APOD 4.5

YET ANOTHER APOD! Todays APOD is from April 21st and is simply beautiful

This is an image of a super massive galaxy that is actually pretty close to us called Spiral Galaxy NGC 2841. Located 46 million light years away in the Ursa Major constellation, this is one of the largest objects known to mankind. This monster has a diameter of over 150,000 light years and is also known as the island universe. Taken by the Hubble, we can clearly see beautiful colors and lights throughout this amazing photo.

OWN Picture of the Week #5

Here is the eagle galaxy that I have edited through the program provided. It is colored and enhanced

Margaret Burbidge Bio Links

Here are the sources that I will use to write my biography on Margaret Burbidge

http://www.phys-astro.sonoma.edu/brucemedalists/burbidgem/

http://www.nndb.com/people/692/000168188/

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/84933/Margaret-Burbidge

APOD 4.4

Today's APOD is taken from April 16th and is very very cool.

This is a photo of the lunar eclipse, Mars and Spica all in the same photo. I chose this photo because I actually got up in the morning to watch it and was astounded by how amazing it looked. The red color of the moon is due to the sun actually passing in front of it. The blue star just underneath is Spica which is also relevant as it is within the constellation Virgin which we are learning about this week. And, you guessed it, the red star isn't actually a star but mars itself being very close to Earth due to the rotations lining up just right. Just amazing.

Observational Study 4/5 - 4/17 & Lunar Eclipse

Let me just start off and say that the Lunar Eclipse was very cool. I woke up at about 3:30 in the morning on the 15th and stayed out watching it get more and more orange for about a half hour. Other than the eclipse, I did go out several times during the past couple of weeks and made observations of the night sky but that had little to no new things worth pointing out. The moon however was the coolest thing I've seen in a while and I can't wait till 2017 to view the SOLAR ECLIPSE!

OWN Picture of the Week #3

Whirlpool galaxy edited by Alex Farlow using the application.

APOD 4.3

Todays APOD is, as per Mr. Percival's instruction, from April 11th.

This is a photo of Mars taken on the third of April. Notice how clear the photo is despite the fact it was taken with a high speed camera and a 16" telescope in Brazil? That is because it is nearing it's closest approach as it's orbit aligns with ours in just the right way to make us much closer than normal. In the photo, we can see it's north pole as well as the clouds that fly over its countless volcanoes. It will be closest to us on the 14th, the same day as the lunar eclipse, and will be about 1/100th of the size of the moon (which is actually pretty big).

Milky Way Contributers

Edwin Hubble

• Edwin Hubble showed the scientific community that other galaxies existed beyond our own by proving that what we thought were spiral nebulae are actually other galaxies far outside of the Milky Way
• He used Cepheid variables to measure the distance from us to another nearby galaxy and showed that it was too far away to reside inside of our own
• In 1929, he attempted to provide proof of the expansion of our universe
• the EMR from galaxies is redshifted, indicating that they are moving away from us
• these galaxies are possibly moving away from us at a speed of thousands of miles per second
• the farther away a galaxy is, the greater its redshift (the faster it was moving)

Harlow Shapley

• He used RR Lyrae stars to correctly estimate the size of the Milky Way Galaxy and the sun's position within it. In 1953 he proposed his "liquid water belt" theory, now known as the concept of a habitable zone
• He was the first to realize that the Milky Way Galaxy was much larger than previously believed, and that the Sun's place in the galaxy was in a nondescript location.
• Partook in the debate with Curtis in the “Great Debate” but was incorrect in that

William Herschel

• Herschel ultimately discovered over 2400 objects defined by him as nebulae. (At that time, nebula was the generic term for any visually extended or diffuse astronomical object, including galaxies beyond the Milky Way, until galaxies were confirmed as extragalactic systems by Edwin Hubble in 1924.)
• He also studied the structure of the Milky Way and concluded that it was in the shape of a disk. (the first person to ever come to this conclusion)

Galileo

• Galileo used his telescope to look and view the Milky Way and resolve it into a myriad of individual stars.
• Though the technology of the time was limited, his discovery that the Milky Way was composed of distinct stars has greatly aided our understanding as to the nature of our own galaxy

RR Lyrids & Cepheids - both are different types of variable stars that periodically change their brightness and density as they undergo a period of instability in their stellar evolutionary track

• RR Lyrids
• RR Lyrids are variable stars found in globular clusters and used to measure stellar distances that are too large for spectroscopic parallax to resolve
• More common than Cepheid variables
• Old and of relatively low mass
• Period is typically less than a day
• First identified in RR Lyrae in Lyra
• Cepheids
• Brighter and more massive than RR Lyrids variables
• Used for determining stellar distances
• First identified from Delta Cephei in Cepheus

Immanuel Kant

• The first person to propose that the band of stars in the night sky (we call the Milky Way)
• Proposed that the stars of our galaxy form a broad, flat disk. The Sun and Earth also inhabit this disk. As a result, Kant said, when we look into the disk, we see the combined glow of countless stars, which make up the band of light called the Milky Way. But when we look above or below the disk, we see only a few stars. 
  
  

Henrietta Leavitt

• discovered the relation between the luminosity and the period of Cepheid variable stars.

• it was her discovery that first allowed astronomers to measure the distance between the Earth and faraway galaxies

Heber Curtis

• famous for his role in astronomy's "Great Debate" with Harlow Shapley in which Curtis argued that what astronomers called spiral nebulae were actually spiral galaxies outside our own Milky Way.

“The Great Debate”

• influential debate between the astronomers Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis which concerned the nature of spiral nebulae and the size of the universe
• Shapley was arguing in favor of the Milky Way as the entirety of the universe. He believed galaxies such as Andromeda and the Spiral Nebulae were simply part of the Milky Way.
• Curtis on the other side contended that Andromeda and other such nebulae were separate galaxies, or "island universes" (a term invented by the 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant, who also believed that the spiral nebulae were extragalactic). He showed that there were more novae in Andromeda than in the Milky Way. From this he could ask why there were more novae in one small section of the galaxy than the other sections of the galaxy

OWN Picture of the week #2

The Trifid nebula... ooooooooo....aaaaaaaa

APOD 4.2

Todays APOD is from March 30th and is an especially cool one.

This is an image of the moon Io that flies around the planet Jupiter. This is the first image of the moon in its true color and I love that it looks like cheese. This photo was taken by the Galileo spacecraft that also orbits the planet.The colors on this moon come from sulfur and silicate. This moon gets so hot that it actually glows in the dark. The main reason I chose this though, is because it looks just like a ball of cheese and I love that it follows the stereotype better than out own moon.

Observational Study 3/22 - 4/4

This past several days have been just as uneventful as the last. I have continued to go out regularly and practice pointing out stars and it has even gotten to the point that I have started to teach my sister constellations. Not much else other than that.

OWN Picture of the week

Here is this weeks picture. It is of the Dumbbell Nebula and has been processed to be more visible.