in 1794.  He studied both mathematics and astronomy later in his life the University of Berlin.  One of his contemporaries and most influential companions was Johann Encke who studied there with Madler. 

However, probably the most influential persons in Madler's life was a man named Wilhelm Beer.  Beer offered Madler a position at the observatory that he was creating and this is where Madler made most of the observations that helped him make large contributions to the field of astronomy.  His largest and most commonly used contributions is his plotting of the moon's cycle.  He was the first to divide it up into four seperate quadrants which we now know today as waxing and waning gibbous, and waxing and waning crescent. 

Another idea that Madler came up with that was not so brilliant was the idea of the Central Sun Hypothesis.  This stated that the center of the universe was found in the star cluster Pleiades and that the sun revolved around it.  We now understand that this is not true at all.

He also did significant research on Mars with Beer.  The use of the Sinus Meridiani as the prime meridian for Mars can be attributed to Madler.  Also, in relation to Mars, Johann calculated the rotation period of Mars and was only off by 1.1 seconds.

There are Madler craters on both the Moon and Mars which obviously relate back to Johann. 

Madler was a man that was obsessed with education.  To sustain his family he worked as a private tutor, in the realm of teaching.  His last piece of published material was the History of Descriptive Astronomy in 1873 which was his last work as he died March 14 1874.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Sources

MacPherson, Hector. Makers of Astronomy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933. Questia. Web. 10 Jan. 2011.

http://www.daviddarling.info/encyclopedia/M/Madler.html

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1988QJRAS..29..313T

APOD 2.6

Martian Moon Phobos from Mars Express

On December 1st 2010, this photo of the Martian moon Phobos was uploaded to the Astronomy Picture of the Day site.  Phobos is the darkest moon in our solar system because it reflects such little light.  Also, Phobos has an extremely abnormal orbit which is highly eccentric.  This leads astronomers to believe that Phobos is actually a captured asteriod and not a moon particularly.  It is composed of both and ice and dark rock and is said to be covered in about a meter of loose dust.  It is a heavily cratered barren moon that was captured here by the Mars Express, a man made satellite currently orbiting Mars.

APOD 2.5

Flowing Auroras Over Norway
On November 24th 2010, a video of the aurora over Norway was posted onto the Astronomy "Picture" of the Day site.  This video really impressed me personally.  I did not realize the amount of movement that the aurora experiences in the night sky: it's very fascinating and extraordinarily beautiful.  The differentiation of shape and birghtness makes the aurora a spectactular entertaining feature in the night sky and places it self in the top 3 things I personally want to see first hand.  The post explains that recently our sun has become extremely active and produces things like this every now and again.

Observation 1/09/11

The new year brings in good sight seeing in the skies.  I went out into my backyard back into this clearing in the woods and looked up.  I had never seen Orion's Belt with such ease.  It was centrally located straight above me at approximately 7:45 pm in Sarasota FL.  The moon was no where to be found as it was in its new moon stage so there were very few lights and third and fourth magnitude stars were easily spottable.