Dark Matter

What if someone told you that around 80% percent of what is in space is not something that scientists can actually observe? Well, I am telling you this right now and extraordinarily this is actually true. How is that possible that most of what is in space is not something we can see? Well, this "thing" that takes up so much of space is something called dark matter.

What is dark matter?  And how do we know that it exists if we can't see it?

Well, in the 1950s, there were studies done which showed that the universe contained more matter than is actually seen by the naked eye. The universe has an abundance of baryonic matter, but if dark matter is baryonic or not is something we do not know about. Some possibilities of "dark matter" could be due to brown dwarfs, white dwarfs, neutrinos or even black holes, all of which are fairly heavy and dense. Other scientist believe that dark matter is composed of non-baryonic matter such as WIMPS (Weakly interacting massive articles). WHIPS have ten to a hundred times more mass of a proton but their weak interaction with normal matter makes it all the harder to detect. The foremost candidate in this group is the Neutralino which is heavier and slower than neutrinos, however, they are yet to be found.

Scientists are able to tell that there is such thing as dark matter by examining stellar object's motion. In the 1950s, astronomer who were studying spiral galaxies, expected to see the center of the galaxy moving faster than the edges. Instead, they found that both the edge and center moved at the same velocity, proving that the galaxies had more mass than could be seen. Cluster of galaxies would fall apart if the only mass they contained were the ones we are able to see; this is due to the lack of gravitational pull if it did not have enough mass. With the help of Albert Einstein who proposed that massive objects can actually have enough gravity to pull light, causing light to bend and distort, scientists are now able to create a probable dark matter map.

Observation 4.8

Date: May 22, 2014

Observation:
On this night sky, was once again looking up at the constellation Ursa Major and I followed the arch to Arcturus and continued it on until I found Spica. I already did Boötes in the last observation where I also mention that Spica was in the constellation Virgo, or Virgin. In my picture, the circle is the general area of Virgo, but the actual constellation is really higher up. I would have been able to draw it out if it was not cut off in the picture. Before I get into Virgo's story, the constellation that you see next to Virgo is Corvus, or the Crow.

The story of Virgo: This constellation is about the goddess of justice, Dike, who has wings. Dike lived during a time called the Golden Age of mankind, when Cronus ruled the heavens. This was a time of peace and happiness and where food grew without cultivation and where humans never grew old. They basically lived like gods, not having to work, never felling sorrow, pain and had no wars. Dike went among them and gave out her wisdom and justice. One day, Zeus overthrew his father from Olympus and became the ruler of the heavens. This brought the Silver Age. During this time, Zeus shortened springtime and introduced the cycle of seasons. During this age, humans began to fight and stopped worshiping the gods. Dike, who longed for the old days, came and gathered the people and scolded them for forsaking the ideal of their ancestors and warned them of worse days to come. She then left and took refuge in the mountains, turning her back on humankind. Soon the Bronze and Iron Ages came where there was violence, theft, and war. Unable to endure the sins of humanity, Dike left Earth and flew up into heaven where she now sits next to the constellation Libra which is the scale of justice.

I will write the story of Corvus another day because it is related to the 2 constellations next to it. Other than that, Happy Summer!

APOD 4.8

What planet do you think this is? Did you say that it was Saturn? Close. This planet is actually Neptune! Yes, for those of you who did not know, Neptune has rings. In fact every planet outside the asteroid belt has some sort of ring or rings encircling it. This is partly due to the excess debris after the formation of our solar system as well is the gravitational pull by the large planets. This image was actually taken by Voyager 2 which was the only spacecraft to visit Neptune. You can see one of Neptune's moon, Triton, which is slightly lit on the bottom. If you look at the bottom of Neptune, the south pole has some cirrus clouds and a dark band circle. There are about 6 rings encircling Neptune and its atmosphere is mostly made up of hydrogen, helium and methane.

Observation 4.7

Date: May 22, 2014

Observation:
So with the spring sky coming up, there is a chance to find some new constellations! One of the first constellations that I noticed in the sky today was the constellation Ursa Major. I already made a blog post about this constellation in the past so if you want to brush up on that story, feel free to look back. Right next to Ursa Major if the constellation Boötes or the Bear Driver. If you look at it though it sort of looks like a boot, but that is not where the name comes from. In the constellation is the star Arcturus and there is a very easy way in finding this constellation. What you do is find Ursa Major and then follow the arch of the pan handle to Arcturus; or better said "Follow the arch to Arcturus". Arcturus is very easy to find because it is one of the brightest stars in the sky. Another tidbit is that if you continue to follow the arch from Arcturus you can find the next brightest star in the spring sky called Spica which is located in the constellation Virgo, but that will be in another observation.

Now for the story. Boötes actually represents Arcas, the son of Zeus. His mother was Castillo, other wise known as Ursa Major, who was the daughter of King Lycaon. Now one day Zeus came down to dine with King Lycaon. Lycaon, who wanted to see if his guest was actually Zeus, took Arcas and cut him up and fed him to his father. Obviously recognizing his own son, Zeus burned with rage and tipped over the table, ruined the whole feast and killed Lycaon's sons and turned Lycaon into a wolf. He then took the pieces of Arcas and brought him back to life. Now his mother, who was impregnated by Zeus and had Arcas, was turned into a bear due the goddess Hera's jealousy of her having a child with her husband. When Arcas turned into a handsome teenager, he came across this bear while hunting in the woods. Castillo, noticing her son, tried to greet him warmly but she could only growl. This was obviously taken in the wrong way as Arcas took to chasing her transformed mother. Castillo ran to the temple of Zeus, where the god himself took Arcas and his mother and put them in the sky where they will always be running through the heavens.

APOD 4.7

For those of you who don't know what this picture is of, it is a edge-on picture of a galaxy. This beautiful reddish galaxy is called the Hamburger Galaxy! 

Can you see it? It kind of looks like a burnt burger... 

Anyways... The more scientific name for this galaxy is NGC 3628. This galaxy is about 100,000 light years across and the tail (the dust clouds surrounding it including the dust coming out on the left side of the galaxy) stretches to about 300,000 light-years. That just makes you wonder how far away was this photo really taken... And even more, how small you really are. This spiral galaxy neighbors 2 other large spiral galaxies M65 and M66 in a grouping called the Leo Triplet. The tidal tail that you see on the left side of the galaxy is due to the gravitational interaction these three galaxies have faced with each other. Because these objects are so big, the amount of gravity that they have corresponds making the gravitational pull very intense. Anyways, the Hamburger Galaxy is the more fainter of the three but it is nevertheless impressive. The cloud that you see surrounding the galaxy, called the halo, is made up of dust and globular clusters which tend to be hundreds of thousands of stars that are up to 13 BILLION years of age! That is even before our own galaxy was even formed! 

Pretty crazy things can happen up in space....

Observation 4.6

Date: April 30, 2014

Observation:
Going outside this day, I saw the beautiful waxing crescent! Just yesterday was the New Moon and today you can see the little strip of light in the sky. In both photos you can still see the whole Moon but when you are physically looking at the Moon outside you will not be able to see the outline of the Moon. This is partly due to the intense contrast of the very light strip of the Moon and the darkness of the sky. I took this photo around 8:30 pm and right now the Moon is in the western sky so it is about to disappear from view soon and that will soon leave us to a beautiful "empty" sky allowing all the other stars to have a chance to shine bright. So if you want to do any stargazing, this week would be the best time while the Moon isn't too bright and since it sets pretty early. Just make sure to follow the stars!

APOD 4.6

Is that really an astronaut just floating there in space? Is this real? Was the movie Gravity possibly based on a true story?

No...

Yes, this picture is real but unfortunately, actually thankfully, a real person was not thrown off into space to orbit the Earth forever. This spacesuit floated away from the International Space Station eight years ago. The suit was actually filled with old clothes and was purposely pushed by the space station crew. The suit had a faint radio transmitter and it successfully circled Earth twice before the radio signal became weak. After a few weeks, the spacesuit burned up in the atmosphere.

Well, now we know that if you were to be floating around in space, you probably wouldn't have much time to live. At least you would have a very nice view during your last moments. Just make sure if you ever happen to find yourself on a space craft, don't let go!

Observing With NASA 4

This is a picture of the Ring Nebula.

I processed this picture by adjusting the 3 images taken for me using the Linear and then Auto button. After that I reduced the noise of each one and then I changed each picture into a different color which were red, blue and green. I then converted the images into a stack and aligned the 3 pictures together after pressing the Shift button and then I converted them into an RGB.

Some facts about the Ring Nebula: Also known as M57, this nebula can be found in the constellation Lyra. In the middle of this nebula lies a white dwarf. The ring was caused by a red giant star dying and expelling all its gas into space. Even though there is no star in the nebula, it is still 200 times more luminous than our Sun.

APOD 4.5

Found in the constellation Ursa Major, this 46 million light year far spiral galaxy can be found. Called NGC 2841, this galaxy has a very bright nucleus and a gorgeous galactic disk. When you look at the arms of the galaxy, you can see that there are parts that are pink and blue. The pink spots are where stars are being formed and the blue is really young blue star clusters. This galaxy is over 150,000 light years wide which is even bigger than the Milky Way Galaxy!

Zooniverse

In the Zooniverse website, I am doing the Explore the Red Planets project. This project is used to help scientists identify and measure the features on Mar's surface.

Biography of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Chelsea Chacko

Percival

Astronomy Period 5

April 19, 2014
                                            
                                     Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Biography

      Being a woman back in the 1900s was not very easy. The majority following and believing the ideal that every woman should be at home and taking care of children, looked down on women who dared venture from this. This, however, did not stop Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin. Being the one to reveal that hydrogen was the most abundant element in the universe and known for her work with her husband on finding and measuring variable stars, Cecilia would prove that females could be just as passionate than men about their jobs.
      Born on May 10, 1900 in Wendover, England, Cecilia Helena Payne would find herself to be the eldest of three siblings under the care of her parents Edward John and Emma Helena Payne. Unfortunately, at the age of 4 her dad passed away, leaving her mother to influence her greatly in the classics which she loved throughout her life. In her early age, Cecilia came to know Latin and became fluent in French and German and had an interest in botany and algebra. She was also very influenced by the works of Isaac Newton, Thomas Huxley and Emmanuel Swedenborg.
      In 1919, Cecilia received a scholarship to attend Cambridge University where she pursued botany, chemistry and physics. While she was there, she became friends with a British astronomer named Stanley Eddington who introduced her to astronomy through his public lecture about the 1919 solar eclipse and Einstein's theory of relativity. He took her as a tutorial student and invited her to use the Cambridge Observatory's library which held all the latest astronomical journals. She completed her studies in 1923, however, at that time, women were not granted degrees in Cambridge so she received a Pickering Fellowship from Harvard, which had the world's largest archive of stellar spectra analyzing the , to work under Harlow Shapley who was the director of the Harvard Observatory.
     Her career at Harvard began in 1925 where Shapley became her thesis adviser. She would soon be the first awarded doctorate for her research at the Observatory, and the first to receive a doctorate in astronomy from Radcliffe. One of her passionate areas was astrophysics. The study of spectra actually made astrophysics. in1859, Gustav Kirchoff and Robert Bunsen found that each element has its own set of spectral lines. Comparing the stellar spectral lines with spectral lines of the chemical elements, astronomers found that heavy elements made a lot of the spectral lines and so they assumed that heavy elements made up the star completely. At Harvard, Annie Cannon sorted the spectra of over a hundred thousand stars into seven classes based on their different spectral characteristics. Many thought that the classes were due to the decreasing surface temperature of the stars but Cecilia, who studied quantum physics, understood that the patterns of the spectrum were due to the configuration of the electrons. She knew that at high temperatures electrons would be detached from the atom and create an ion, this was the first research done that used the Indian physicist Saha's recent theory of ionization. Cecilia began to measure the absorption lines in the stellar spectra and showed that the wide variation in it was due to the different ionization states of the atoms therefore due to the different surface temperatures of the stars, not from the different amount of elements. She calculated the amount of 18 elements in stars and revealed that the composition was almost the same in different types of stars. Cecilia also discovered that Sun, as well as many other stars are made up mostly of hydrogen and helium and that the heavier elements only made up for less than 2% of the mass of the star. This research became her doctorial thesis while she soon turned into a book called Stellar Atmospheres which was accepted by many astronomers. Cecilia taught people how to read the spectrum of any star to find its surface temperature. She explained that Cannon's ordering of the stellar spectral classes was based on a sequence of decreasing temperature and that she was able to calculate the temperatures. So now, the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram could be read and understood.
      Cecilia became the youngest scientist in the American Men of Science in 1926 but it was not until 1938, when she married a Russian-born astronomer Sergei Gaposchkin, that her work was recognized and received the title of Philips Astronomer. Getting married proved to be a great advantage for Cecilia. She did have three children, Edward, Katherine and Peter, Katherine being the one to pursue astronomy as well and help with her parents' research, however this did not keep her down; in fact, Cecilia continued to work even with having to take care of her children. Cecilia and Sergei both began to work together and became known for their research of variable stars, including pulsating variables, exploding stars, eclipsing binaries and rotating stars, as well as their research of the structure of a star. Both of them researched the structure of the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds, which are nearby galaxies; they discovered over two million estimates of variable stars' magnitudes in the Magellanic Clouds.
      Throughout the rest of her life, Cecilia continued to prove herself as an outstanding astronomer as she was the first woman to become a professor at Harvard and would soon head Harvard's Department of Astronomy from 1956 to 1960. While she was still a student at Cambridge in1923, she was elected to the Royal Astronomical Society and as well as the American Astronomical Society. In 1934, She received the Annie J. Cannon Prize due to her contributions to astronomy and in 1936 she became a member of the American Philosophical Society. Her recognition does not stop there as she doctorates of science from Wilson College, Smith College, Western College, Colby College and Women's Medical College of Philadelphia. Still winning many more awards and medals, Cecilia was also the first woman to receive the Henry Norris Russell Prize of the American Astronomical Society in 1976 and in 1977 a minor planet was named after her. Her contributions can still be seen in the 150 papers, monographs such as "The Stars of High Luminosity", and many books and textbooks she wrote such as Variable Stars, Stars in the Making and Stars and Clusters. Editing publication of the Harvard Observatory for 20 years and becoming an Emeritus Professor there, Cecilia would continue to write and research until her death, all proving that see was one of the greatest women astronomers in history.

Observation 4.4

Date: April 19, 2014

Observation:
Before I get into this picture, I would like to state that this picture was actually taken in March. If you can look at the sky in the picture you might notice one constellation, Orion. You are able to see Orion's Belt on the top right and corner but I did not point it out in the second picture because I did not find it necessary.

Anyways, I have previously talked about the constellation Canis Minor, or the Little Dog but I never realized that I never talked about its companion Canis Major, also called Big Dog. (You can obviously see Canis Major easier than you can with Canis Minor. There is a star that I pointed out which is the star Sirius. This star is also very bright in the sky and if you noticed, the stars in Orion's Belt is pointing right at it! If you can recall, I have always looked at Orion's Belt as the Three Wise Men who were on their way to see Baby Jesus and the star Sirius represented the bright star that they followed to get there. Just another interpretation of the stars.

The story of Canis Major is fairly short and simple in that it is the other guard dog of Orion and that it too was on the pursuit to capture Lepus the Hare which is found under Orion. And that's it.


Now the constellation I would like to bring to your attention is Monoceros, the Unicorn, which is placed right in between Canis Minor and Canis Major. Not many people know or can actually see this constellation because it doesn't have any bright stars. But what this constellation does have in it, is the Rosette Nebula. This nebula is the home to many new stars and its expansion caused the formation of neighboring clusters.

The sad thing about Monoceros is that it was just a gap filler in the skies. Every portion of the sky has its own constellation just to ease the pain of trying to find stellar objects in the sky and space. So although this constellation has no story behind it, a unicorn was chosen for this spot because a unicorn appears several times in the Old Testament of the Bible.

Well, that is it for now! Keep looking up!

APOD 4.4

If you were in the western hemisphere and if you were up at 3 AM on April 15th, then you would have possibly seen a total lunar eclipse, the first one of the year! This picture was taken in the Caribbean island of Barbados the Moon was in Earth's shadow for a whole hour. You can see that underneath the Moon is the star Spica which is in the constellation Virgo and the bright star to the right would be the planet Mars which was nearing opposition which means that Mars will be the brightest this year.

The reason why the Moon is reddish during a total lunar eclipse is because this is when the Sun, Earth and the Moon are in opposition. With the Sun directly behind Earth, the sunlight is still scattered due to Earth's atmosphere and gives it a red hue. This red light is then reflected on the Moon which makes the Moon reddish-orangeish. Here is a picture of what I am trying to explain:

This picture would be a better representation of the Moon during the eclipse:

Observing with NASA 3

This picture is of the Pinwheel Galaxy.

Since this is only one picture, I took it and adjusted the image taken for me using the Log and then Auto button. After that I reduced the noise of it.

This galaxy is actually in the constellation Ursa Major and is also known as Messier 101 or M101. This type of galaxy is a spiral galaxy and is 70% larger than the Milky Way Galaxy! It is also 21 million light years from Earth which means that this picture that you are seeing, which was taken last night, is how the galaxy looked 21 million years ago... That is absolutely crazy!

Observation 4.3

You can really see the rainbow around the Sun.

Don't mind my hair in this photo. The Sun looks black in this picture!*

Date: April 16, 2014

Observation:
Guess what I saw when I was at school today?

A rainbow around the Sun? Well, yes but more specifically, a sun halo. This ring is formed when the sunlight passes through cirrus clouds (which you can see in the first picture). Since clouds hold ice crystals, which are basically drops of water that stick onto the dust particles in the atmosphere, the crystals bend the sunlight and create a rainbow (just as a prism bends light and creates a rainbow). Here is a little secret. You can see this halo anytime or anywhere in the world.

How?

Well, if you are positioned 22 degrees from the Sun you can see the halo! It is more common to see these halos in the fall, winter and spring. So next time, if there ever happens to be cirrus clouds in the sky, try to see if you can see a sun halo and show others too!

Keep looking up!

*The Sun is not really black, it just appears that way through the picture.

Observing With NASA 2

This image that I processed is the Orion Nebula.

Like the previous picture, I adjusted the 3 images taken for me using the Log and then Auto button. After that I reduced the noise of each one and then I changed each picture into a different color which were red, blue and green. I then converted the images into a stack and aligned the 3 pictures together after pressing the Shift button and then I converted them into an RGB.

Some facts about the Orion Nebula is that it is obviously in the constellation Orion, more specifically Orion's belt. It is also given the name Messier 42 or M42. It is also the closest massive star formation region to Earth. Awesome right?

APOD 4.3

Tonight, the planet Mars will be between opposition (April 8) and its closet approach (April 14) with Earth this year! What is opposition? Well, that is when the Earth and a planet, in this case Mars, are aligned with the Sun. You can find Mars near the constellation Virgo and you should really take the time to try look at Mars through a telescope because it is so close. The only problem with Mars being in its position is that the Moon today is also almost full which means that it is reflecting a lot of light, outshining the other planets and stars. 

This picture was taken in Brazil with a high-speed camera and a 16-inch diameter telescope. You can see that there are whitish orographic clouds where water vapor clouds are condensing in the cold atmosphere above the Mar's volcanoes. It is amazing on how clearly you can see Mars and its variety of colors and climates. 

Some of you might wonder why isn't Mars's opposition and its closest approach on the same day! Well, the reason why they are different is because all the planets have somewhat of an elliptical orbit which also vary in size and position in relation to the Sun. But what is so special about the day of Mars' closest approach is that it is also the day in which there is a total eclipse of the Moon. So make sure you look up!

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Biography Sources

1. http://biography.yourdictionary.com/cecilia-payne-gaposchkin
2. http://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/famous-scientists/astronomers/cecilia-helena-payne-gaposchkin-info.htm
3. http://www.amnh.org/education/resources/rfl/web/essaybooks/cosmic/p_payne.html

Contributions to Understanding the Milky Way

It always amazes me how we are able to know so much about our universe. Just the fact that we were able to find so much information even before setting a foot into outer space just boggles my mind! Well, if it weren't for some certain people, none of these things would have been. With the help of renowned astronomers such as Galileo, William Herschel, Harlow Shapley, Edwin Hubble, Immanuel Kant, Henrietta Leavitt, and Heber Curtis, we were able to understand more of the structure and nature of our galaxy, as well as others.

Galileo
Galileo contributed information about the Milky Way through his use of telescopes pointed towards the skies. Using his telescopes, Galileo was able to see stars which were too faint to the unaided eye. With this new found information, he attempted to put all the stars he knew and found into star systems. These new, "invisible" stars that he found seemed to be very important to understanding nebulae and the Milky Way. Now, instead of just thinking that the Milky Way some sort of painting in the skies from the gods, Galileo began to think that the Milky Way was actually a view of the very far stars from Earth. Overall, Galileo's contribution was verifying that the Milky Way is made up of stars.

William Herschel
William Herschel's contribution to understanding the nature of the Milky Way was finding the shape of the Milky Way. Being interested in finding nebulae, Herschel thought that some were in separate galaxies. When he discovered one of the many nebulae having a star in its center, he proved wrong the theory that nebulae were not able to hold stars in them. Trying to search for more information about these stellar objects, Herschel went to make bigger and bigger telescopes. Thinking that the Milky Way was a nebula, he wanted to find out how it was shaped. He accomplished this by measuring the distances to as many stars as he could which he found to be in a circular band around the sky suggesting a disk shape. He also tried to find the thickness of the Milky Way, however, he had no way of measuring the actual distances, at least accurately. With the help of Herschel, we are now able to understand that our galaxy is the shape of a flat disk with a bulge in the center.

Harlow Shapley
Shapley believed that everything in space was located inside our own galaxy which he thought was 300,000 light years in diameter. He believed that the Sun was not at the center of the galaxy (he thought it was 50,000 light years away from the center) and said that spiral nebulae were actually as clouds inside the Milky Way as well. Shapley went on finding the size of the Milky Way by observing globular clusters. He thought that all globular clusters were around the same size and used their size to find out how far away they were. He made the discovery that the center of the globular distribution is where the center of the galaxy is.

Edwin Hubble
Hubble was one of the few who believed that the spiral nebulae were not in the Milky Way but rather they were other entire galaxies outside our own. He tried to prove this by making a reflector telescope which allowed him to see the star in the Andromeda Galaxy. But to prove that it was another galaxy, instead of a nebulae, Hubble had to try to find its distance. He found the distance by using the Cepheid variables in the Andromeda Galaxy which he used to find that this "nebulae" was 25x farther away than most stars in the Milky Way. Soon in 1925, Hubble also made a classifying system for the galaxies by their shape such as spiral, elliptical, or irregular. Lastly, Hubble was also the one who proved the expansion of the universe. He saw that the farther the object was, it had more of a redshift. He showed that the redshifts of galaxies meant that they were moving outwards of about thousands of miles per second. He made Hubble's Law which states that redshifts increase in their proportion to their distance away from us. He also made Hubble's constant which is the velocity of a receding galaxy divided by the distance to it.

RR Lyrids and Cepheids
Cepheids are a type of variable stars. A variable star is a star that changes in brightness over a period of time. These types of stars were actually named after the star Delta Cephei which varied in magnitude after 5.367 days. Henrietta Leavitt was the first to notice this type of variable star, most of them found in a near by small companion galaxy called the Small Magellenic Cloud where she observed that the brighter stars took longer to change their brightness. Cepheids are around 1000x the brightness of the Sun and are driven by pulsing. They are rare stellar objects and their period depends on their metallicity. They change in brightness due to expand and contracting. These stars can be used in finding the distances of other galaxies and clusters. An example of this is When Edwin Hubble used the star Delta Cephei to indicate that the Andromeda Galaxy is outside of the Milky Way

RR Lyrae variable stars are the brightest in the variable star group. They are like Cephiads but are less luminous and have a shorter variability period. These stars are old and have a low mass but are more common than Cephiads

Immanuel Kant
Kant agreed with the theory that the Milky Way was a disc of stars but he was the first to suggest that other nebulae could also be discs of stars in 1755. He said that the tiny, dim nebulae were actually other galaxies or  "island universes". Kant also made a nebular hypothesis which explained how our solar system was formed but used it generally to the Milky Way and the universe which expanded the view on how the universe was made and opened up possible ideas that there could be other galaxies.

Henrietta Leavitt
Leavitt, on her way to finding variable stars, she found that the Cepheid variable in the Small Magellanic Cloud were all the same distance from the Earth. She also studied the period-luminosity relationship of these stars which with she was soon able to find that the distance from the stars are up to ten million light years. With the help of Ejnar Hertzsprung, they both were able to find the distances of different stars. With Harlow Shapley they were able to measure the size of the galaxies. Edwin Hubble would use her work to fin the age of the universe.

Heber Curtis
Heber believed that the Sun was near the center of a smaller galaxy and thought that spiral nebulae were galaxies outside the Milky Way. He believed that globular clusters were outside the galaxy but thought that they were much closer to one another. He made a theory that spiral nebulae were similar to the Milky Way using the optical spectrum as proof as the spectrum for the spiral nebula and the galaxy were the exact same. He also thought that the spiral nebulae were large collections of stars far away from the Milky Way.

"The Great Debate"
The Great Debate was also known as the Shapley-Curtis Debate which was a time when astronomers had very different theories on what the structure of the Universe and how it was formed. Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis both disagreed with each other on how the universe was composed. Harlow believed that everything in the universe was inside our own galaxy while Curtis believed that spiral nebulae were actually outside the Milky Way and were actually other galaxies. They both disagreed on how far away the globular clusters were which Curtis thought was closer and said that our galaxy was smaller than Shapley believed it to be. It was found that Curtis' theory was correct when Edwin Hubble settled the conflict by finding the distance of the Andromeda galaxy. Shapley was correct in saying that the Sun was far from the center of the Milky Way. He was also correct in his estimate of the total size of the Milk Way.

Observation 4.2

Date: April 5, 2014

Observations:
This night I took a picture of Perseus, also known as the Hero. As you can see the arrow is pointing at on of the star Algol which is a second magnitude star (that means it is really bright, with 1 being the brightest) but obviously in this picture Algol does not seem so bright because I was next to a light pole which probably conflicted with the star.

Now for the story of Perseus. As many of you might know, Perseus is part of the soap opera in the sky which includes Andromeda, Cassiopeia and Cepheus.

In Greek myth, Perseus was the son of Danaë, daughter of King Acrisius of Argos. Acrisius had locked Danaë away in a heavily guarded dungeon when an oracle foretold that he would be killed by his grandson. But Zeus visited Danaë in the form of a shower of golden rain that fell through the skylight of the dungeon into her lap and impregnated her. When Acrisius found out, he locked Danaë and the infant Perseus into a wooden chest and cast them out to sea.

Inside the bobbing chest Danaë clutched her child and prayed to Zeus for deliverance from the sea. A few days later, the chest washed ashore on the island of Seriphos, its cargo still alive but starved and thirsty. A fisherman, Dictys, broke the chest open and found the mother and child. Dictys brought up Perseus as his own son.                 

            

The brother of Dictys was King Polydectes, who coveted Danaë as a wife. But Danaë was reluctant and Perseus, now grown to manhood, defended her from the king’s advances. Instead, King Polydectes hatched a plan to get rid of Perseus. The king pretended he had turned his attentions to Hippodameia, daughter of King Oenomaus of Elis. King Polydectes asked his subjects, including Perseus, to provide horses for a wedding present. Perseus had no horse to give, nor money to buy one, so Polydectes sent him to bring the head of Medusa the Gorgon.

 

The Gorgons were three hideously ugly sisters called Euryale, Stheno and Medusa. They were the daughters of Phorcys, a god of the sea, and his sister Ceto. The Gorgons had faces covered with dragon scales, tusks like boars, hands of brass and wings of gold. Their evil gaze turned to stone anyone who set eyes on them. Euryale and Stheno were immortal, but Medusa was mortal. She was distinguishable from the others because she had snakes for hair. In her youth Medusa had been famed for her beauty, particularly that of her hair, but she was condemned to a life of ugliness by Athene in whose temple she had been ravished by Poseidon.                 

            

A Gorgon’s head would be a powerful weapon for a tyrannical king to enforce his rule, but King Polydectes probably thought that Perseus would die in his attempt to obtain it. However, the king had reckoned without Perseus’s family connections among the gods. Athene gave him a bronze shield which he carried on his left arm, while in his right hand he wielded a sword of diamond made by Hephaestus. Hermes gave him winged sandals, and on his head he wore a helmet of darkness from Hades that made him invisible.

                       

Under the guidance of Athene, Perseus flew to the slopes of Mount Atlas where the sisters of the Gorgons, called the Graeae, acted as lookouts. The Graeae were poorly qualified for the task, since they had only one eye between the three of them, which they passed to each other in turn. Perseus snatched the eye from them and threw it into Lake Tritonis.

            

He then followed a trail of statues of men and animals who had been turned to stone by the gaze of the Gorgons. Unseen in his helmet of invisibility, Perseus crept up on the Gorgons and waited until night when Medusa and her snakes were asleep. Looking only at her reflection in his brightly polished shield, Perseus swung his sword and decapitated Medusa with one blow. As Medusa’s head rolled to the ground, Perseus was startled to see the winged horse Pegasus and the armed warrior Chrysaor spring fully grown from her body, the legacy of her youthful affair with Poseidon. (Pegasus is commemorated in a constellation of its own.) Perseus rapidly collected up Medusa’s head, put it in a pouch and flew away before the other Gorgons awoke.

            

Drops of blood fell from the head and turned into serpents as they struck the sands of Libya below. Strong winds blew Perseus across the sky like a raincloud, so he stopped to rest in the kingdom of Atlas. When Atlas refused him hospitality, Perseus took out the Gorgon’s head and turned him into the range of mountains that now bear his name.

            

The following morning Perseus resumed his flight with new vigor, coming to the land of King Cepheus whose daughter Andromeda was being sacrificed to a sea monster. Perseus’s rescue of the girl, one of the most famous themes of mythology, is told in detail under the entry for Andromeda. Perseus returned with Andromeda to the island of Seriphos, where he found his mother and Dictys sheltering in a temple from the tyranny of King Polydectes. Perseus stormed into the king’s palace to a hostile reception. Reaching into his pouch, Perseus brought out the head of Medusa, turning Polydectes and his followers to stone. Perseus appointed Dictys king of Seriphos. Athene took the head of Medusa and set it in the middle of her shield.

            

Incidentally, the prophecy that had started all these adventures – namely, that Acrisius would be killed by his grandson – eventually came to pass during an athletics contest when a discus thrown by Perseus accidentally hit Acrisius, one of the spectators, and killed him. Perseus and Andromeda had many children, including Perses, whom they gave to Cepheus to bring up. From Perses, the kings of Persia were said to have been descended. 

 

 In the sky, Perseus lies next to his beloved Andromeda. Nearby are her parents Cepheus and Cassiopeia, as well as the monster, Cetus, to which she was sacrificed. Pegasus the winged horse completes the tableau. Perseus himself is shown holding the Gorgon’s head (Algol).

Observing With NASA 1

This is the Trifid Nebula M20

This photo was actually taken 2 weeks ago specifically for me. Actually this photo is consisted of 3 separate photos that were processed and stacked together using the MircoObservatoryImageWindows2.3.

The way that I processed it was I took the 3 photos of the nebula that I requested and I adjusted the images using the Log and then Auto button. After that I reduced the noise of each one and then converted the images into a stack. I then aligned the 3 pictures together by pressing Shift and then I converted them into an RGB.

A little information about the Trifid Nebula M20 is that it is in the constellation Sagittarius. The red glow is from light hitting the hydrogen gas. The nebula can also be seen with good binoculars at night.

APOD 4.2

These two bright stars in the sky will be seen together for the next few months. The reddish "star" is actually the planet Mars and it will continue to get brighter as Earth and Mars get closer together on their orbit around the Sun. Spica is the bluish star, however, it is constantly one of the brightest blue star in the sky. What is amazing is that this star has been seen throughout human history, all the way back to ancient times.

The reason why Mars appears to be reddish is because of its soil. It is found that Mar's soil is abundant in iron which gives it a reddish tint. It is not completely known why it has so much iron in it but some possible explanations are that once there was warm water flowing on Mars which carved out long channels through the planets. The rocks with iron would have slowly been worn away by the rivers and the sea, and the oxygen in the water would have combined with the iron and make iron oxide which would have made the iron rust and turn into red dust. The mineral would then be dispersed throughout the planet through rain. Another explanation would be that the iron came from meteorites that have hit Mars in the past. Whatever it is, Mars is still one very beautiful and mysterious planet.

Spica is seen as blue because it is a blue giant! It is actually a binary star, which means that it revolves around a common, central point with another stellar object, yet they are so close together, the two stars are not easy to see. Another reason why it is so bright is because it is one of the nearest massive binary star systems to the Sun; that and the fact that it is 10 times the mass of the Sun, 7 times the radius of the Sun and 12,100 times the luminosity of the Sun... no big deal.

Other information about this photo is that it was taken last week in Sweden. Who says you can't be creative for astronomy?

Observations 4.1

Date: April 30, 2014

Observations: This photo is of the constellation Leo, also known as the Lion. This picture was actually taken on March 1, which was Astronomy Night, but because I wanted to take more time on each one and not take all this newly found constellations and spill out the information in one day, I decided to portion it out a bit.

Now after reading up on this constellation, using the Greek mythology of the constellation, I found that the story of Leo was quite short so I looked into it a little more. So the story goes: Once there was a lion who lived near a town called Nemea which was south-west of Corinth. There the lion lived in a 2-mouthed cave where it would bring the local citizens to eat them. Due to this recurring event, the people there actually became scarce. It happened to be that facing the lion would be Hercules' first of his 12 trials in which he would have to find and kill the beast. Finding the animal, Hercules tried to strike it down with arrows but to his disappointment, he was to find that the lion impenetrable skin as the arrows simply bounced off it. Quite agitated, Hercules took up his mighty club and ran after the beast, scaring it into its cave. Blocking one of the cave's entrances, Hercules went through the other opening and struck the lion with the club and then choked the beast to death. Having to prove his victory, Hercules had to cut off the pelt of the lion by using its own claws which he wore as a coat. The end.

Well, why is the lion placed up in the sky? Well, it is said that the Greek goddess Hera was the basically the godmother of all the great monsters including the lion's. The animal was nursed by Hera as well as by Selene, the Moon goddess, as child. Angry at Zeus, Hera sent the Lion to live in the town Nemea where there was a shrine for Zeus. This meant that if anyone wanted to worship Zeus, they would have to get through the invincible lion. After the death of the lion, Hera pitied it and allowed it to live with the other stars.

I would like to add one more thing about the picture. This is not the complete constellation of the lion. This is simply due to the trees being in the way of the last stars. But you can probably see the lion laying down, otherwise, you can point this constellation out in the sky by looking for a backwards question mark somewhat in between the constellations Gemini and Ursa Major.

APOD 4.1

What you see here is the nebula M78, the nebula to the right, and NGC 2071, the one to the left, in the constellation Orion. As you can see, there seems to be a very dark and dusty cloud that is blocking out all the light, but believe it or not, there are actually stars there. Although the cloud is absorbing the light preventing us from seeing the stars, it also reflects the light of many bright blue stars that have recently formed in the nebula.

M78 is around 5 light-years across and is in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex that holds the Great Nebula in Orion as well as the famous Horsehead Nebula; For those of you who don't know what that is, it is basically a nebula that is somewhat shaped like a horse head. Surprising right?

Well here is something even more mind-boggling... This picture is of the nebula 1600 years ago... No we did not go back in time...No we did not have such technology back in the day to go into space and take such pictures...Well, then how is this possible?

The reason why this picture is around 1600 years old is because that is how long it takes for the light to travel all the way to us. Although light is traveling at 300,000 km/sec, which is the fastest any object can go, stars are so far away from us that what we see on Earth is what happened to the star thousands of years ago. With the help of satellites like the Voyager 1 and other satellites that travel through space, we are able to get better and more recent pictures of how stars and planets and nebulae look today.

Observation 3.9

Hey guys. Unfortunately this day has come again in which I am not able to give you guys a picture. Why? Well, I was gone all weekend to a retreat in Atlanta, Georgia. I promise, though, I did not for get about this.

While I was out of state I did not have the chance to go outside but when I finally came home today and I looked at the sky, which was partly cloudy by the way, I noticed that the constellation Orion was a whole lot more west than it used to be. That means the seasons are changing and new constellations will soon be visible! I also noticed the constellation Ursa Major which was a lot higher off the horizon. Today the moon was in its last quarter phase so it was not bright enough to outshine many other stars. Anyways, I am glad to be back in warm, humid Florida. See you next time!

APOD 3.9

What you see here is an common occurrence between two galaxies. Two galaxies? Isn't there only one in the picture? Well that's what's so interesting about this picture, these are actually two galaxies, colliding.

The only reason why it is not usual when a galaxy collides because there are thousand of light years between each one. Although there is this huge space between them, remember that galaxies move as well as rotate. So after billions of years, there is a chance that they can come and collide with one another. When they do collide, however, the actual stars formed in them do not collide with other stars just because there too is a lot of space separating each star from one another. Also compared to the galaxy as a whole, the stars only take up a very little proportion.... so basically a star 5 times bigger than our sun is just like a grain of sand in the ocean..... Galaxies are huge! The universe is huge!!

Anyways, this collision of two galaxies can take up to a hundred million years in which both systems, due to their intense gravity, will basically rip each other apart, usually with one winner at the end. During this battle of the stars, the dust and gas in each system collide and intertwine forming molecular clouds which are being compressed during the encounters which cause the rapid birth of millions of stars. This also causes many of the new stars to be gravitationally bound near one another making massive star clusters.

These galaxies that you see above are in the constellation Corvus the Crow. The galaxies are NGC 4038 and NGC 4039 and together they are now called Antennae.

Neutron and Pulsar Stars

What happens after a star explodes? Does all the matter just disappear in the depths of space? Is there any remnant let behind to remind us that such an amazing structure had existed? Well, lucky for us there is something left from a star after it ends it life.

After a supernova, what remains from a massive star is what is called a neutron star. A neutron star is a spherical-like object with the radius of about 20 km and is held together by neutron degeneracy. That is the process in which the star becomes so dense in such a small amount of space that the atoms get so close to each other that they are almost touching, but since each neutron must have its own state, they almost repel each other which produces enough pressure to counteract with gravity, therefore preventing a possible black hole. What is so spectacular about this formation is, is that compared to 695,500 km radius of our Sun, this fairly small object has the mass of over 1.44 solar masses! Think about it, picture the mass of our Sun in something as small 12 miles! That means if you take a teaspoon full of a neutron star, it will way around a billion tons!

1.44 solar masses, also called Chandresekhar limit, is the line that determines if it a neutron star will develop or not. If the stellar mass is less than 1.44 solar masses, then there would not be enough mass to produce a neutron star but rather the star would be held by electron degeneracy. If the solar mass is 1.44 to 2 solar masses then the star will become a neutron star. However, if the solar mass is any bigger than 2 to 3 solar masses, there would be too much gravity pulling the star inward that not even neutron degeneracy will not be able to stop the collapse, making a black hole.

With a surface temperature of around 50,000 K, a neutron star has a crust made out of iron and electrons that is only 100 meters thick and with an atmosphere of about a couple of centimeters, yet because of it's high density, it has 10^11 times more gravity and stronger magnetic field than the Earth.

Pulsars are basically rotating neutron stars. Rotating at a speed of about 1000 rotations per second, particles are literally being ripped apart and shot out into space at around the speed of light which actually produces beams of light. So as the pulsar rotates, the light produced by the jet also rotates. This is why we call it a pulsar because on Earth, the star seems to be pulsing light. Pulsars emit X-rays and there have been some cases in which pulsars have been in a binary system in which 2 pulsars are orbiting around a common center of mass. There are about 40 binary pulsars found.

The closest pulsar to Earth is the star Calvera in the constellation Ursa Minor and is around 250 to 1,000 light years from us.

Observation 3.8

Date: March 8, 2014

Observation: On this cold and windy night, I, like I told you the week before, found another constellation in the sky! The lucky constellation for today is... Cassiopeia!

Now, before I get into the story of Cassiopeia, I would like to say that all the stories that I tell you about a constellation is just one interpretation of the story. There are countless other stories made of each constellation because different regions of the world can interpret one constellation in many different forms or ways, for example in Greek mythology Cassiopeia is known as the Queen while the Chinese looks at Cassiopeia as a legendary Chinese charioteer, in fact they call Cassiopeia, Wangliang. The only reason why I choose to pick mostly the Greek interpretations of the constellations is because they are more widely known to people. Also, as I had said before that there are a total of 88 constellations in the sky throughout the year, there of course can be more that people can randomly make up if they want to. This ominous number, 88, comes from the International Astronomical Union in which a group of astronomers, in the early 20th century, came together and decided that because more and more stars and celestial bodies were being found, they would pick constellations and place boundaries around them so to help with finding and recognizing new stars or bodies. I am not saying that they only picked Greek constellations, because that is not true, there are Egyptian, Chinese, Indian constellations and more part of the 88 standard constellations. But don't let that stop you! If you happen to see a picture of a car or a face in the sky, then go right ahead and name it whatever you want, have your own constellation but just be aware, I am not picking favorites or putting down any other stories, I am just picking the one that corresponds with the origin of a constellation.

Alright! since all that is cleared up...Cassiopeia. Cassiopeia, like I said is also known as the Queen. Now, she is part of a sort of soap opera in the skies, so I will be mentioning some constellations that I have not mentioned before, but don't worry I will talk about them in the following weeks. Cassiopeia was always known as a very vain and proud wife of King Cepheus of Ethiopia (Cassiopeia and Cepheus are the only husband and wife couple in the constellations). One day she declared that she held more beauty than the sea nymphs called the Nereids. Being that a mortal challenged their beauty, the 50 Nereids, daughters of the Old Man of the Sea, Nereus, decided to take revenge on the Queen. Amphitrite, one of the sea nymphs, was married to Poseidon, the sea god, and with her sisters, convinced him to punish Cassiopeia. To appease them , Poseidon sent down a sea monster called Cetus to destroy King Cepheus' country. To stop the monster, Cepheus and Cassiopeia offered their beautiful daughter Andromeda as a sacrifice. Before giving her to Cetus, however, she was saved by Perseus, the hero. So to punish her, Cassiopeia was placed on the celestial pole forever while part of the time she is seen to be hanging upside down. She is placed in the sky in between Perseus and Andromeda as well as next to Cepheus. She also is interpreted to be stretching out her hands with a bitterly expression on her face while looking at her daughter, blaming her for Cassiopeia's sin.

So much drama... Another fact about the constellation is that it has an asterism in it, which is a group of stars that look like an actual object. This asterism is called the Worm Asterism. You can probably see that in the picture above. She is also circumpolar, meaning that the constellation is able to be seen in more than one season. She also has a Messier object within her known as M 103.

Well, I hope you enjoyed one interpretation of the story. If you want to know where I get all these stories, I will link the website at the bottom. Until next time!



http://www.ianridpath.com/startales/startales3.htm

APOD 3.8

This beautiful creation seen above is called the IC 2944, also known as the Running Chicken Nebula.... I don't know, I don't see any kind of resemblance of a chicken. Maybe I can see a beak on the reddish-orangeish part of the emission nebula to the left of the center of the picture and the eyes are the darker portions above and to either side of the beak... Well at least that is my interpretation of it. Anyways, this image was taken in Australia in the Siding Spring Observatory where the picture was processed and given colors.

If you look near the right of the center of the image, you will see a couple of small (compared to the rest of the nebula), dark clouds. Those are called molecular clouds, which are clouds made up of, you guessed it, molecular gas and interplanetary dust. Theses clouds prevent us from seeing other star behind them while as you can see with the nebula surrounding it, you can at least see some stars behind them. These molecular clouds are actually called Thackeray's Globules, or more conveniently, the eggs. These eggs are possible sites of gravitational condensation, which is a primary step of forming stars. The problem about these eggs, is that because they are moving rapidly away from the rest of the nebula due to the radiation of nearby stars, the clouds are actually being shredded apart, decreasing their chance of forming a star.

This whole complex region of gases, reflecting dust and massive stars are all part of an open cluster called Colinder 249 which spans about 70 light-years and is around 6,000 light-years away from us.

Biography of Camille Flammarion

Chelsea Chacko

Percival

Astronomy Per. 5

March 4, 2014

Camille Flammarion Biography

          If one sets his or her mind on something, he or she can accomplish anything. A perfect example of this would be the renowned French astronomer, Camille Flammarion. Born on February 26, 1842,  in the little town of Montigny-le-Roi in France, Camille found himself in a family stricken by poverty and was to become the oldest of four children. Although his family was poor, his parents assured him a good education by sending him to school early. Portraying astounding intelligence for a child, Camille was able to read and write at the age of 4 and was already excelling in grammar and math at 5. Camille's mother had always wanted him to have a career as a priest, however, because of her belief in a strong and solid education, she would place the first stepping stone for her son into the career of Astronomy. It just so happened that in 1847, an annular eclipse was to occur near where they had lived. Wanting her son to see this spectacular event, she placed a bucket of water near their house in order that Camille, a 5 year old at the time, would be able to make his very own observation through its reflection. After seeing this, there was an immediate spark of interest and amazement. This followed with questions he posed such as how were people able to tell when such an event would occur or how long would it be till the next one? All this led him to search for more opportunities to see eclipses and to find out more information about such things. Soon he was find that there were people specialized in these topics and with the help of algebra and geometry they were to predict events like eclipses. With his interest rekindled, he went to study cosmography, the study of the universe and the Earth, where he made his decision in becoming an astronomer.
          Throughout his childhood, Camille continued his passion of the heavens, observing and recording whatever passed his sight, such as more eclipses and comets, including that of the weather and nature. There was a minor fallback during his life when his family was forced to Paris due to financial reasons in which Camille was taken out of school and was made an apprentice of an engraver to help his family make an income. This, however, did not discourage him from continuing his studies as he would join the Association Polytechnique, collect scientific journals and articles, and would spend every night studying algebra, geometry and even English, all without any assistance. Adding to this boy's outstanding skills, he even wrote his first book called Cosmogonie Universelle which gave Camille enough attention to be accepted to the Observatory of Paris where he would be under the eyes of the astronomer LeVerrier. With this amazing opportunity, Camille found himself pursuing his dream of recording the mysteries of the heavens.
          Camille, becoming more enveloped into astronomy, would write journals and books, related to science and the stars such as La pluralite des Mondes Habites which became an immediate hit. In 1869, he became the editor of the Cosmos in which he wrote his own articles of astronomy and meteorology. Soon, he devoted all his time to writing about astronomy. He made charts of the positions of the planets and used spectral analysis to study the planets which he wrote articles and journals about and put them in Le Siecle. He also gave out lectures, which successfully allowed more and more people to discover and become passionate about astronomy. He made observations of the sky with a 0.108m refractor, where he made his own observations and observed Nova Coronae in 1866, all of which he put into his volume "Studies and Readings of Astronomy". One of his major accomplishments was his observation of double-stars. Camille came to find that there were many catalogs of double-stars, yet they were missing resumes, so he decided he was going to fix that. So with his observations of binary systems and even a triple system, such a Zeta Cancri, he placed all of his observations into "Catalogue of Double and Multiple Stars". Another topic in which Camille became interested in was meteorology, and the affects of the atmosphere. Through air balloons, Camille would observe the atmosphere and write up his book The Atmosphere. His best work was made in 1880, "Popular Astronomy" had almost everything about science with such easiness that anyone could read without having to face the trouble spots of the subject. This book received an outstanding amount of popularity and support which made his readers demand another book which resulted in the making of "The Stars and the Curiosities of the Heavens" in 1881 which had all his accurate observations of all the stars over his part of the sky above the 6th magnitude. It also had tables of stars' varying magnitudes at different times and descriptions of special stars, nebulae and star-clusters, including in the catalogs of Messier objects. His success continues as he made a chart of the Moon, made a lunar globe and a globe of Mars as well as a volume of "The Planet Mars and Its Conditions of Habitability" after years of observing the planet, which also gained much attention.
          Although he wrote many novels and journals and made many observations, another very important part of Camille's life was when he founded the French Astronomical Society in 1887 which was made for anyone and everyone in order to spread the interest of astronomy and enabled people to use astronomical instruments to observe the sky. Continuing to write new novels, revise old ones and make more observation, Camille carried on with his life, gaining more and more popularity until on June 3, 1925, Camille died of a heart attack. Camille was married, although he was married twice due to his first wife dying of a stroke in which he married Mlle. Gabrielle Renaudot who also had a passion in astronomy. What this wonderful man left behind in the world were 55 published works, many more not published or finished and 23 works given to the Academy of Sciences. His works continue to be used and revised even today, and without his help, there probably would not have been as many people involved in the beautiful subject of astronomy.

Observation 3.7

Try to see if you can find and name the constellations...

Okay, here are the answers!

Date: March 1, 2014
Time: 7:00pm-8:45 pm

Observation:
Well, first off today was Astronomy Night. That is a day in which my astronomy class has a star gaze that is open to the public. This was actually my first time ever going to a star gaze and it was a pretty awesome experience. I learned a lot more about the stars and the constellations. These pictures that I have above, however, were taken at my house not at my school.

When I got to my school, it was very, very dark, obviously, and everyone could only use red light to see things; no white light from flashlights and phones! (That's because white light destroys your purple vision which is the chemical formed in your eyes that enable you to see in the dark although it takes a few minutes for your eyes to adjust)There was actually a pretty good turn up! There were a lot of little kids and adults and we all got to show them the constellations in the sky. There were telescopes stationed in certain parts of the area in which it was focused on specific constellations or stars.

Now, I am going to go into the specifics of what I saw in each telescope:

One of the telescopes was positioned towards the Pleiades which is in the constellation Taurus the Bull. If you look at my pictures you can see that the Pleiades sort of looks like a triangle or even shaped somewhat like the Little Dipper. What the Pleiades actually is, is it's a cluster of stars and its one of the closest ones to Earth as well as the other cluster, the Hyades which is also in Taurus (the Hyades is actually the head of the bull). Fun Fact: Not many people know that the Pleiades in Japanese is Subaru. Yes, that is where the actual car brand, Subaru, name derived from, which is also why its symbol is a cluster of stars. Brain Blast! It was amazing how clearly you could see through the telescope at the cluster; it had a beehive sort of shape to it.

Another telescope was positioned at an open cluster, I think in the constellation Orion (I am not very sure if this was the constellation). Anyways, there is actually an open cluster in Orion, it is in the Orion nebula, also called Messier object 42, which is located below Orion's Belt. An open cluster is basically a breeding ground or the birthplace of many stars with hundreds of stars in the cluster (a globular is also a type of star cluster however they are usually older with hundreds of thousands of stars forming and aging there). When looking through the telescope I could see many blue stars, which can indicate that they are younger or that they are blue giants. Fun Fact: The two brightest stars in Orion is Betelgeuse and Rigel.

Another one was focused on one of the stars in the constellation Gemini the Twins. This star was Castor, one of the two twins. What is really cool about this star is that with the naked eye, the star looks like one star, but through a telescope you can that it is really a binary star (two stars that revolve around each other)! Through the telescope you were able to see the binary star although split was not dramatic. Fun Fact: The other twin is called Pollux.

Now my favorite section was the telescope that was pointed at the planet Jupiter, which was located in the constellation Gemini. I thought that this was the coolest and the prettiest one out of them all! It was amazing on how clear you could actually see Jupiter as well as its moons! (4 to be exact). What made it better was that you could actually see the gas streaks on Jupiter! In all honesty, this totally boggled my mind because I had never seen any other planet through a telescope, and to have it look so clear and pretty close was all the better! It just amazes me how far we have gotten in this world and its crazy to think that we have better technology that enables us to look even further into space!

Honestly, just seeing pictures of stars, or clusters of planets are just one thing, they don't have much to it really. But to actually be able to see these things through telescopes although they might not be in that high of a resolution is ABSOLUTELY CRAZY! My mind just can't grasp on how complex our solar system is let alone our Earth...

Well, besides all that craziness, I have even more good news!... I found more constellations in the sky! I am not going to go in depth was each of the new ones I found because I think I had you for enough time, also because I need other things to talk about next week... But the constellations that I finally took a picture of were the constellations Cassiopeia the Queen, Perseus the Hero, Leo the Lion and Monoceros the Unicorn.

There is going to be a lot of exciting things to talk about next time so don't forget to come back a look! Also, if you ever hear of a local star gaze of some sort, (Hey! You never know you might find one.) go to one! I promise you, you will learn a lot! And remember, NO WHITE LIGHTS! See you next week!

APOD 3.7

This photo almost looks surreal! Well, this is actually happening in space. What you see here is star cluster called the Pleiades, which is located in the constellation Taurus, the bull. The icy blue thing that you see surrounding the star cluster is a gas and dust cloud. This dust cloud is from a ring of young star formation part of Gould's belt.

Okay here is a little background information. The Gould's Belt is a collection of big bright stars that form a ring on the sky. So no, there is not a constellation named Gould with a belt named after it (that would be like the constellation Orion).  This ring is more then 2000 light years long but no one really knows how it happened. This belt also includes the stars in Orion, Canis Major, and including our very own Sun!

Now part of the belt, over the past 100,000 have been moving right through the Pleiades which is causing a strong reaction between the stars and the dust. The pressure of the stars are repelling the dust into the blue reflection nebula, which are just clouds of dust that reflect the light of the stars. It's amazing how something so intense can make something to pretty. It just makes you wonder, what else is out there that we have yet to see...

Observation 3.6

Look for Sirius, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major.

We are getting closer...

Well... here it is...

Yup.

Okay, the picture is getting better...

 

Date: February 22, 2014
Time: 8:33 - 8:50 pm

Observation: When I went outside today and I looked up at the sky, surprisingly enough, I couldn't find any new constellations, or at least I didn't notice them or the stars were not bright enough for me to see them. But as I looked on with hope that I might have something to record for this week, it sprung upon me that I really wanted to take a zoomed in picture of a star. Now, don't get me wrong, I know I wasn't going to get far with my Sony camera but I wanted to see what would come up, if anything, and this is what I got!

Well, the first star I saw tonight, was Sirius, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, the Big Dog. As I zoomed up to the star, it was quite difficult trying to steady my camera because you know how it is if you zoom in your camera to the fullest, the slightest movement and what you are trying to focus on is gone! Well, after struggling with my camera and the camera stand for a good 10 minutes, I finally found Sirius and I took a picture of it. I was not satisfied. As you can tell the first close-up picture I took was the third picture above. It looked like that because my camera was moving and same thing with the next picture. But after I got the camera steady and I took a picture, the star was still not a perfect circle, in fact it was a different color!

Well that, my friends, was due to atmospheric blurring! You see, the atmosphere is a very windy place. Basically, there are currents of wind and a lot of molecules floating and whisking around up in the sky. Now, there is already an inaccuracy of where we think stars are positioned due to how far away we are from them, but because of our windy atmosphere, this makes matters worse. With molecules moving in the sky, the light is actually diffracted which is why there seems to be a halo surrounding the star, even in a clear, still night. Also, due to the windy atmosphere, sometimes the star seems to shift a little, or it will seem to make, as we call it, a twinkling star! So yes, that star in the song that you have heard all your life, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, was never an actual twinkling star, but just a normal (I am using the word "normal" very lightly because every star is unique in its own way) star in which atmospheric blurring is the cause of its dreamy presence. Sorry.

Anyways, be sure to always wonder about things and try to find the answer to them, but don't be surprised if you don't get a straightforward answer, because some things are best to be left unanswered. Rather you should just take the time to be thankful for those things and keep following the stars!