APOD 2.7

Some planetary nebulas such as this are extraordinarily complicated. When a nebula is formed there is usually a simple shape after the sun dies and then a normal nebula is formed. The common shapes include rings, spheres, helixes, and other rounded figures however clearly this picture is not as simple. The Hubble telescope is going to investigate this strange occurrence and astronomers hope that they will find out the reason for one such as complicated. The current hypothesis is that there was a binary star and this is the result of that explosion. There are no doubt other nebulas as strange and amazing as this.

APOD 2.6

Pictured above is a strange occurrence in the Radio Galaxy Hercules A. No one is sure how a thing such as this can happen however it is suspected to be the cause of a super massive black hole at the center of the object. The physics point towards a black hole and the jets erupt as a cause of the gravity that the huge phenomenon possesses. If something like this were to happen close to Earth there would be catastrophic consequences.

APOD 2.5

The picture above is an image of the Horsehead nebula, located within the constellation Orion. It is a part of a large, dark cloud of molecules. The color derives from the hydrogen gas being ionized by the star Sigma. Dust is seen in all of the picture, surrounding the nebula and all of the stars. Most of the stars are rather young ones but some are very old and humongous. The Horsehead is one of the most recognizable objects in the cosmos and is easily seen by amateur astronomers.

Things to see in the December sky

1.Epsilon Lyrae, a double double
2.Jupiter's moons
3.Cephei
4.M31
5.Andromedae
6. Orionis
7.Polaris
8.M38
9. Draconis
10.Double cluster in Perseus

Constellation Quizzes

http://www.astronomyquiz.info/constellations-quiz.
This quiz is not too terribly hard but it helps reinforce the basics and get down some of the important stuff in the night sky.

http://www.astro.umass.edu/~arny/constel/constel_quiz.html
When looking up at the night sky it is sometimes hard to apply the things that you see on a constellation chart but this quiz helps with that.

APOD 2.4

Total solar eclipses are rare events, even more than the regular ones. In these eclipses the moon fully covers the sun rather than only partly. Australia is the lucky place this week for it was able to witness a total solar eclipse as pictured above. The corona is visible in the picture which is known as the wedding ring, it appears only after the sun is fully enveloped and it is said to be truly amazing. This is the only time that you can look up at the sun and avoid permanent damage to your retinas. It is easy to see solar flares when it is in this state and even normal people can become astronomers.

APOD 2.3

Pictured above is the Heart Nebula and other cosmic clouds surrounding it. Many shapes are formed by the stellar winds that blow through the universe, astounding astronomers. From the area shown there are thousands and thousands of stars, many very young for star standards, most around 1.5 million years. This is about 7,500 lights years from the constellation Cassiopeia, where the center of the Heart Nebula lies. Several of the colors from the visible spectrum jump out in the picture and there are even more in the rest of the spectrum that are able to be seen using special telescopes and satellites.

APOD 2.2

The picture above is in the constellation Cepheus, picturing, as astronomers call it, a ghostly apparation. It is very faint, only visible by the most powerful telescopes. This is an unordinary event, and although others have been seen before, there are not too many. It is rather ironic that this would appear on the telescopes on halloween day. It blocks the nebula partly, but gives a bluish tint to the pictures that can pass through the ultraviolet catching particles. It is about 7 light years away, and it seems that it just wandered into that area, being completely unpredictable. There is a luminescence that is given off that makes the pictures taken look even more mysterious.

APOD 2.1

Mars currently has two moons orbiting it at the moment, Phobos and Deimos. They aren't particularly large but they are still caught in the gravitational pull of the red planet. They were originally just small asteroids that got separated from the asteroid presumably by the force of other asteroids hitting into them. Mars may not be a big planet but compared to Phobos, a rather small moon, it is humongous. Because of this it is like a tidal pull and the moon is being pulled into Mars. It is doomed to crash in about 100 million years, Phobos will be no more.

APOD 1.8

Far into the universe a stange thing is happening, two galaxies are combining. NGC 2623 seems to be in the final stages and very soon it could become one. It is about 300 million light years away so it has probably already happen and we have yet to see it but soon the fates of the galaxies will be revealed. The cause of the two colliding is likely a very large black hole that is sucking them into each other. In the picture you can see the thousands of stars and the dust as well as the nebulus clouds. Never have we witnessed such an event and many astronomers are excited to see the outcome.

Chp 5.1-5.3 Outline

5.1

• Optical Telescope- Optical is designed specifically to collect the wavelengths that are visible to human eye.
• Telescope-device designed to collect as much light as possible from some distant source and deliver it to a detector for a detailed study. Depending on the size and power of the telescope one can see several thousand light years into space.
• Refracting Telescope- uses a lense to concentrate and focus the light captured by the telescope.
• Reflecting Telescopes- use mirrors to reflect the image.
• Newtonian and Cassegrain- reflecting telescopes that use secondary mirrors to avoid placing detectors at the prime focus. More complex light paths are also used to allow the use of large or heavy equipment that cannot be plaved near the telescope.

5.2

• All large astronomical telescopes are reflectors because large mirrors are lighter and easier to consturct than large lenses. They also suffer fewer defects and do not need to be replaced or cleaned as often as lenses.
• The collecting area, which is the light gathering power of a telescope, is proportional to the square of the mirror diameter.
• To study the faintest sources of radiation, astronomers must use very large telescopes. They suffer least from the effects of diffraction and are able to better achieve better angular resolution once the blurring effects of Earth's atmosphere are overcome.
• The amount of diffraction is proportional to the wavelength of the radiation under study and inversley proportional to the size of the mirror.

5.3

• Most modern telescopes use charge-coupled devices (CCD's) instead of photographic plates to collect their data.
• The field of view is divided into an array of millions of picels that accumulate an electric charge when light strikes them.
• CCD's are much more sensitive than photographic plates, and are more easily saved into the computer and are much more popular in the astronomical field.
• Photometry may be performed either on a stored image or during the observations, using a specialized detector called a spectrometer, that may be used to analyze the spectrum of the radiation recieved.

APOD 1.7

When images like these are taken it is easy to see the path that stars take. Depending on the time filmed their paths are more or less obvious. This particular picture was from 30, one minute exposures in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The house and the lighthouse are put in the picture as a frame of reference, so that one can see the scale, and in this particular one it looks as though the stars are orbiting the lighthouse. Several of the stars in the picture are circumpolar, which mean that they never set. These pictures are always interesting to astronomers and they astound other people viewing them.

James Bradley Biography

Connor Boles                                                                                                              Boles 1

Mr. Percival

Astronomy Honors

12 Oct. 2012

James Bradley

            Jams Bradley was a well known astronomer for the discovery the aberration of light, which proved that the Earth moved, which was a key part to the Copernican Revolution because it helped convince the skeptics that Earth was heliocentric. It was the first direct evidence and that is the main reason why he will go down in history as a noted astronomer. He also discovered the nutation of Earth’s axis, and together, they were called the most brilliant and significant of the century.

            Born in March, 1693 in Sherborne, Gloucestershire, England, Bradley had an upper class family. He was the nephew of astronomer James Pound, which later helped him secure a job and helped him in the astronomical field. In 1711 he started his education at Balliol College in Oxford. He continued at his education until in 1718 he was elected to the Royal Society, which was a pivotal point in his career. He continued to excel in his field and gaining more and more prowess and several desired titles.  

            In 1722 he measured the diameter of Venus with his telescope, which he later used to discover the aberration of light. He was attempting to discover stellar parallax of Gamma Draconis when he made his discovery, and he was perplexed at first for the stellar parallax of the star should have shown up immediately. Instead of what was expected there was an annual cyclic motion that the star adopted. His calculations were off by several months with alerted him of another possible cause of the strangeness. Finally, he realized that it was an aberration of light.

            The aberration of light is a phenomenon that produces an apparent motion for many celestial objects that hides their real location. There are many factors that affect the aberration such as where one is on the earth and also their speed and height as well as the velocity and direction of the celestial object. The actual effect is the tilt of the direction that the light is coming from and one’s position. This is what proves that Earth has parallax, a key point in the Copernican Revolution.

            The other discovery that Bradley is known for is the nutation of Earth’s axis. Although the nutation of Earth isn’t a perfect angle such as Euler described it does indeed have the procession. It is able to be seen in the changing tides of Earth’s oceans when the tides move and as Bradley was an avid sailor it definitely helped his career. It is parallel to Earth’s ecliptic, a term used in nutation in obliquity. This discovery is something that changed how all astronomers perceived all events, especially the solar events.

            James Bradley was a key contributor in the astronomical field. He achieved the title of Astronomer Royal and for over 40 years he was an avid contributor to the discoveries in his time period. With such a high position and all that power he has forever made an imprint, and changed how we perceive the universe today.

Observations for the week of 10/1

I was able to see the normal stuff every morning, Jupiter and Venus, but also the bright moon. The moon was at its' full moon phase on Saturday and then every morning at around 630 I was able to see it outside my house. It was in the waning crescent phase on Monday and I was able to see it then with limited cloud interaction. I was also able to see the first magnitude star Regulus when it was close to Venus. Even though Venus has a magnitude of about -4.1 and Regulus has a magnitude of +1.3 and it was difficult to see the star I was still able to see the star. Along with these I have been able to see several first magnitude stars but unable to identify them. I plan on using the astronomy app on my phone to identify them over the weekend when I am not in a rush.s

APOD 1.6

APOD October 1st, 2012: Comet Ison

It is difficult to spot some comets for they are objects that move at incredible speeds and can disappear from view in just hundreds of years, which is very lengthy when concerned with astronomy. This comet could soon grow into one of the brightest visible in the night sky with Earth as the point of view. That is one possibility but another is if the comet gets too close to the sun, and breaks apart into pieces, floating aimlessly through space. Astronomers hope that the first option comes true so that they are able to study the object. It has a magnitude of 18, which is very low, very impressive that the Russian astronomer who discovered it was able to see it. In just 15 months however, the dirty snowball could a completely different object at a very different distance.

APOD 1.5

Equinox: The Sun from Solstice to Solstice

On September 22nd it was the Autumnal Equinox, a time when the Sun hasd completed a full cycle and the day and night are equal. This only happens twice a year, once now and then again for the Summer equinox. An Equinox occurs between two solstices, between the summer solstice and the winter solstice. These are both important days for the astronomical world because it only happens twice a year, and they can take advantage to study the Sun's patterns. If you take pictures and compare them to past years this is what happens, and one can see how the earth and sun are changing. This can also help predict the seasons, it is a very important day of the year.

James Bradley Biography sources

Connor Boles                                                                                                                       Boles 1

Mr. Percival

Astronomy

26 Sept. 2012

                                                                         Works Cited

Hawkins, Gerald S. "James Bradley (English Astronomer)." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia

 Britannica, n.d. Web. 26 Sept. 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/76818/James-

Bradley>.


"James Bradley." James Bradley. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Sept. 2012.

 <http://www.nndb.com/people/130/000102821>.


Stratford, Joseph. Gloucestershire Biographical Notes. Gloucester: "Journal" Office, 1887. Print.

APOD 1.4

A Solar Filament Erupts:
In between sunspots the plasma flowing can either collapse or explode. Often the plasma collapses, but this is a rare event where it exploded. It is impossible to predict when one of these will occur and even if it will occur, due mainly to the ever changing magnetic field of the sun. As the filament exploded it sent ions and electrons outward, some of them hitting Earth approximately 3 days later. When they hit it impacted the Earth's magnetosphere, causing visible aurora, much more than the norm that we usually experience. There is an active region on the sun where these occur, although frequently changing. This is the beginning of a solar maximum that will impact us for the next two years.

APOD 1.3

When looking at the sky, just 2 degrees within the constellation Cygnus, the Cocoon Nebula is visible. The interstellar dust clouds stand out from the hundreds of thousands of stars visible, all bright, colorful, almost magical. The nebula is about 4,000 light years from ours, occupying about 15 light years across, the nebular glow from the middle still shines brightly. The clouds are comprised of hundreds of different colors, powered by all the stars residing in the nebula, making it quite a sight. The only hint of the molecular clouds are the dust clouds surrounding the edges of it. The stars hidden by these dust clouds are visible with infrared cameras, which shows how many stars really are in this mysterious nebula.

Copernican Revolution

Contributors and their contributions:

Nicolaus Copernicus: Proved Earth does not have to be the geometric center of the systrem for the heavens to move as they do. He initiated the revolution but was not able to contribute much more and submit irrefutable evidence to prove that his competition, Ptolemy, was incorrect. He had the heliocentric model which did later prove to be correct, although not proven in his lifetime.

Tycho Brache: He proposed a system, the Tychonic system, that was a compromise between the geocentric and heliocentric theories. It showed that the objects in the heavens were mathematical devices rather than just objects floating in space. He also made many observations that paved the way for Johannes Kepler to become successful with his laws of planetary motion. The great comet of 1577 was a big help to his work and helped proved his theories.

Johannes Kepler: This was a modern model of the heliocentric model proposed by Copernicus. Copernicus formulated the model making the orbits around the sun circles, which was inaccurate. Kepler made the orbits ellipses rather than circles, and his theory is mostly accurate today. He was greatly helped by Brahe's observations, they permitted his success.

Galileo Galilei: Being the first to use a telescope he backed up Kepler's model by observing the phases of Venus and also the moons of Jupiter. He also wrote a defense of the heliocentric model, leading to his trial. His use of telescopes made his observations possible and then backed up the valid theory. He was later put under house arrest for his work but continued supporting the model.

Isaac Newton: One to finish the Copernican Revolution, although that is argued by some. His "Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy" shows how gravity is able to keep all the planets in their orbits. This supported all the theories, it was the evidence needed to push the model foward and make it the scientifically recognized model of the solar system. He also expanded on Kepler's findings, using gravity to perfect the calculations of the orbits, and the model.

Observations for the week of 9/10

I have been able to see the moon every morning getting closer and closer to Venus this week. I have also seen Venus every morning at about 6:45 am. Jupiter is directly overhead every morning very bright in the sky, a few fists away from Venus. I also saw a 1st magnitude star approximately a fist away from Jupiter is the southwest direction. I was also able to see some micellaneous stars and objects in the sky. During the day I was also able to spot the moon and Venus at 11:20 am, despite the sunny conditions.

APOD 1.2

When conditions are right and people are in the right spot it is sometimes possible to see what is called an airglow. About 90 kilometers above the Earth's surface a faint glow is visible, seen frequently when pictures are taken from space. There can be many different colors, green however, was the color featured the other day. The glow comes from the excitation of ultraviolet rays, excited by the Sun and then emitting colors. They are excited when the bands fluctuate due to the atmospheric gravity waves. This can happen around the world and although it is easier to see with a camera or telescope most can still view the phenomenon with their naked eye.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/1209/airglow_hackmann_1400.jpg

APOD 1.1

The Cats Eye Nebula is one of the most complex nebulae in the universe. Over three thousand light years away this beautiful nebula is surrounded about what is believed to be a binary star system. A binary star system is when two stars follow the same elliptic orbital path, there is a balance point when the two intersect as well. Surrounding the binary star are millions of other stars and cocoons of gas from the stellar evolution. The final product is something far off in the universe similar looking to a cats eye, although unimaginably larger and more mysterious.

Observations for the first two weeks of school

• Venus and Jupiter ouside my house every morning when they weren't obstructed by clouds
• Full moon on 8/31