Apod 4.7

Several key conditions came together to create this award-winning shot, including a dark night, few clouds, an epic auroral display, and a body of water that was both calm enough and unfrozen enough to show reflected stars. The featured skyscape of activity and serenity appeared over Iceland's Vatnajökull Glacier a year ago January, with the Jökulsárlón Iceberg Lagoon captured in the foreground. Aurora filled skies continue to be common near Earth's poles as our Sun, near Solar Maximum, continues to expel energetic clouds of plasma into the Solar System.

Apod 4.6

The sky over Longyearbyen, Norway presented a beautiful astronomical sight this year during the March 20^th equinox, a total eclipse of the sun. This photo shows the moons silhouette at different stages before and after the eclipse, which lasted a total of 3 minutes. Because of the way the solar disk with its lunar limb are surrounded by the glow of the sun, the eclipse appeared as a diamond in the sky. Also, at the boundaries of totality, the sunlight streaming through valleys in the irregular terrain along the Moon's edge, produces an effect known as Baily's Beads, named after English astronomer Francis Baily who championed an explanation for the phenomenon in 1836. This intense composition also shows off the array of pinkish solar prominences lofted above the edge of the eclipsed Sun.

Apod 4.5

This photo was recorded on February 20 from Charleston, South Carolina,

USA, planet Earth and depicts Venus, named for the Roman goddess of love, and Mars, the war god's namesake, coming together by moonlight. Made in twilight with a digital camera, the three second time exposure also records earthshine illuminating the otherwise dark surface of the young crescent Moon. Of course, the Moon has moved on from this much anticipated triple conjunction. Venus still shines in the west though as the evening star, third brightest object in Earth's sky, after the Sun and the Moon itself. Seen here within almost a Moon's width of Venus, much fainter Mars approached even closer on the following evening. But Mars has since been moving slowly away from brilliant Venus, though Mars is still visible too in the western twilight.

Apod 4.4

Contrasting the Seven Sisters in the sky are the Seven Strong Men on the ground, which are located just west of the Ural Mountains. The unusual Manpupuner rock formations are one of the Seven Wonders of Russia. How these ancient 40-meter high pillars formed is yet unknown. The persistent photographer of this featured image battled rough terrain and uncooperative weather to capture these rugged stone towers in winter at night, finally getting the shot in February of last year. Utilizing the camera's time delay feature, the photographer holds a flashlight in the foreground near one of the snow-covered pillars. High above, millions of stars shine down, while the band of our Milky Way Galaxy crosses diagonally down from the upper left.

Apod 4.3

The dark sky here shows the alpha star of Canis Major, Orion the Hunter striking a pose familiar to northern winter skygazers. Above Orion is the V-shaped Hyades star cluster, head of Taurus the Bull, and farther still above Taurus it's easy to spot the compact Pleiades star cluster. Near the top of the frame you'll find the greenish coma and long tail of Comet Lovejoy, astronomical darling of these January nights. At the bottom if the picture, the Atlas V rocket can be seen blasting skyward carrying a U.S. Navy satellite piercing a cloud bank. On its way to orbit from Space Launch Complex 41, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, planet Earth, the rocket streaks past brightest star Sirius, as seen from a dark beach at Canaveral National Seashore. 

Apod 4.2

Here, near the northern boundary of Corona Australis, or the Southern Crown, there can be seen cosmic dust clouds and young, energetic stars (than 500 light-years away). The dust clouds effectively block light from more distant background stars in the Milky Way, as well as stars still in the process of formation. 

The striking complex of reflection nebulae (cataloged as NGC 6726, 6727, and IC 4812) produce a blue color as light from the region's young hot stars is reflected by the cosmic dust. At the left, smaller yellowish nebula NGC 6729 bends around young variable star R Coronae Australis. Just below it, glowing arcs and loops shocked by outflows from embedded newborn stars are identified as Herbig-Haro objects. On the sky this field of view spans about 1 degree. That corresponds to almost 9 light-years at the estimated distance of the nearby star forming region.

Apod 4.1

This photo depicts the Great Nebula, which is located in Orion. Visible to the unaided eye, it appears as a small fuzzy patch however as seen here (an illusory-color four-panel mosaic taken in different bands of infrared light with the Earth orbiting WISE observatory), the Orion Nebula is a bustling neighborhood of recently formed stars, hot gas, and dark dust. The power behind much of the Orion Nebula is the stars of the Trapezium star cluster, seen near the center of the above wide field image. The orange glow surrounding the bright stars pictured here is their own starlight reflected by intricate dust filaments that cover much of the region. The current Orion Nebula cloud complex, which includes the Horsehead Nebula, will slowly disperse over the next 100,000 years.

Biography 3

Henrietta Leavitt 

Henrietta Leavitt was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts on 4 July, 1868. She was one of seven children born to George Roswell Leavitt, a prominent Congregationalist minister, and Henrietta Swan Kendrick Leavitt. Both being colonials, her parents were extremely strict, and held to the stern virtues of their Puritan ancestors.

Leavitt found her first real opportunity to study astronomy during her senior year at Oberlin College and the Society for Collegiate Instruction of Women, or what is now known as Radcliffe College, from whom she received an A.B. in 1892. She spent an additional year as an advanced student in astronomy, but returned home for several years when she suffered from an illness that left her severely deaf. However in 1895 she became a volunteer research assistant at the Harvard College Observatory. By 1902, after receiving a permanent position there, she had rapidly advanced from a meager assistant measuring the brightness of variable stars, to chief of the photographic photometry department.

This how it happened. A man by the name of Charles Pickering, the director at Harvard during the 1880’s and 1890’s, had embarked on an extensive program to determine what the visual stellar magnitudes were. In 1907, after realizing the importance of photographic magnitudes, Pickering announced his plans to establish a standard photographic sequence that was based on stars near the north celestial pole. Henrietta was able to carry out the plan with “originality, skill and patience”, comparing 299 plates from thirteen telescopes to determine a standard range of brightness of six million. Consequently, this “north polar” sequence was published in the Annals of Harvard College Observatory, providing the standards for most statistical investigations of the Milky Way system until about 1940; Leavitt was appointed to the permanent staff, at a salary of 30 cents an hour, by Charles Pickering.

Leavitt’s most famous discovery, however, was the period-luminosity relation of the Cepheid variable stars, better known as the cepheid variable period-luminosity relationship, originating in her study of variables in the Magellanic Clouds. In 1912 she found that the apparent magnitude decreased linearly with the logarithm of the period. This relation was seized upon by Shapley at the Mount Wilson Observatory, who calibrated the absolute magnitudes of the Cepheid variables, thereby making it a universal tool for ascertaining the size of the Milky Way galaxy and its distance to other galaxies. Basically, what she discovered was a direct correlation between the time it took a star to go from bright, to dim, to how bright it actually was. Knowing this relationship helped other astronomers, such as Edwin Hubble, make their own groundbreaking discoveries. To Miss Leavitt’s contemporaries, however, her more obvious contribution was her discovery of 2,400 variable stars, about half of those being known at the time.

Unfortunately, Henrietta was not allowed to pursue her own topics of study, but instead researched what the head of the observatory assigned to her. Due to the prejudices of the day, she didn't have the opportunity to use her intellect to the fullest. However, Dorrit Hoffleit wrote that although Leavitt was not awarded the honors and publicity of her colleagues, she was just as deserving. “Her most important work required greater understanding and even more meticulous care, and was more desperately needed by other astronomers of the time, even though it lacked the glamour and popular appeal of the newly opened field of stellar spectroscopy.”

Just as her parents raised her, she remained deeply conscientious and religious, devoted to her work and as well as her family. She shared her mother’s home in Cambridge after her father’s death in 1911, working at the Harvard College Observatory until her death from cancer in 1921.

Planetary Nebulae

The Eskimo Nebula (NGC 2392): Clownface Nebula or Caldwell 39

It is a bipolar double-shell planetary nebula, surrounded by gas that was once the outer layers of a Sun-like star. The inner filaments are expelled by a strong wind made up of particles from the central star while the outer disk contains unusual light-year-long filaments.

It was discovered by astronomer William Herschel in 1787.

NGC 2392 lies more than 2,870 light-years away and is visible in the constellation of Gemini.

The Helix Nebula: The Helix, NGC 7293

Large planetary nebula is similar in appearance to the Cat's Eye Nebula and the Ring Nebula, whose size, age, and physical characteristics are similar to the Dumbbell Nebula. It only varies in its comparative proximity and appearance from the equatorial viewing angle.The Helix Nebula has sometimes been referred to as the "Eye of God", as well as the "Eye of Sauron" based on the Lord of the Rings series.

Discovered by Karl Ludwig Harding in the 1800s, of all the bright planetary nebulae it is one of the closest to the Earth. The estimated distance is about 215 parsecs or 700 light-years.

It is located in the constellation Aquarius.

Little Ghost Nebula: NGC 6369

It is located in the constellation Ophiuchus and was discovered by William Herschel

Round and planet-shaped, the nebula is also fairly faint. The former white dwarf star, seen near the center in this photo, radiates strongly at ultraviolet wavelengths and is what causes the nebula's glow. The main ring structure is about a light-year across and the glow from ionized oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen atoms are colored blue, green, and red respectively.

The Owl Nebula: Messier Object 97 (M97) and NGC 3587.

It was discovered by French astronomer Pierre Méchain on February 16, 1781, though it wasn't until William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse observed the nebula in 1848, and his hand-drawn illustration resembled an owl's head, that it was named the Owl Nebula.

It is located approximately 2,030 light years away in the constellation Ursa Major.

The nebula is approximately 8,000 years old and is circular in cross-section with a little visible internal structure. It is arranged in three concentric shells, with the outermost shell being a bit larger than the inner shell. The owl-like appearance of the nebula comes from the inner shell that is not circularly symmetric, but forms a barrel-like shape.

Its outer radius is around 0.91ly (0.28pc) and it is still expanding.

The nebula was imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in the 1990s.

Minkowski 2-9: M2-9, Minkowski's Butterfly, the Wings of a Butterfly Nebula or just Butterfly Nebula, and Twin Jet Nebula

Discovered by Rudolph Minkowski in 1947 and is located about 2,100 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus.

It is a bipolar nebula which takes the peculiar form of twin lobes of material that emanate from a central star. Astronomers have dubbed this object as the Twin Jet Nebula because of the jets believed to cause the shape of the lobes. Its form also resembles the wings of a butterfly. The primary component of this nebula is the core of its star that has reached the end of its main-sequence life cycle, ejecting most of its outer layers and becoming a red giant, and is now in the process of contracting into a white dwarf.

The Cat's Eye Nebula: NGC 6543

Relatively bright planetary nebula in the northern constellation of Draco, and was discovered by William Herschel on February 15, 1786. It was the first planetary nebula whose spectrum was investigated by the English astronomer William Huggins, demonstrating that planetary nebulae were gaseous and not stellar in nature.

Its small bright inner nebula covers an average of 16.1 arcsec, with the outer prominent condensations about 25 arcsec. Deep images reveal an extended halo about 300 arcsec across, that was most likely ejected by the central star during its red giant phase.

The Cat's Eye nebula, given in some sources, lies about three thousand light-years from Earth.

Sources Biography 3

* "Henrietta Swan Leavitt." Science and Its Times. Ed. Neil Schlager and Josh Lauer. Vol. 6: 1900 to 1949. Detroit: Gale, 2000. 506. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 20 Feb. 2015.

                    http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.doid=GALE%7CCX3408503777&v=2.1&u=fl_sarhs&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=e1e1effd2053ce989d71dfeaa5b3fe05

*"Leavitt, Henrietta Swan." Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 8. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008. 105-106. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 20 Feb. 2015.

http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.doid=GALE%7CCX2830902515&v=2.1&u=fl_sarhs&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=1ff5a124dcae89be547b1ffc1832aad4

*http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/baleav.html

*https://cosmology.carnegiescience.edu/timeline/1912

Star Formation

Star Forming Regions

W3 Star Forming Region

S 103 Star Forming Region

                                                       

                                                   Star Formation in our Milky Way Galaxy 

Danish 1.54-metre telescope (located at ESO’s La Silla Observatory in Chile) took an incredible shot of NGC 6559, which shows what happens when stars form inside an interstellar cloud

Stellar Nurseries

                                            

                                            NASA->

TrifidNebula-               (looks like a unicorn)

Apod 2.7

Our milky way galaxy arcs of the desolate landscape of the Valle de la Luna in the Chilean Atacama desert. You can see the lights of San Pedro, Chile just along the horizon line, as well as Socaire, Toconao, and the road in between Calama and San Pedro. Also seen are the four galaxies easily visible from our fair planet's dark sky regions. At the far left, satellite galaxies known as the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds can be seen, as well as the much fainter, at the right, Andromeda Galaxy. The most farthest away, Andromeda lies some 2.5 million light-years away.

Apod 2.6

This photo of Europa was taken by the Galileo space craft in the 1990s while it was flying through the Jovian system. Scientists, using the newly

remastered images, this being one of them, have uncovered evidence that the moon's surface hides a deep ocean. The moon experiences tidal flexing in its elliptical orbit around Jupiter, which supplies the energy to keep the ocean liquid. And even more tantalizing is the possibility that in the absence of sunlight the process of the ocean being rotated by its orbit could also supply the energy to support life, making Europa one of the best places to look for life beyond Earth.  

Apod 2.5

In 1999, there was a sharp peak in the number of meteors during the Leonids Meteor Shower, in Europe. This specific picture is a 20-minute exposure ending just before the main Leonids peak began, on November 18. Seeable here are at least five Leonid meteors streaking above the Torre de la Guaita, an observation tower used during the 12th century in Girona, Spain. 2014 has a large amount of meteor activity, with the Leonids meteor shower peaking again, as well as a stream of debris left over from Comet Tempel-Tuttle.

Observation Post 5

Tuesday 
6th of January, 2015
        6:25 PM    South/ South-West
              Venus, Mercury
         6:26 PM
            Pegasus (great square) 

Wednesday
7th of January, 2015
        7:30 PM    North-East 
             Iridium Flare 
             Jupiter 
             

Apod 2.4

This image of a classic planetary nebula, NGC 6543, or more commonly know as the Cats eye Nebula, demonstrates a brief, yet beautiful phase in the life of a sun-like star. Scientists believe that this nebula's dying central star may have produced the simple, outer pattern of the concentric shells by shedding its outer layers in a series of regular expulsions. On the other hand, the formation of the more complex inner structures is not well understood. Although seen here very clearly in this sharpened Hubble Space Telescope image, scientists have very few ways of studying how this nebula grew into what it did. It is actually quite important for astronomers to discover the history of this nebula, for it is to believed that this may be the fate of our sun, destined to enter its own planetary nebula phase of evolution in about 5 billion years.

Apod 2.3

In Norway's Austnesfjorden fjord, close to the town of Svolvear on the Lofoten islands, whitenesses' had the grand opportunity to observe a spectacular light show. Auroras, as I have previously mentioned in other posts, are formed when emissions from the sun interact with the earth's atmosphere. These images were taken in early March, as our sun is approaching its maximum surface activity in its 11-year magnetic cycle. Due to this there has been an unusual abundance of picturesque auroras.

Apod 2.2

Not an actual image of a black hole, depicted here is a computer animation 

of what scientists think a black hole would look like if we were able to get up close to one. What we do know about black holes is that their gravity is so strong that light would bend towards it, as seen here, and would cause some very strange distortions. Also, there is evidence that black holes are the densest states of matter in the universe, and scientists believe that they can be found in stellar binary systems as well as globular clusters, galaxies, and quasars. This background was taken from the 2MASS infrared sky survey, with stars from the Henry Draper catalog photoshopped in. 

Apod 2.1

Focused in the central regions of the emission Nebula IC 1805, cosmic clouds form from stellar winds and radiation from monolithic hot stars. The nebula is the home to thousands of new born stars, which are formed within the Melotte 15. This image displays the Melotte cluster in the right hand side, in silhouette to around 30 light years of glowing atomic gas emitting ionized hydrogen, sulfur, and oxygen. Nubula IC 1805 is commonly known as the Heart Nebula, easily seen from a wider view than the one provided here by the Hubble Telescope. It is located about 7,500 light years away from the large constellation Cassiopeia.

Astronomer Biography 2

Joseph Fraunhofer

Fraunhofer was born in Straubing, Bavaria, in 1787, and was orphaned at the age of 11. He was taken in and apprenticed to Philipp Anton Weichelsberger, a unpleasant glassmaker, but in 1801, the shop where he worked collapsed while he was inside. Maximilian IV Joseph (the future king of Bavaria, Maximilian I Joseph) led the rescue operation, entering into Fraunhofer's life. The Prince provided him with books and forced Weichelsberger to allow the young Fraunhofer time to study.

Then in 1806 two other glassmakers, Utzscheider and Georg von Reichenbach, brought Fraunhofer to their Institute, a Benedictine monastery that specialized in glass making. It was there that he discovered how to make optical glass, as well as invent extremely precise methods for measuring dispersion. By 1818, he had became the director of the Optical Institute.

During this time, in 1814, Fraunhofer invented the spectroscope, and, while researching the light-bending properties of different types of glass, noticed dark lines in the light spectrum of a sodium fire. That bright line that had appeared in the orange color of the spectrum, led him to begin experimenting to determine whether the solar spectrum contained the same bright line in the orange like it did in the fire. Fraunhofer plotted hundreds of spectral lines, and by measuring their wavelengths found that the positions of the lines were constant, and didn't matter whether they were produced by the direct rays of the Sun or by reflected light from the Moon or planets. This led him to discover 574 dark fixed lines in the solar spectrum. Today we know that there are millions of such fixed absorption lines.

After his discoveries, in 1815, he designed several heliometers, that were eventually used by the German astronomer Friedrich Bessel, who made the first measurement of the distance between a star, 61 Cygni, and Earth. After studying the work of James Gregory, who identified the foundation of diffraction grating, and David Rittenhouse who invented the first man-made diffraction grating, he developed his own diffraction grating in 1821. Fraunhofer discovered that the spectra of first-magnitude stars, like Sirius, differed from the sun and from each other, thus founding stellar spectroscopy.

Unfortunately, like many glassmakers of his era, Fraunhofer died young, at the age of 39, due to heavy metal vapor poisoning.

The dark lines that Fraunhofer discovered were later found to be atomic absorption lines, as Kirchhoff and Bunsen explained in 1859. These lines are still called Fraunhofer lines in his honor and its said that his discovery went far beyond the few divisions in the solar system's spectrum that had been previously discovered.