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...