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.

APOD 2.4

Astronomy Picture of the Day: November 19th 2010
Nebulae in the Northern Cross

I really liked this picture a lot for many reasons.  For one, the picture is stunningly beautiful as is almost every picture that they decide to post on the site.  However, the contrast between the dark reds and dark blacks makes for an intense photo.  Also, I enjoyed how they labeled everything in the picture.  It didn't take away from the beauty by putting too much notation on it, but instead I could easily understand what was going on.  I think the highlight of this picture astronomically is the bright intense Deneb.  It's so obvious as to which star Deneb is even without the notation because of how bright it is.  Alberio is suprisingly bright too. The Northern Cross asterism is widely popular and all of this is happening in the constellation Cygnus.  With all of this going on, how does Cygnus not get a ton of recognition for its beauty? Maybe it does as it should. Also even outside of the main focus of the photograph lies the veil nebulae which in and of themselves are beautiful.  Nature created something incredibly beautiful this time around.

Star Count Observation 11/12/10

I went out behind my house to the other side of the wooded area to look at the sky at approximately 7:30pm.  Looking up to Cepheus I was suprised at how few stars I could see. In comparison to the pictures online I would classify being able to see Magnitude 3 stars.

APOD 2.3

Astronomy Picture of the Day: The Elephant's Trunk in IC 1396, November 6th 2010

This nebula is extremely appropriately named.  The Elephants Trunk Nebula exists in the high and far off constellation of Cepheus.  The "trunk" is over 20 light years long.  Cool interstellar dust and gas form and come together to create this image in the night sky.  These dark clouds interest astronomers because they usually contain the raw material for star formation.  This could be a hot spot of stars in millions of years from now.  This nebula, even though it is far off into the distance, takes up 5 degrees of the night sky.  This is about 4 Full Moons.

Pretty.

APOD 2.2

Astronomy Picture of the Day: 2010 November 3

The Necklace Nebula is beautiful.  It is located in the summer constellation Sagitta (The Arrow) which is just below Vulpecula and above Aquila.  This is a newly discovered example of a ring shaped planetary nebula and is approximately 15,000 light years away. It's bright ring is a half a light year in diameter making it a gigantic nebula in the night sky.  Planetary nebulae are created by sun like stars in their final phase of stellar evolution.  That sun like star in this case ia actually a binary star.  This makes this nebula extremely unique.  Astronomers estimate this nebula to be about 5,000 years old.  What a pretty picture.