Jan Oort Biography

Jan Oort Biography

     Jan Oort was born April 28th 1900.  He died 92 years later on the 5th of November.  During his life time he contributed almost unmeasurably to the field of astronomy and remains an extremely well recognized astronomer even today.

     Oort is clearly most recognized for the aptly named Oort cloud.  This cloud is a hypothetical spherical cloud of comets that lie nearly a light year away from the sun. The outer edge of this belt of comets defines the outer limits of our Solar System.  The outer edge of the Oort cloud is gravitationally affected by passing stars and by the Milky Way Galaxy itself.  Although, currently, technology does not allow the direct observation of the existence of the Oort cloud, it is commonly accepted that this cloud is the place where all long period comets and Halley-type comets come from as they start there trip across our Solar System.  Oort postulated in 1950 that all comets come from the same place.  This was incorrect.  However, its principle is now accepted as fact due to this Oort cloud.

     Another very popular discovery that he made, which was actually more of a calculation, was his discovery that the center of the Milky Way lies 5900 parsecs away from Earth in the direction of Sagittarius.  He also showed that the Milky Way has a mass 1 billion times that of the Sun.  He also found that the Crab Nebula was polarized.  From this discovery he theorized synchrotron emission.

     Another thing that was named after Oort besides the Oort cloud was his calculated constants imaginitively named Oort's Constants.  These constants A and B are empirically defined paramaters or the rotationaly properties of our galaxy.  I would elaborate more on these extremely impressive foundings if I understood what they were.

     Many astronomers are very good at observation.  Many astronomers prefer calculated and applied astronomy.  Although Oort was clearly gifted at both it is obvious that he was more inclined to heavily mathematical and applied astronomy.

     The Dutch born astronomer's death marked the end of one of the great 20th century astronomer's life and consequently his extremely prolific discoveries.  After his death a colleague remarked "The great oak of Astronomy has been felled, and we are lost without its shadow."





P.S. I've been trying to get this to post all day long. Every time I have tried it won't let me. Hopefully this time it will go through.

APOD 4.8

The Little Dipper
2011 May 14

This is a picture of the very well known and very easily locatable asterism "The Little Dipper".  It is interesting to note that the Little Dipper is NOT a constellation.  It is in the constellation Ursa Minor.  Also, it is important to clarify that perheps the most popularly known star, Polaris, (maybe after Alpha Centauri) is not the brightest star in the sky.  It's actually not even close.  This asterism, or pictographic collection of stars, is easily seen and is circumpolar.  Polaris is actually the denotational star for the top of the sky.  This asterism spans 23 degrees across the night sky.

APOD 4.7

A Beautiful Trifid
2011 May 13

This is in space.  The fact that this beauty exists in space is interesting enough.  This is a Trifid Nebula. It is also known as M20.  It lies about 5000 light years from Earth in the nebula scattered constellation Sagittarius which lies at the center of our galaxy.  This picture represents three different kinds of nebulas (reflection, dark, and emission nebulae) all centered in this M object which is where it gets its name: Trifid.  It is about 40 light years across.

Zooniverse

I spent a total of four hours in the past two weeks on zooniverse doing moon zoo. I also started a little bit of solar stormwatch recently which is also interesting.

APOD 4.6

Globular Cluster M15 from Hubble
2011 May 3rd

Well, well, well....look what we have here. Another fantasticly appealing picture indicating an infinite number of stars in the universe.  If that many stars can be taken in one picture.....I digress. This picture is of globular cluster M15.  This cluster is visible even if all you're looking through is a pair i binoculars.  Recent evidence suggests that there is a massive black hole at its center.  And this cluster specifically is one of the oldest ones in the Milky Way Galaxy.  It occurs 35,000 light years away in the direction of Pegasus. And there has been a dramatic increase in the density of stars indicating that there is star formation happening in that region. This picture was taken by Hubble. 

APOD 4.5

The Antennae
2011 April 29th

This object resides in Corvus which was one of the two constellations of the week. How coincidental.  About 60 million light years away, two galaxies collided and resulted in this.  The two stars in the respective galaxies did not collide however but there atmospheres and dust did creating an extremely prolific star formation area.  Again, this object is named the Antennae for obvious reasons and the picture illustrates just how strong gravitational tidal forces are.  The objects surrounding the Antennae have been formed and thrown away from the galaxies. Awesome.

Zooniverse

I logged two more hours on Moon Zoo this week.

APOD 4.4

Cat's Eye Nebula
2011 April 24

First of all I think this is the most appropriately named object thus far.  It looks exactly like its name, which is cool.  Secondly, this nebula is awesome! It looks stunningly different from others due to its translucent nature and bluish-pinkish hue. What a fascinating picture.  This nebula occurs three thousand light years from Earth.  It spans half a light year in size and represents the final phase of a sun-like stars life.  This very well may be what our Sun will look like in 5 billion years.

Also, Lord of the Rings?

Zooniverse

I'm hooked on exploring the surface of the moon. I find it very interesting and entertaining. This will be the project I focus most on. I spent two hours last week on it.

APOD 4.3

Sunspot Loops in Ultraviolet
2011 April 10

This picture is a pretty good illustration of how violent our Sun is.  Imagining all of the activity that is occuring on our Sun right now is awesome.  This picture beautifully depicts the extraordinarily hot sunspots on the sun.  It is said to be over one million degrees Celsius.  This number means nothing to me.  I can't even imagine what that means but whatever it means, it's fascinating.

APOD 4.2

Messier 101
2011 April 15

This is a sprial galaxy found as an M object in the direction of Ursa Major. As is apparent in almost every astronomy of the day picture this photograph is stunningly beautiful.  To think that there are an almost infinite number of these galaxies in our universe really starts to hurt my mind.  This is one of the last entries into Messier's catalog of objects in the sky.  This galaxy is almost twice the size of our own Milky Way galaxy. It's pictures like this that do more to prove the existence of life on other planets than anything a scientist has found thus far.  Just by sheer probability, I feel life does exist.  Maybe that life exists in this pictured spiral galaxy.

Zooooooooooooniverse

I spent two hours this week really exploring the different things I can do on Zooniverse. My favorite so far has been the Moon Zoo which intrigued me most.  The Milky Way Galaxy exploration was interesting also.

APOD 4.1

Planetary Nebula NGC 2438
2011 April 7th

This is a planetary nebulae. This picture is obviously very aesthetically appealing and is very intriguing just after looking at it. However, it is even cooler to know that the reason it looks like this is because this star much like our sun has been existing for so long that is has run out of hydrogen at its core.  It's cool to extrapolate that data and move the information to our sun where this process will occur eventually. (Hopefully by then we'll be living in other galaxies and planets...Haha.) Still, this is part of a stars life and turns out to be a very beautiful one! This occurs in a relatively young star cluster M46 which is found in Puppis.

Observation 6

On Monday, March 21st, I looked up in the morning at approximately 6:50 in the morning to see one bright spot in the sky other than the moon in the south east.  It was visible when all other stars were not so I inferred that it was a planet.

It was Venus.

Observation 5

On Saturday, March 19th, I witnessed my first supermoon apparently.  It was a full moon at the time that it was closest to the Earth on its rotation.  This combination of events made for a gigantic moon. It was huge and awesome.

Awe-inspiring almost.

APOD 3.8

APOD: 2011 March 16th (my freaking birthday.)
Sideways Galaxy NGC 3628

This picture is most interesting to think about conceptually. Putting this image into perspective is something that is very hard to do considering this, like millions of others, is the size of our galaxy, The Milky Way. Considering there are millions of galaxies in an almost limitless universe and inside those galaxies lies millions of stars and planets, space because something that is very hard to grasp.  he vast expanses of space don't compute in my brain. More scientifically, the bright reddish hues are a tell-tale sign of a star forming area. This galaxy is about 35 million light years away in the direction of the Leo constellation.

Observation 4

At approximately 9:00 pm on March 14th I went out and looked up towards the sky and saw a beautiful moon.  However, there was an even more interesting thing going on that night in particular. There was a ring around the moon! It was really cool looking. It interests me how the shape is naturally a perfect circle.

Observation 3

I went out in the morning at approximately 6:45 on Monday March the 14th (after the awful and dreaded Spring Forward) and could actually see the Summer Triangles in the east which was pretty interesting. I was not sure if that should be visible but it was confirmed by my astronomy teacher, Mr. Percival, later that day.

APOD 3.7

APOD 2011 February 27
Saturn's Hyperion: A Moon with Odd Craters
Hyperion is an extremely unique, some might say the most unique moon, that has ever been discovered. It is mathematically the most eccentric object that orbits another object. Robot Cassini spacecraft helped us gather more information on the object recently, including this picture.  Astronomers 600 years ago would have never thought anything like this could have possibly existed, which I find interesting.  Most planets are mostly spherical, however, it's objects like Hyperion that really get me questioning, "what's really out there?" There seems to be no natural governing this moon, so why should there be a natural order governing all other moons?

APOD 3.6

APOD 2011 February 24th
NGC 1999: South of Orion

Orion is by FAR my favorite constellation in the night sky. Not only is it readily available and easily spotted almost anytime in the night sky during the Winter, but it is also a beautiful constellation filled with easily recognizable stars.  It contains Betelguese, which due to its size, is the most interesting and fantastic natural occurence in the universe! Also, it's one of the few constellation that resembles what it is supposed to be. All of this combines to make a great night sky object. Now, they are throwing in this gem, NGC 1999. As you can see this is an extremely beautiful night sky object that is considered a blue reflecting nebula. Orion never ceases to amaze me.