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.