APOD 2.4

"Frosted Leaf Orion" (November 17, 2010)

This picture shows the night sky from Earth from Japan. It really illustrates how much living in the city affects my viewing of the stars. From this location away from all the city and the lights, so many stars can be seen. At my home, where I usually make my observations, I would never be able to get the view that this photographer got in Japan.

In this photograph you can see, the constellation Orion. You can clearly see the stars that make up his belt and dagger. You can also see Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, a little blue cluster in the sky, known as the Pleiades open star cluster, and Betelgeuse, the red giant. And, the larger streak that is seen in the left of the photo is a meteor from the Leonid meteor shower. Recently we have learned in star lab that the Pleiades open star cluster is the most famous star cluster on the sky because it can be seen without binoculars even in the city. However, the thing that most surprised me was Betelgeuse. It is a red giant, but I didn't realize how much of a giant it was. Apparently if it was put at the center of our Solar System it would extend to the orbit of Jupiter. That is huge considering the relative sizes and the distances between the planets that we have learned about in class. It still hard to comprehend how large these stars and planets can be.

Great World Wide Star Count and Observations (11/12/10)

Yesterday, (November 12, 2010) at about 8:06 pm outside on my driveway, I located cygnus in the west. The skies were clear and I could see the stars that made up the endpoints of the cross and the star at the center. It seemed to match chart 3 that was shown on the website for the Great World Wide Star Count.

Also at 6:10 am on the same day on my driveway, I was able to see Venus in the east. It was very bright. The skies were clear and the sky was starting to get bright and not too many stars were visible due to the rising sun.

APOD 2.3

NGC 7023: The Iris Nebula (November 12, 2010)

This picture shows the Iris Nebula, which is located in the constellation Cepheus. It is named the Iris Nebula because of its resemblance to flowers. The center of the "flower" is a bright shining light, surrounded by blue petals. The center is actually a hot, young star, and the blueish colors come from the scattering of white light off dust particles that survived the stars birth. This scattering is similar to Rayleigh scattering, which is responsible for the color of the sky on Earth. This also explains why the Iris Nebula is a reflection nebula versus an emission nebula. Reflection nebulae because they cannot create their own light and scatters the light of other stars nearby. Emission nebulae are clouds of hot gas that are hot enough to emit light themselves. This APOD was interesting because I was not aware of the different types of nebulae and I did not know that some nebulae could not create light themselves. I thought all nebulae created their own light. It was also interesting to read about the experiment in "The Feynman Lectures On Physics" which explained in detail why the scattering of light created the blue color we see.

Observations

Date: November 5, 2010
Time: 6:10 AM
Location: My driveway in Osprey
Weather: A few clouds but the stars were still visible

Today when I went out this morning the moon was not visible, but I was again able to spot Orion above in the south/southwest. Looking at the other stars in the sky, i tried to find other constellations and i was surprised to be able to identify Ursa Major. It was in the north, and it certainly was larger than Ursa Minor.

APOD 2.2

Night Lights (November 4, 2010)

This picture was taken from the International Space Station. I have seen what a lot of the stars and nebulas looked like, so it was interesting to see what Earth looked like from space. This picture was taken from 220 miles above Earth. In this picture I can see the the Gulf coast and where some of the major cities are like New Orleans and Houston. Following the bright lights, you can even see the central US highway I55. They Earth is covered with all these lines and dots of light that we have created. It puts things into perspective because I never really knew how much light we use. It seems as if the Earth is constantly glowing and there is no where to escape all the light. 

Also, reading about the International Space Station, November 2nd marked the first decade of  continuous human presence in space on board the International Space Station. This was surprising because I didn't even realize that there were people living in space for that long. Some of the people that have been on the station stayed up there anywhere from a month to 150 days. I can't imagine what it must have been like to live out in space for that long in a completely different environment. And from the pictures that are on their website, it looked like is was a tight space to move in, but apparently it is as large as a 5 bedroom home, with two bathrooms, a personal gym. It's amazing that they were able to build something like that and put it into space and be able to live in it.

APOD 2.1

This week, I am looking at "Ultraviolet Andromeda" (October 27, 2010).

This picture is the highest resolution image ever made of the Andromeda Galaxy at ultraviolet wavelengths. It was taken by NASA's satellite, Swift. Swift is usually used to search for distant cosmic explosions. But with the 330 images that it took from May 25-July 26, 2008, it was able to form this amazing image. Using those pictures, an undergrad student at the University of Maryland at College Park who worked with Stefan Immler, a research scientist on the Swift team, was able to process all of that data to make the image that is seen here after 10 weeks of hard work. In this mosaic, it reveals about 20,000 ultraviolet sources in the Andromeda Galaxy, especially hot, young stars and dense star clusters. Studies show that tides raised by the many small satellite galaxies in orbit around M31 help increase interactions withing gas clouds that makes all of these new stars.

I really like this picture because it shows the entire galaxy and when you move your cursor over the picture, you can see the same galaxy in optical light. Compared with the image in optical light, the ultraviolet image appeals more to me just because it's purple. It has more of a fantasy look about it and the ring around it is more defined. But the optical image has more glare from the center and a white haze around the stars so it's a little harder to see them. I was also amazed that this picture was made out of 330 images put together. It turned out very nice and you can get an idea of how wide it actually is by the length of the picture (220,000 light-years across).

APOD 1.8

Vista with NGC 2170 (October 15, 2010)

This picture of the day is in the constellation Monoceros. The picture was taken by VISTA (a survey telescope) in near-infrared light.. It shows the bright stars surrounding  the dust and clouds which is where star formation and other young stars are hidden from view. This was interesting because I wasn't sure exactly what a Monoceros was. I thought it was some terrifying Greek mythological creature, but this constellation is actually modern. I learned that a monoceros was associated with a unicorn and had probably come from descriptions of a rhinoceros. I usually knew where most of the constellation's names came from but this was one of the few that I was unsure of, so it was interesting to read about the origin of it's name and what it was. This picture also relates very well to the chapter on telescopes that we just read in class. Seeing a video of the comparison between pictures taken with visible and infrared light gave me a better sense of why astronomers would want to study space in the different spectrums. The pictures that were taken in visible light had a lot of glare and twinkling from the stars. The colors weren't very bright either. With the infrared picture, the glare was greatly reduced so it was easier to get a view of the background and the star-forming region could be seen as orange/red with the colorful streaks coming out. This made me realize what a difference the sectrum made.