APOD 3.3

Most of you know that right now we have a rover on Mars, mapping out the land and testing the rocks of their elements. The rover up there now is called Opportunity. Opportunity is programmed to take photos of the landscape and recently it had taken a picture of the ground to the left. After 12 Martian days, a picture was taken of the same piece of land, however there was an object there that wasn't there before; a white, doughnut shaped rock.......

Could it be? Are there really aliens out in space? Is this a sign?.....Until next time on blogger.com!

Just kidding. Fortunately, the mystery was found and it turns out, our rover hasn't met up with some outer space creature from Dagobah (the reference is from Star Wars for all you Star Wars junkies). This rock was actually just overturned and scattered by one of the rover's tires. Weird looking rock though, right? Well, that's why it is actually nicknamed the Jelly Doughnut! After a chemical analysis, it was found that this rock was composed of twice as much magnesium than any other rock examined. This is another puzzle added onto the mysterious planet. But luckily, Opportunity is still functioning, and has been for 10 years, and is about to examine the Murray Ridge.

There is still so much to learn about our possible second home. Who knows there still might be a chance to find some other crazy creature that is living in our solar system with us!

Observation 3.2

Date: January 26, 2014

Observation:
            ...I am sad to say that this will be my first observation without a picture. Unfortunately, this whole weekend the night sky was cloudy and I was not able to see any of the stars or constellations. In fact, even in the daylight almost all this weekend the sky was threatening to pour out rain. Just thinking about it though, all there needs to be is one cloudy night and the next night when you look up at the sky, everything can look so different. The constellations could have shifted, the planets could have moved into another set of stars and even the Moon could look absolutely different. Honestly, that must've sucked for astronomers back in the day when they would be observing some kind of pattern in the sky such as an orbit of a moon on some other planet. Just one day could mess up all the data if they were not careful enough but luckily we don't have to worry about that just with all the satellites and space probes up in space. I have made a challenge for myself. One of the things I want to do before I die is take a picture of all the constellations in the sky. Yup, all 88 of them and so far I have 8 of them down. Just 80 more to go! Hopefully next week will be clearer. Well, I guess until next time!

APOD 3.2

What kind of picture is this? This is our very own Moon! Why then does it look so weird? Well, this picture is actually how big the Moon appeared in June 22, 2013 and January 15, 2014. Are you saying the Moon changes its size? Nope, it can't change its size but it can appear that way. Now let me explain this a little more. The Moon revolves around the Earth however, not in a perfect circle. Just like all the planets in the solar system, the Moon's obit is slightly elliptical shaped, or it has the eccentricity of 0.05 (that is a very slight ellipse). Since its orbit is not a perfect circle, there are times where the Moon is farthest away from Earth (apogee) and when it is closest to Earth (perigee). Of course, the farther away something is, the smaller it seems, which is why the full Moon on January 15 was smaller than usual, although the change is not significant, just 50,000 kilometers farther away than it was in perigee. Although you might have missed out on the apogee the next time the Moon is at this position will be March 5, 2015. Write that down in your calenders and see if you can see a difference in the Moon!

Observation 3.1

You can see that tonight was very cloudy.

 

Orion was hard to find because it was behind some of the clouds

 

Date: January 21, 2014
Time: 9:00PM - 9:27 PM

Observations:
Let's just say that tonight was a very cloudy night. Today when I went outside the sky was just full of patches of clouds and one second I would see some stars or some familiar constellations (really just Orion) and the next second they were gone. So taking a picture of the sky tonight was fairly difficult. Before I go into the pictures in more detail, I just wanted to say that the clouds have a reddish, orangeish tint to them because I was next to my street lamp post which got annoying at times but at least I was able to get the pictures!

Okay now going into the pictures, I believe I found 2 new constellations today! It was actually pretty difficult trying to find these constellations not only because it was cloudy but because I was not familiar with them. Also at a point I was confused on where Jupiter was located because one time there was not a cloud over Canis Minor but one over Jupiter making the bottom star in Canis Minor appear to be Jupiter. Confusing right? Not really.

Anyways, back to the constellations. Canis Minor, also known as the Lesser Dog, is usually known to be the other dog following Orion (the other dog being Canis Major, also known as the Greater Dog). However, in another story, Canis Minor is known as Maera. According to the legend from Attica, a place around Athens, there was a man named Icarius whom Dionysus, the god of fertility and wine, taught how to make wine. Wanting to test the drink out, Icarius gave some of it to some shepherds; the drink however made them drunk and thinking that Icarius had poisoned them, they killed him. Maera, Icarius' dog, ran to Icarius' daughter, Erigone (the constellation Virgo), to show her of what had happened and in grief, they both took their lives. Zeus placed them up in the heavens to remind people of this tragic event in which the people of Athens now celebrate a day in honor of Icarius and Erigone. That's deep.

Now moving on to Gemini, this constellation is a zodiac and it is also called The Twins. Now this story is a confusing one but just hold on tight and bear with me. The twins in this constellation represent Castor and Polydeuces. There is dispute whether or not they are the sons of Zeus however. The story goes that one day Zeus visited the Queen of Sparta, Leda, in the shape of a swan, the constellation Cygnus. Apparently, she slept with both Zeus and her husband King Tyndareus that night and that resulted in Leda giving birth to 4 children. It was said that of the 4, Polydeuces and Helen were the children of Zeus and Castor and Clytemnestra were the children of King Tyndareus. It happened that Castor and Polydeuces were identical twins and grew up very close to one another, never fighting and always consulting with one another. Castor became a horseman and a warrior and was the one who taught Hercules how to fence while Polydeuces became a renowned boxer in which he used his skill to defeat the world's greatest bully, Amycus, in order to receive the golden fleece that the twins were looking for. It was said that there were many other incidents where they were the heroes all happening to be during a voyage out to sea which is why they are known to be the patron saints of sailors. Their story comes to an end when the twins come to fight another pair of twins, Idas and Lynceus, for women whom the latter were engaged to but whom the twins had won over. During the fight over the women, Lynceus kills Castor who is in turn killed by Polydeuces who is attacked by Idas who is killed by Zeus. In the end, Polydeuces pleads to Zeus to allow both Castor and himself to have immortality. Zeus then places the twins up in the sky where they will be together for eternity.... If only I had that relationship with my sisters.....So if you are a Gemini then you are very talented, social, have a lot of interests and you better have a good relationship with your siblings!

Well, I think that is enough writing for one post and hopefully you made it to the end! Don't forget to keep following the stars!!

APOD 3.1

What a beautiful sky right? There are not many places on this Earth or at least where the majority of the people are that you can see the sky at its maximum star visibility due to light pollution. Luckily there are still places unaffected by pollution so that amateur astronomers like ourselves are able to observe the night sky and discover more of our mysterious galaxy.

Looking at this photo might be a bit confusing for some. For one thing, there are so many stars out in the sky but it seems that the Sun had just set. Man, if this is how our evenings are supposed to be everyday then we really messed up the Earth! Well, not really. This photo is actually taken while the Sun is on the opposite side of the Earth. What?! Yup, if it weren't for all the stars in the sky, then all you would be seeing is a black photo.

Well, then why does the bottom part of the sky seem so bright, almost like a sunset? Well this is the result of the interplanetary dust particles in space. Interplanetary dust is basically leftovers from asteroids or comets that have passed by; their residue due to its fiery path toward the Sun. So, there is really enough dust in space that the Sun's light reflects off of these particles. The faint glow that you see across the sky is called the gegenschein. That is basically a very dim spot in the sky which shows the reflection of the Sun's light on the interplanetary dust. Since the dust particles orbit on the ecliptical plane, the Sun's apparent path in the sky, that is why the gegenschein is in a diagonal like fashion.

The pretty orange part of the sky would be known as the zodiacal light, also known as the false dawn. This is also due to the light reflecting from the interplanetary dust particles in space and is easier to see than the gegenschein.

Other than that, with the millions of billions of stars in the sky, I don't think I can decipher even one of them, either that or I would be very wrong. Anyways, being able to see such a phenomenon such as this one is one of the many things on my bucketlist. Try making it one of yours, it could be life-changing. Sweet star-gazing!

APOD 2.8

A few weeks ago, I made an observation of the Sun where I described how our Sun was made and more. This will be a continuation of that.

First off, let's talk about the picture. This picture was taken in Switzerland on January 5 as the Sun was setting. This is a pretty average representation of the Sun; big, yellow, and amazing, if I do say so myself. Now looking at it closer, you may see a blemish on the photo. This, however, is not the camera's fault. Those dots on the Sun are what are called sunspots. Sunspots are dark spots on the Sun which are cooler than the rest of the Sun or the photosphere. Cooler that is being at about 3,800 K while the photosphere has a temperature of about 5,800 K. So that is still very hot! These things however, can get big like around 10,000 kilometers long.

So how are sunspots really made?

Well, it involves intense magnetic fields. First, think of your typical magnet, negative on one side and positive on the other. Now think of it 1000 times stronger. This is just a simplified version of the Sun's magnetic field. Well, the sunspots are disturbed places on the photosphere where this internal magnetic field reaches the surface and jets out of one sunspot and enters into another one, which is why you usually see a group of sunspots. This means that there can also be solar flares which  are loops or streams of gas being emitted from the Sun into space. These spots can last from 1 to 100 days and as I had mentioned before, these spots can be very big.

Relating this back to the picture, this sunspot that you see is so big that it can not only be seen from Earth, it is also 11 times bigger than our meager little planet! The sunspot is said to eject a solar flare that would reach the Earth, but don't worry, that doesn't mean that our planet is going to go up in flames. It actually means there will be auroras up in the north. This, however, happened on January 7.

There are still so many things that I have not even got into about the Sun alone which comes to show how mysterious of a place we live in.

Biography of William Herschel

Chelsea Chacko

Percival Per.5

Astronomy

January 5, 2014

William Herschel

 

       Its a bird! Its a comet! Its a planet? A renowned astronomer from the mid 1700s to the early 1800s, Frederick William Herschel was born on November 15, 1738 in Hannover, Germany. Brought up as a Protestant, during a time of religious dispute, William's education was meager however enough to become a very skilled musician and mathematician. Beginning his career in the music field at the age of 14, William accompanied the Hanoverian military band on their journeys to England, however, grew too sick to continue with them; his parents then sent him off back to England at the age of 18 where he lived a very isolated and difficult life. Nevertheless, William got a job as an organist in Bath during its time of glory and soon became economically situated. Little did he know that his fate was soon to be altered to chart the heavens and become one of the most influential astronomers of all time.

       After settling down, William went back to Hanover at around 1772 to bring his sister, Caroline Herschel, to help him with his various tasks. In his free time Herschel would take up on reading books of the heavens such as Smith's Harmonics and Ferguson's Astronomy which led him to want to try to uncover the mysteries of the sky. He would continue to research and read more books from other astronomers such as Lalande whom all would influence him as he began to educate himself as an astronomer. Since in those days telescopes were uncommon, expensive and not that effective, William had the idea of making his own telescopes. He continued to construct bigger telescopes however the first few he made did not satisfy him. He finally took to the step to use an astronomer's old technology to grind and polish his own mirrors, which in those days was a very tedious feat but with the help of his sister and brother he made a Newtonian telescope with a focal length of 6 feet in 1774. With this, his goals were to record and chart the stars in the sky.
       Of the first couple of observations William made, one was of the variable star Mira. Variable stars are stars that change its brightness during in a period of years or even seconds, such as our own Sun. He wanted to observe them in order to understand our Sun better and to see if other stars shared the same characteristics as it. William knew that our Sun rotated on an axis as well as emitted dark spots but he wanted to know if other stars also did these things. With the information that he found, he wrote it down and sent it to the Royal Society which was a group of philosophers who promoted and discussed discoveries and findings of the world. Other observations William made in 1781 was of the other planets' rotation as well as their satellites' in which he tried to see if there needed to be a change in the length of our own day. In the process of observing the planets, when he came to look at Mars, he noticed that on its poles there were white spots. Further investigating Mars, William came to find that its tilt on its axis was not so different from the Earth's tilt. He concluded that both of the planets' climate were similar and that the white spots on Mars were actually some sort of snow. While observing Saturn, William came upon a new object in the sky. At first, thinking it was a comet, he began to observe it for a couple of weeks, however, noticing the way that it moved, he came to realize that this object was really a planet! Wanting to name it after King George III at the time, the planet's name, however, became Uranus. William continued to observe the new planet and soon came to find 6 satellites around it; however, 4 of them are not considered as satellites today. In 1782, King George III invited William and his sister to come and stay with him in Windsor and he then became the King's private astronomer.
       Being elected as a member of the Royal Society, William read Charles Messier's almanac "Catalog of Nebulae and Star Clusters" which had a list of nebulae, or clouds of gas, in the sky. This led William to want to find more. With the help of his sister, they would both dedicate nights charting the sky by positioning his telescope on one part of the sky and would stay right there throughout the night recording the stars and observations he made. The next night he would do the same but at a position higher or lower than the night before until he completely charted the entire sky above Britain. With this he would be able to observe up to 2,500 new nebulae and star clusters, all which he would record in "The General Catalogue of Nebulae". Continuing his amazing feat, William began to study nebulae even further. Primarily believing that some nebulae were actually separate galaxies, William came to discover one of the nebula to have a star in its center therefore declining the previous views that it could not contain a star. This is how he also got into observing the Milky Way. Considering the Milky Way also as a nebula, nursing many other stars, William tried to find out how it was shaped. In this process, he tried to find the distance of each star from one another and from Earth; with this he needed bigger telescopes. In 1789 William made the largest telescope of his time with a focal length of 40 feet which with he was able to discover two more satellites circling Saturn. This telescope, however, was too heavy to support so he was forced to work with smaller telescopes. With these telescopes, William discovered that some of the stars that he had been observing (145 of them) were actually pairs of stars or binary stars. He saw that they were actually revolving around each other which supported the fact that Newton's laws of gravity and Kepler's laws of planetary motion were also present in other solar systems not only our own. With this new found information, William began to observe the dense and the not so dense parts of the Milky Way and came to the conclusion that it was the shape of a disk. Although his representation of it is inaccurate due to a misconception he had of some dark regions he saw in the Milky Way, it actually opened the idea that our solar system is actually part of the Milky Way.
       In 1788, William married a widow and fathered his son, John Herschel, who with him discovered even more stars and nebulae; 4,630 to be exact. Following up on his previous observations of the sunspots our Sun emitted, he wanted to see if they affected the Earth's climate in any way. To his amazement and surprise, it did; however, not in the way that he thought it would. William proposed that Earth's climate would be better if there was no sunspot activity because he thought that the more sunspots there were the less bright the would be and the less amount of heat and light energy would reach the Earth. After observing a period of time when the harvest was plentiful, however, he came to realize that this was during the time where there were sunspots being emitted from the Sun. With this, William wanted to find the temperature of the different colors and in 1800, he discovered a part more energetic than the color red and soon came to find infrared radiation. Finally becoming the first president of the Royal Society in 1821, 84 year old William passed away in 1822, but was not forgotten because the Moon and Mars and even one of Saturn's moons have craters with his name. Who knew that one simple man could find so many things through a telescope and with a lot of determination!

William's representation of the Milky Way