Collinding Galaxies

http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/04/24/colliding_galaxies.jpg
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/Images/bios/deMello/CollidingGalaxies.jpg
http://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/web/1008_web.jpg

Astronomy Cast-Observations 2

http://www.astronomycast.com/astronomy/ep-79-how-big-is-the-universe/
This episode is the sequel to the episode that I last listened to. It discusses how big the universe is. It starts by discussing how much of the universe we can actually see and we get a distance of somewhere between 70 and 80 billion light-years, although the universe has only existed for a fraction of this time. This is because of the rapidly expanding universe due to dark energy. It then talked about how large we think the universe is and the relatively small amount of the universe that is visible to us.

Astronomy cast-Observation 1

http://www.astronomycast.com/astronomy/ep-78-what-is-the-shape-of-the-universe/
This Astronomy cast was on the shape of the universe and started becoming very confusing to me near the end of it. At first, they talked about how in our universe, physics only allows for light to travel at a certain speed which allows for us to see only objects within a certain amount of light-years from the earth, somewhere around 10-20 billion light-years, since that is how old the universe is, or seems to be. Then they started talking about how the universe is flat, as opposed to open or closed. This is where I became confused with the astronomy cast and was confused for the rest of the time remaining.

4th Quarter Essay-Jan H. Oort

Jan H. Oort was a Dutch astronomer who was born on April 28th, 1900 and died on November 5th, 1992. He was also one of the few people that got to experience Haley’s Comet twice in his life time. Jan Oort made many innovative discoveries in the field of radio Astronomy. Jan H. Oort discovered much of the dynamics of the Milky Way galaxy, the mass of the cosmos and the origin of comets. He used mathematics to come up with the hypothesis of the Oort cloud. He also found that the light coming from the Crab Nebula was polarized. Jan Oort won many awards and had many honors in the field of astronomy.
Jan H. Oort discovered much about the Milky Way Galaxy’s dynamics. First of all, he discovered that in fact the sun was not at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy and that it is actually about 30,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy. He also showed that the galactic center was in the constellation Sagittarius. He also said that it takes the sun about 22 million years to rotate the Galactic center once, and he showed that stars that are closer to the center of the galaxy are moving at a faster rate than ones that are farther away. Through his studies of galactic motion, Jan Oort also discovered the invisible ‘dark matter’ that makes up about 90% of the universe. Oort also discovered the vast cloud of possibly 100,000 million comets, known today as the Oort cloud. He discovered this region through studying where comets come from and discovered that they came from a region far beyond Pluto. He discovered that the average aphelion of the comets was about 100,000 AU and that the Oort cloud ranged from about 50,000 AU to 150,000 AU from the sun.
Jan Oort also made many contributions to the field of radio astronomy and was a pioneer in its field. He was one of only a few astronomers of the time to realize the potential of radio wave telescopes to search the skies. His theoretical research of radio waves suggested that vast clouds of hydrogen lingered in the spiral arms of the milky way galaxy and that these clouds could be seen using a radio telescope. He also predicted that these clouds were the birthplaces of stars. After WWII, Oort was able to confirm his theories of these clouds in the new Dutch radio telescope observatories.
Jan Oort won many awards and honors for his work in the field of astronomy. The medals he won were the Bruce Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Henry Norris Russell Lectureship of the American Astronomical Society, the Gouden Ganzeveer, the Karl Schwarzschild Medal of the Astronomische Gesellschaft, and the Balzan Prize for Astrophysics. Jan H. Oort also had the Oort cloud named after him, an asteroid in the asteroid belt, and the Oort constants of galactic structure.

*Encyclopedia of the Solar System by Lucy-Ann Mcfadden, Paul R. Weissman, Torrence V. Johnson; Academic Press, 2007.
*http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEMBPC2PGQD_index_0.html

APOD 4.4

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100429.html
This picture is of the barred spiral galaxy, NGC 4731, in the constellation Virgo. The constellation is about 65 million light years away and has many young stars. Its spiral arms are distorted by a companion galaxy, NGC 4697. This picture interested me because it is a barred spiral galaxy, like the Milky Way Galaxy.

APOD 4.3

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100419.html
This picture was very interesting to me because of the sheer magnificance of the photo. It shows two lightning bolts next to a huge plume of ash rising from the recently erupted volcano in Iceland. The volcano began erupting on March 20th and a second eruption occured on April 14th. The second volcanic eruption occured from under a glacier and caused a lot of ash to rise.

APOD 4.2

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100418.html

This APOD picture was very interesting to me because it shows a huge prominence explosion on the sun, one of the biggest eruptive explosions that has been recorded. A prominence is a cloud of hot solar gas that is held above the Sun's surface by its magnetic field. Prominences may erupt in a CME-Coronal Mass Ejection and violently expel hot gas into the solar system.

APOD 4.1

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100403.html

This picture was interesting to me because it shows a small galaxy near the small magelinic cloud that exhibits many young, newly formed stars. The dust and gas outside of the cluster of stars in the image is rippled and may be creating many new young stars. The background of the picture was also very interesting to me because it shows many distant galaxies, including several spiral galaxies.

APOD 3.8

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100324.html
This picture shows a pair of binary galaxies that, in a few billion years, will merge and become one galaxy. The two galaxies have caused effects on each other, due to their gravity. One has caused richer spirals in the other and the other one has violent star forming regions and colliding gas clouds that emit x-rays.

APOD 3.7

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100322.html
This picture shows newly resolved images of the Milky Way Galaxy. The pictures are of cold dust in the galaxy and are in infrared. The photo was taken by the European Space Agency's Planck Satellite. This gas is within 500 light years of the earth and is between 10 kelvin and 40 kelvin degrees.

APOD 3.6

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100305.html

This picture is of the constellation Auriga, the charioteer. It shows M36, M37, and M38 as well as shows three emission nebula, a concept that has been recently discussed in class. It shows the star forming regions of IC 405, IC 410, and IC 417. The picture also has an overlay that appears when one scrolls the mouse on the picture showing exactly where the objects that are talked about are.

APOD 3.5

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100314.html

This picture is of a binary black hole system in the Abell 400 galaxy cluster. The black holes are 25,000 light years apart and they are about 300,000 light years from the earth. This was very interesting to me because we have just studied black holes and talked about how they form.

Bibliography

* http://www.questia.com/read/113240205?title=100%20Most%20Popular%20Scientists%20for%20Young%20Adults%3a%20%20Biographical%20Sketches%20and%20Professional%20Paths (online book)
* http://www.mwoa.org/hale.html
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Ellery_Hale

Astronomer Essay

George E. Hale was a famous astronomer who won many awards for his contributions to astronomy and the scientific field before dying in early 1938. He attended MIT, the observatory at Harvard, and at Berlin. While he was an undergraduate at MIT, he invented the spectroheliograph which he used to make discoveries about the sun, including the solar vortices and the magnetic fields of sunspots. He became the director of Kenwood Astrophysical observatory, and became a professor at two colleges in Chicago. He would later become the editor of the Astrophysical Journal.
While at Kenwood Observatory, George E. Hale first put the spectroheliograph, invented at MIT, to practical use. The spectralheliograph works by capturing a photographic image of the sun at a single wavelength of light. It does this by using a prism to separate the wavelengths of light and a narrow slit. While using the spectralheliograph, Hale discovered that sunspots are at relatively lower temperatures than other parts of the sun. Kenwood Observatory was constructed by George Hale’s father and Kenwood’s primary instrument was a 12 inch refractor telescope. The telescope was used in conjunction with Rowland grating as part of the spectroheliograph. Hale’s work at the Kenwood Observatory sparked the interest of many in the astronomical community.
George E. Hale worked to found many significant observatories. These observatories include Yerkes Observatory at the University of Chicago, Mount Wilson Observatory, Palomar Observatory, and the Hale Solar Laboratory. While at Mount Wilson Observatory in Los Angeles, Hale would receive a 1.5 m. telescope as a gift from France. The design of the telescope allowed for allowed for the pioneering of spectroscopic analysis, parallax measurements, nebula photography and photometric photography. The Hale telescope was one of the largest telescopes in use for many decades. Also while at Mount Wilson Observatory, Hale hired and encouraged Harlow Shapley and Edwin Hubble. Hale also helped make the California Institute of Technology into a top research university.
Hale also won many awards during his lifetime and had many astronomical objects named after him. Among his many awards, he was awarded the Galileo medal in 1920, the Actonian prize in 1921, the gold medal of the royal astronomical society in 1904, the Franklin gold medal in 1927, and the Bruce Medal in 1916. Among the objects named after Hale were the 22-year solar Hale cycle, the asteroid 1024 Hale, and a crater on the moon and a crater on mars. George E. Hale also had an award named in his honor, as the George Ellery Hale Prize for the Solar Physics Department of the American Astronomical Society.
George E. Hale, as he grew older suffered from neurological and psychological problems, including insomnia, and schizophrenia and would often report that there was an elf that would visit him regularly and advise him on his work. He spent months at a time in sanitariums.

Observations-podcasts

I listened to two podcasts from astronomycast.com for this half of the quarter. The two that i listened to were:
# 158-Pulsars and # 166-Multiverses

Pulsars:
What pulsars were explained as were basically white dwarfs that were spinning very rappidly and releasing energy as light. The pulsars are so densely packed that they have only neutrons because the electrons and protons have been pushed together so tightly. Many pulsars spin several hundred times per minute and can be used as accurate units of time.

Multiverses:
Multiverses were explained as parrallel dimmensions that have alternative outcomes. For instance if a coin were to be tossed in our universe and it came up heads, it would be tails in another parrallel universe. The universes were also explained to have the same basic mathematics such that 2+2 will equal 4 in a parallel universe.

APOD 3.4

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100208.html
This picture shows the atmospheric effect of a sun halo. The sun halo is created by tiny ice crystals in thin higher clouds. The crystals deflect the sun's light by 22 degrees creating a sort of magnifying effect. There are similar moon halos at night which have been seen here in Florida commonly.

APOD 3.3

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100202.html
This picture was interesting to me because of the atmospheric effects that were going on in the picture. The picture shows a dense fog with a fog bow and mars near opposition. A fog bow is created by moonlight, rather than sunlight. The picture was taken from the top of a volcanic crater.

APOD 3.2

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100120.html
This apod was of a video that shows the known universe. It was very interesting to me to find out what we already know about the universe and what we have predicted that there might be in the universe. The video started by showing the earth, then the human-made satellites, then the moon's orbit, then the planet's orbit and the sun, then the milky way, then the known galaxies, and then what we have hypothosized might be in the Universe.

APOD 3.1

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100122.html
This picture interested me because it is something that we have talked about in class. It is of the annular solar eclipse which took place on January 15, 2010. The annular phase of the eclipse lasted for 11 minutes and 8 seconds. This makes this the longest annual solar eclipse to occur in the next 1,000 years. The picture was taken on the southern tip of India, just before mid-eclipse.

APOD 2.8-at mcdonalds bc my home internet is not working and so i had to come here.

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100114.html

This picture was very interesting to me. It depicts M94, a galaxy, that lies in the northern constellation, Canes Venatici. The galaxy is 30,000 light-years across. Newer investigative studies have shown that M94 has a faint broad ring of stars. The picture also shows three bright bluish stars which are in the Milkyway galaxy.

APOD 2.7

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100109.html

This picture was interesting to me because it showed the Andromeda galaxy, also known as M31. The picture of the Andromeda Galaxy was in much higher quality than I am used to seeing. Usually, I can only see a whitish blob, but with this picture, it is much easier to see where the concentration of stars is and that the Andromeda Galaxy is a spiral galaxy, like the Milky Way.

Research Paper-Johann Heinrich von Madler

Johann Madler was a German astronomer in the 19th century. When he was 19, he became an orphan due to an outbreak of typhus and he had to raise three younger sisters. He began teaching and privately tutoring. By doing this profession, he met Wilhelm Beer in 1924. Wilhelm Beer was a wealthy banker.
In 1926, Wilhelm Beer set up a private observatory and hired Johann Madler to work with him. Wilhelm Beer and Johann Madler produced the first true maps of Mars in 1830. They also made a preliminary determination for Mars’ rotational period which was off by almost 13 seconds. The exact figure for one earth day that Johann Madler got was 24 hours, 37 minutes, and 9.9 seconds. The map that he made of Mars showed the small dark feature on Mars but Johan neglected to give it, or any other features on Mars a name. To do this, he chose a small dark region and precisely timed its’ appearance night after night Beer and Madler also made the first exact map of the moon. This map of the moon was called Mappa Selenographica and was published into 4 volumes from 1834 to 1836. In 1837, another map of the moon was published and the two became the most descriptive of the moon for many decades. The two maps were finally surpassed in detail in the 1870s by Johann Schmidt. Beer and Madler also came to the conclusion while studying the moon that its features did not change and it did not have an atmosphere or water.
In 1836, Johann Madler was appointed by Johann Franz Encke as an observer at the Berlin Observatory. The telescope that he used at this observatory was a 240-mm refractor telescope while the one at the private observatory was a 95-mm refractor telescope. In 1840, he was appointed as the director position at an observatory in Estonia, called the Dorpat Observatory. At the observatory, he made both meteorological and astronomical observations. He continued the previous director’s observations of double stars. He remained at the observatory in Estonia until he retired in 1865, and then returned to Germany.
Johann Madler also came up with the “Central Sun Hypothesis” by examining the motions of the stars. According to his hypothesis, the center of the galaxy was located in the Pleiades and that the sun revolved around that point. This hypothesis was later proven to be wrong.
Along with his accomplishments of mapping mars and the moon, Johann Madler made calculations concerning the true time of the earth’s orbit around the sun. His calculations of the tropical year were with precision that had never been obtained prior to his calculations. Based upon his calculations, he proposed a new 128-year rule. This rule stated that every 128 years would also be a common year, as opposed to a leap year. The first year that this started, oddly, was 1900, which was not a multiple of 128. This new rule allowed for only .025 days of error for every 10,000 years.
Johann Madler had many accomplishments and had a few features on other bodies in space named after him. In 1958, Johann Madler had a crater on Mars named after him, by the International Astronomical Union. There was also a crater named after Johan Madler on the moon. He also published many scientific works, along with a two-volume book called History of Descriptive Astronomy in 1873.
Sources:
* Mapping Mars by Oliver Morton
* http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/onlinebks/mars/chap04.htm
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Heinrich_von_M%C3%A4dler

APOD 2.6

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap091214.html
This picture was very interesting to me because it shows the peculiar pattern at Saturn's north pole. The picture shows a hexagonal pattern made up of clouds. The article also has a link to a video of pictures from the Cassini satellite which orbits Saturn. The video is a time-lapse video of the north pole of Saturn. Astronomers still do not know what causes the hexagonal pattern on Saturn's north pole to form.

Observations 2.2

Highlands, North Carolina (4 hours)
During my vacation to North Carolina which was from Dec. 23 to Dec. 29, I viewed the sky using my December sky chart for 4 hours. I started by using the compass in my phone to get the correct directions so that i could use my sky chart to observe the sky. I started by locating the great square of pegasus and located other objects in the sky from there. I saw polaris and ursa minor, casseopia, the Pleiades, andromeda, Capella, Aries, the milky way, Cygnus and the northern cross, Jupiter, Cetus, Taurus, Orion, and pisce. The weather throughout the week was varied. The first couple of days had lots of rain, so i could not observe the sky at all, but as the week went on, the weather cleared up and i was able to view the sky although it was quite chilly outside.

APOD 2.5

http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap091212.html
This APOD entry interested me because of the picture's high quality and of the view of the sky. The picture is of a meteor from the Geminid meteor shower. Also in the picture is an amazing rocky terrain partially covered in snow. The picture was taken at the Monument Valley region in the southwestern portion of the US. The meteor points back to the center point of the meteor shower, the geminid constellation.