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.