Quarter 2 Biography Citation

Here is the links I will be using to do my biography on William Herschel

http://messier.seds.org/xtra/Bios/wherschel.html

http://www.ing.iac.es/Astronomy/telescopes/wht/

http://www.nndb.com/people/661/000096373/

http://space.about.com/od/astronomerbiographies/a/herschelwilliam.htm

http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/resources/explorations/groundup/lesson/scopes/herschel/

http://www.astrolapalma.com/en/william-herschel-telescope

http://www.astroleague.org/al/obsclubs/herschel/fwhershs.html

APOD 2.7

This weeks APOD is taken from today, December 13th and is an image of the Geminid Meteor shower. While this image was taken in 2012, it gives a good idea to the viewer what it will look like tonight. That's right, the night of December 13th and the morning of the 14th will look like this in select places around the world. This is a yearly thing that is looked forward to by astronomer everywhere. This image was taken over three hours with a time lapse camera and it really shows just how amazing beautiful flaming space rocks heading for one's head can look like. Fortunately, we have the atmosphere to protect us from dying and allow us to see the amazing spectacle in the image above. This image was taken in China and this year it will be somewhere else but, unfortunately, us Floridians won't be able to see it. The meteors that rain down are actually traveling at 14 miles per second. I know that I am looking forward to seeing what they looked like this year tomorrow.

Observational Study 11/25 - 12/7

It has been a while since I last made an observational post so I have made several observations to talk about. These weeks, I saw the moon go from waning crescent to new moon to waxing crescent all the while getting closer and closer to Venus until they were right next to each other. I have also been using computers and equipment to watch the movement of Comet ISON as I passed near the sun. I was able to see tons of stars and almost all of the constellations we have studied so far. I also noticed that constellations are changing position slightly every night until they are starting to fall below the horizon and out of view since we are getting into winter and out of fall. There were fewer clouds and it was dark enough to see quite a few things in the sky. On some nights, I went several times and noted the approximate positions of the things in the sky and could clearly see how they changed so much in only a few hours. All in all, not a bad two weeks for observations.

APOD 2.6

This weeks APOD was difficult to pick since there are so many amazing photos to choose from over a span of 2 weeks but I decided to use the one from November 29th 2013.

This is an image of a before (right) and after (left) of comet ISON's trip around the sun. This is an infrared image and is actually screenshots of a youtube video uploaded by NASA that I found.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pCroW5ACSE
 ISON actually got within only 1 million kilometers of the sun which sounds far away, but is extremely close which is why it is so much dimmer in the after picture. In the video, you can see that it speeds up greatly when it gets close to the sun. This is not speeding up the picture, the gravity from the sun is so strong it worked like a slingshot that shot the comet even faster than it was already going. I chose this because I actually found it a while ago to use in my project.