Observation post 4

Summer Triangle
Polaris; Ursa Minor            
Pegasus                      : Philadelphia PA, 7:30 PM  Nov. 8th, 2014



Iridium Flare: 6:42 PM        Nov. 10, 2014;  Sarasota, Fl


Siesta Beach                         Sat. Dec 6, 2014
Full Moon


Sat Dec. 13, 2014
10:30 -11:30
       10 meteors from high in the Eastern to sky all the way down to low in the south

Work Cited

Joseph Fraunhofer Paper Work Cited

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/217618/Joseph-von-Fraunhofer

              "Joseph Von Fraunhofer | Biography - German Physicist."Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 19 Dec. 2014.

http://www.madehow.com/inventorbios/43/Joseph-von-Fraunhofer.html

               "How Products Are Made."Joseph Von Fraunhofer Biography (1787-1826). N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Dec. 2014.

Observation Post 3

Summer Triangle

     Vega

     Deneb

     Altair

Time: 12:00 o'clock Midnight: October 23, 2014

Location: 28.0379° N, 82.4216° W

October 25th - 8:00 o'clock: Crescent moon

     Seemed to have slight red cast to it

Great Star Count

      Sagittarius

      Cygnus 

Time: 8:25- October 26, 2014

Location: 27.286793° N, 82.534922° W

For Sagittarius, you can match the sky to the 3rd and some of the 4th magnitude charts, while Cygnus magnitude charts got up to 4 and some of 5.

Lights from street were main hinderance to view, lights from neighbors houses were all off except for one down the street.

Apod 1.7

Eclipse at Moonset and Sunrise

Seen from the atop the Chilean coastal mountains looking down upon the pacific ocean under a sea of clouds, is the moon entering into a lunar ellipse. Although the moon is only partially eclipsed in this photo it still gives a wonderful view of the the phenomena that occurred on October 8th, 2014. Lunar eclipses, though not as rare as solar, are not something you get to see ever day. Happening around two to four times a year, a lunar eclipse happens when the moon passes through a portion of the Earth's penumbral or umbral shadows. This process can only occur when the Sun, Earth, and Moon are aligned exactly so that the Earth is in the middle, and the moon is full.

Depictions of Lunar Eclipses

Geometry of Eclipse 

Example of Eclipse from 2010 as Seen from Space

Astronomer Biography

Georg Von Peurbach 

Georg Von Peurbach was born on May 30^th, 1423 in a town in upper Austria called Peuerbach, about forty kilometers west of Linz. Unfortunately almost nothing is known about his early life, except his father's name, Ulrich, and where he was born. His recorded activity began when he started studying at the University of Vienna, and graduated in 1446. Soon after he received his masters degree, he spent the year of 1453-1454 traveling through Germany, France, and Italy lecturing in the field of astronomy. During this time it is said that he met Giovanni Bianchini who, at the time, was the most noted Italian astronomer, and had attempted to persuade Peurbach to accept a job at university in Italy. By the end of 1454, he had become the court astronomer for King Ladislas of Hungary, as well as professor of astronomy at Vienna university. Peurbach’s work at court was completed because of his knowledge in the field of astronomy, but his occupation at the university was mostly concerned with humanistic studies. Such studies include a lecture on the Aeneid in 1454, on Juvenal in 1456, and on the Rhetorica ad Herennium and Horacein 1458, though these last two are more speculation. Peurbach's protege, Johannes Müller von Königsberg, or better known as Regiomontanus, enrolled in the Vienna university in 1450 at the age of 13. Regiomontanus learned much from Peurbach, referring to him as “my teacher”, and both observed together what could become to be called Haley's Comet in June 1456. Peurbach mentioned the comet to Nihil, a fellow astronomer of the time period, as well as writing an astronomical report about it, however this report was not discovered or published until the twentieth century. A year later Peurbach and his assistant observed another comet, as well as a lunar eclipse. This eclipse, as documented by Peurbach, was eight minutes earlier than was predicted by the Alphonsine Tables, and this discovery is what let him to create his own calendar of astronomical events, Eclipse Tables, which were most likely completed in 1459. In 1460 they discovered two more lunar eclipses, one on July 3^rd and the other on December 28^th, but this time they compared their observations to Peurbach’s tables, and found them to be accurate. Around this time there was a bit of a dispute going on in the royal family of Vienna. This led to the archbishop of Nicaea, Johannes Bessarion, a cardinal since 1439, to arrive in Vienna to intervene in the persisting dispute between Frederick III and his brother Albert VI of Styria. While in Vienna, he happened to meet Peurbach and Regiomontanus. Bessarion wished to translate important intellectual texts from Greek to Italian, some of which included the exact sciences. One such manuscript to which he wished to convert was the Almagest, which would replace Gerard of Cremona’s version that was in Arabic. He also wished to create an abridgment of the Almagest so he could use it as a textbook. Although Peurbach was not familiar with the Greek language, he had, according to Regiomontanus, memorized the Almagest and would have no problem translating as well as condensing it. Peurbach took the job of the abridgment, and soon further plans were established for Peurbach and Regiomontanus to accompany Bessarion to Italy and work for him. Unfortunately, Peurbach died before he was able to make the journey on April 8, 1461, with only the first six books of the abridgment completed; he was not yet thirty-eight years old. The early death of the astronomer, as well as the equally early death of Regiomontanus in 1476, left the development of the field of mathematical astronomy disadvantaged of real improvement until Tycho Brahe's generation.

Observations 2

Wednesday October 1st (at 8:30):
    1st quarter moon
    Mars 
    Antares 

Sunday October 5th (at 8:00):
   1st quarter moon
   Constellations- Sagittarius, Corona Australis, Scorpius ( to the South) 
    Mars and Antares (South/West)  

Apod 1.6

Aurora and Milky Way

Centered on the apex of the sky above Lake Storsjön in Jämtland, Sweden, this "little planet", or little sky photo, captures the milky way during the northern hemisphere's autumn equinox. The bright green and yellow bursts of light that can be seen in the upper left hand corner of this photo is an aurora, which increase in frequency the closer to the equinox they get. Auroras are caused by solar activity; where gusts of solar wind, often called solar flares or CMEs, hit the Earth’s magnetic field, messing up the planet's protective magnetic shell. This then causes charged particles to rain down over the south and north poles, which are where the doughnut-shaped regions called “auroral ovals" are located, lighting up the atmosphere where they hit. This is why auroras are only seen at high altitudes, except for certain times of the year when solar activity is high and the ovals expand.

Auroras as seen from space 

Astronomer Paper Sources

Sources: 

*Knight, Judson. "Georg von Peuerbach." Science and Its Times. Ed. Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer. Vol. 2: 700 to 1449. Detroit: Gale, 2001. 230-231.

*"Georg Peurbach." Science and Its Times. Ed. Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer. Vol. 3: 1450 to 1699. Detroit: Gale, 2001. 305. 

*"Georg von Peuerbach." Science and Its Times. Ed. Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer. Vol. 2: 700 to 1449. Detroit: Gale, 2001. 315.

*"Peurbach (or Peuerbach), Georg." Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 15. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008. 473-479.

Observations 1

First couple weeks of school:
Saw
 International Space Station (Time: 8:21pm) (Date: N/A)
 Phases of Moon changing from waxing crescent all the way through
      Although from full to 3rd quarter it was too early in the morning for me to see
 August 10th: Super full moon

Apod 1.5

                                                                     Saturn at Equinox
The impact that technology has had on our society can be shown in no better way than when we turn to the stars. Before August of 2009 scientists were stumped by Saturn's disappearing rings, which seemed to vanish every 15 years. Now, thanks to the satellite Cassini that revolves around Saturn, we know that it is due to the extreme thinness of the rings themselves, and the position of the Earth that is the reason they appear to disappear. It works likes this: Saturn and Earth experience equinox at the same every spring and fall, however it takes Saturn roughly 30 years to make its way around the sun, resulting in much longer seasons, and equinox's to occur every 15 Earth years. As it rotates, Saturn's rings are seen from different angles from the sun, as it has a tilt with that of its orbital plane. When the rings cross the orbital plane, or an equinox happens, they are hit directly by the sun, and vanish. Because the Earth is so close the sun, the rings at equinox are edge-on from the perspective of Earth bound astronomers, which gives us the same view of the sun as they are hit directly. 

This photo shows this process in a 6 year span (south pole to equinox) 

Apod 1.4

Milky Way Above Atacama Salt Lagoon

Centered above the salty lagoon Laguna Cejar, located in Salar de Atacama, the largest salt flat in Chile, is a menagerie of objects to fill the astronomer's eye. Besides the extensive amount of stars that can be seen, the observer can spot both the Large and Small Magellanic clouds. These groupings of stars, located in the left area of this picture, are satellites of our galaxy the Milky Way, the LMC being 163,000 light-years away, and the SMC, a dwarf galaxy, being 200,000 light-years away. The Small Magellanic is located in the Tucana constellation and both the LMC and SMC appear as hazy bright spots in the southern hemisphere, like detached pieces of the Milky Way (as seen here).

Other than the Magellanic clouds, there is the star Antares which is located in the constellation Scorpius, in the right hand side of this picture, as well as the Milky Way. The Milky Way is our home galaxy, and appears as a strip of light across the sky due to our observation of it from its center. Specially in this photo, you can    see the center of the galaxy, a bright spot in the middle left portion of the galaxy band.

                                                                

Apod 1.3

Although the sun has set on this night in Molokai Hawaii, amazingly we are able to see what looks to be a rainbow. 

Commonly called a "moonbow", this nighttime display is formed in the same way that a normal rainbow is, by both reflection of the water droplets back at the observer, and refraction of longer wavelengths less than shorter ones resulting in the separation of colors which forms a spectrum of light in the sky. The moon, located behind the photographer as is customary with rainbows, however is providing the light to which the rainbow is being created instead of the sun. Usually for there to be such an occasion the moon will have to be in its full phase, as it is here, just a couple days past this time.

Apod 1.2

Due to a major thunderstorm over Bangladesh, Tibet, China was subject to an unusual site, the sky projected as a multicolored target. 

Airglow Ripples over Tibet

This interesting effect  is caused by an event called gravity waves, where waves of alternating air pressure, or buoyancy, pushes air up, and gravity pulls it back down. The colors are formed by chemiluminescence or the production of light in a chemical reaction, where the green light (excited oxygen atoms) that predominates the glow is located 90-100 km high in the thermosphere and the weaker red light (oxygen atoms) is further up. This phenomenon of chemilumencene, also called airglow, is what keeps the night sky from being completely dark, as seen in this visual of the milky way. 

Apod 1.1

Milky Way Galaxy over Yellowstone 

Although appearing as if it is being formed from the steam of a the hot spot Silex Spring in Yellowstone National park, The Milky Way, the brightest object in the gamma-ray sky, is completely separate from our earth's natural phenomenons. In actuality, we are located in the middle of the Milky Way Galaxy, making our understanding of it rather difficult. As it is, we see the Milky Way as a band that runs across our sky, do to the fact that its disk-shaped structure is viewed from within the Galaxy, and is around 100,000–120,000 light-years in diameter, containing 100–400 billion stars. It is fundamentally unbelievable that our singular planet is positioned in such a beautiful array of stars, and that such view points of this galaxy are able to be seen whenever we deem to look up at the sky; simply awe inspiring.