Observation 12/28/10

Tonight, I went out and looked up at the sky from my driveway in Sarasota, at about 9:30 pm.  The moon was not visible from where I was, but I can guess that it was in its waning crescent phase.  I did see a couple of stars in the eastern portion of the sky.  I am pretty sure I could make out the star Vega in the Lyra constellation.

Observation 12/20/10

On Monday night, 12/20/10, I watch the lunar eclipse from my driveway in Sarasota.  The Moon was surrounded by stars and was in the western direction of the sky.  I was only able to watch part of the eclipse, and I watched from about 1:00 to 2:30.  I saw the Moon slowly become darkened by a shadow that gradually covered its surface.  Then, the Moon started to turn to a reddish color.

APOD 2.7

For this week's APOD, I chose the picture called "The Solstice Moon's Eclipse", uploaded on December 23, 2010.  It was taken from Georgia, and it captures the moon during its lunar eclipse.


On Tuesday morning, the full moon moved into Earth's shadow, starting a lunar eclipse.  A total lunar eclipse is when the moon passes behind the Earth so that the Earth completely blocks the Sun's rays from reaching the moon.  This lunar eclipse in particular happened to occur during the December Solstice, which is why it was such a special eclipse.  The moon eventually became reddened into a coppery disk, because of light filtering into the Earth's umbra, or the Earth's central shadow.   The left side of the moon appears darker because it passes closer to the Earth's umbra.

Observation 12/10/10

Tonight, I observed the sky from my driveway in Sarasota at about 7:45 pm.   I could only see a couple of stars, but I did see the moon.  The moon appeared to be in its waxing crescent phase, as it was about a quarter of the way illuminated.  I saw the moon in the south west direction of the sky.

APOD 2.6

For this week's APOD, I chose the picture called A Twilight Occultation, uploaded on 12/10/10.  It is a picture of a thin crescent of the moon in the western horizon, and it was captured on December 6, 2010.


At this time, the moon also occulted, or passed, in front of Mars.  Only some people in North America were able to see this occultation.   The picture was taken in De Soto, Kansas in the United States.  The Moon was only a few degrees above the western horizon.   In the picture, a little dot is see next to the moon's crescent, and that would be Mars right after it came out from the Moon's sunlit edge.  Also coming up this month is a total lunar eclipse on December 20/21, 2010.  A lunar eclipse is when the Moon appears to be darkened as it passes through Earth's shadow.

Observation 12/4/10

Tonight, I went out and looked up at the sky from my driveway in Sarasota at about 9:00 pm.  I didn't see the moon, as it was in its new moon phase.  I did see the star Polaris, and I also saw the constellation of Cassiopeia high up in the northern sky.

Observation 11/27/10

Tonight, I went outside to observe the sky at 10:30 pm from my driveway in Sarasota.  It is a very cloudy night, and I could not see the moon.  But, if I would have been able to see the moon, it should have been in its waning gibbous phase because it was in its full moon phase just a few days ago.  I couldn't see any stars or planets either, because of the clouds that were blocking them.

APOD 2.5

For this week's APOD, I chose the picture called Flame Nebula Close-Up, uploaded on November 26, 2010.  It is a picture of the big Flame Nebula, also known as NGC-2024.  NGC-2024 is an emission nebula in the constellation of Orion.  The nebula appears to be on fire, but it isn't actually on fire.


The nebula appears to have a reddish color, which is because of the glow of hydrogen atoms. The nebula is in the process of forming a star cluster. The hydrogen atoms are on the edge of Giant Orion, which is a molecular cloud about 1,500 light-years away from our solar system. The hydrogen atoms have been stripped of their electrons, or in other words, they have been ionized.  By losing electrons, the atoms become positively charged ions.  The glow is caused by the the atoms and electrons recombining with each other.  In this picture of the nebula, there is a central dark lane of absorbing interstellar dust, which is prominent as a dark silhouette when compared to the hydrogen atoms glowing next to them.  This can actually hide the true source of the Flame Nebula's energy from optical telescopes.   At infrared wavelengths, young stars can be seen behind the dark areas.  The most probable source of ultraviolet radiation and ionization of hydrogen gas in this nebula is a young, massive star in the cluster.

APOD 2.4

For this week's APOD, I chose the picture called Home From Above, uploaded on November 15, 2010.  It is a picture of an astronaut looking down on Earth, and the the picture shows the Earth out the windows of the spacecraft.  The image was taken in late September by Dr. Dyson, who used to be a lead vocalist in the band Max Q.


Astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson is about 350 kilometers in The International Space Station, or the ISS. The picture was taken through the ISS's Cupola window bay. The ISS was high enough up above Earth that the surface of the Earth appears to be curved.  Usually, there could be something blocking the view of the horizon, which is why the curvature of the Earth isn't very pronounced.  The moon's curvature, on the other hand, can be seen from the Earth easily because it has a smaller diameter, making the curvature more pronounced.  In the picture, through the windows, the Earth appears to be blue and white.  The white being seen is Earth's complex cloud structure, and the blue is the oceans that inhabit the Earth.  The space station is capable of orbiting the Earth once every 90 minutes.  People living below the ISS are able to look back toward it, seeing a bright light drifting overhead right after sunset.  Telescopes use individual frames to construct composite images, and can resolve the overall structure of the space station.

Observation 11/17/10

Tonight, I viewed the sky from my driveway in Sarasota at about 8:00 pm.   The sky was cloudy and I couldn't see any stars.  I saw the moon in the southern portion of the sky, in its waxing gibbous phase.  The moon was about 90% of the way illuminated.  In the southeast portion of the sky, somewhat close to the moon, I could see the planet Jupiter, shining brightly.

APOD 2.3

For this week's APOD, I chose the photograph called Two Views, Two Crescents.  The picture was uploaded on November 11, 2010, but the picture was taken on November 5, 2010.  The photo is a picture of two separate scenes, with interesting views of objects from space.



On November 5, 2010, Venus rose just before the Sun did.  It was in its crescent phase, and could be viewed through binoculars or a telescope. This planet goes through phases just like our Moon does, as it is fairly close to the Earth.  The phases on Venus are the different variations of lighting seen on the planet's surface, much again like the lunar phases. On the same day, the moon was seen in its waxing crescent phase, hugging the eastern horizon in Earth's morning skies.  The celestial pictures were taken from two different places.  The image on the left was taken from an Alpine Mountain (in Italy), and is a picture of two crescents hovering over the clouds.  The two crescents were separated  by less than one degree, meaning Venus and the Moon appeared very close to one another.  The picture on the left is a telephoto taken from the Alborz Mountains in Iran, and was taken before an earlier sunrise.  The tiny crescent of the Moon is apparently sliding towards Venus, in steady skies, with Venus's compact crescent just clearing the mountainous horizon.  As of right now, Venus is able to be seen with binoculars on early November mornings.

Moon Observation 11/11/10

Tonight, I looked at the moon from my driveway in Sarasota at about 8:30 pm.  I saw the moon in the southwest direction of the sky, but I could only see a couple of stars.  The moon appears to be in the waxing crescent phase of its cycle, and is about 40% of the way illuminated.

Observation 11/7/10--World Wide Star Count

Tonight, I did the World Wide Star Count Activity. I viewed the sky from my driveway in Sarasota at about 9:00 pm.  Using the W2U/UCAR Geocoder, I found out that I was viewing from a spot that has a latitude of 27.28899, and a longitude of -82.4683. I could not see the moon from my location, but I did see a fair amount of stars.  I was able to distinguish the summer triangle, and from that I could identify the constellation Cygnus.  With a level 3 limiting magnitude, I was able to see the four stars that make up this northern cross.

APOD 2.2

For this week's APOD, I chose the picture called Spicules: Jets on the Sun, uploaded on November 2, 2010.  It is a picture of thousands of young spicules on the sun.  This picture is the highest revolution yet of these solar flux-like tubes.


If one were to imagine a pipe made of a transparent magnetic field as wide as Florida and as long as the Earth, filled with hot gas moving 50,000 kilometers per hour, one would be envisioning one of the thousand spicules on the sun.  Spicules are glowing tendrils of hot gas that project from the sun's surface.  They last for about five minutes before they vanish, making them hard to study. They start out as tall tubes or rising gas, but they tend to fade back down as the gas reaches its peak, and then falls back down to the Sun. These spicules line the frame in the picture, the solar active region 11092, which crossed the Sun just last month.  The spicules seem to converge at the sunspot, located in the lower left of the picture. Scientists still do not know what determines the creation and dynamics of spicules, and they are actively researching the topic.

Observation 10/28/10

On 10/28/10, I saw an iridium flare from my driveway in Sarasota.  It occurred in the northeast portion of the sky, at about 7:58 pm.  An iridium flare is a satellite in the sky, and this one in particular got very bright.  Out of the three that I have seen, this iridium flare was the brightest, with a magnitude of about -8.  The bright part of the flare lasted for about 6 seconds, and then it kept getting duller and duller, until I could no longer see it.

APOD 2.1

For this week's APOD, I chose to write about the picture called Mirach's Ghost, uploaded on October 28, 2010.  It is a picture of the Mirach Ghost galaxy, containing the bright star Mirach in the center.


Mirach's ghost is a faint and fuzzy galaxy, and it can be classified by the name NGC 404.  NGC 404 was discovered by William Herschel in 1784.  It is a dwarf lenticular galaxy in the constellation of Andromeda.  Mirach's Ghost a spheroidal galaxy that has a few luminous young stars, with a high proportion of red giants.  A red giant star is a luminous giant star in the late phase of stellar evolution.  The star Mirach, centered in this star field, is classified as a red giant.  Mirach is about 200 light years away from us.  The star is cooler than the sun, but it is much brighter than our own parent star.  Just above and to the right of Mirach in the picture, one can find Mirach's Ghost, appearing to be about 10 million light years away.  Usually, telescopic views tend to have glare and diffraction spikes, which are lines radiating from bright light sources in reflecting telescope images, and they usually tend to hide things lying near the Mirach Ghost galaxy. But, in this picture, NGC 404 can be clearly seen to the right and just above of the star Mirach.

Moon Observation 10/23/10

Tonight, October 23, 2010, I looked up at the sky at about 9:30 pm from my driveway in Sarasota.  The moon was in the east direction of the sky, and about 99% of it was illuminated, meaning that it is in the waning gibbous phase of its cycle.  I could see Jupiter to the southwest of the moon, and I noticed that it is further away from the moon that it was the previous night.

Moon Observation 10/22/10

Tonight, October 22, 2010, I looked up at the moon from my driveway in Sarasota, at about 10:45 pm.  I saw the moon in the southeast direction in the sky.  The moon is 100% illuminated, and is in the full moon phase.  It is a pretty clear night, but because of how much light is coming from the moon, not many stars can be seen.  But, I did see Jupiter to the southwest of the moon.

APOD 1.8

For this week's APOD, I chose to write about the picture "It Came From the Sun", uploaded on October 18, 2010.  It is a picture of the Sun, and it was captured by a sun-orbiting satellite called SOHO earlier this year.  There appears to be an orange gas-like looking substance coming off over the edge of the sun.


Solar prominence is what is coming over the edge of the sun in this picture.  Solar prominences are filaments, or thin clouds of solar gas,  held to the sun by its magnetic field.  And, they are on the edge of the sun, appearing brighter than the dark outer space behind them.  A quiescent prominence expels hot gas into the solar system, typically lasting for about a month on average.  On the other hand, eruptions like the one developing in the photograph, might erupt within hours into a CME.  A CME, also known as Coronal Mass Ejection, is a burst of solar wind coming from the solar corona.  Both types of prominences, though, succeed in expelling hot gas into the solar system.  The prominence recorded in the picture was during an early stage of the eruption, and it quickly became the biggest ever recorded.  It was so gigantic, that the whole Earth would be able to fit inside of it.  Prominences look dark when next to the sun because, although they are hot, they are still slightly cooler than the sun's surface.   More large solar prominences are to be expected over the next three years, as the sun evolves toward solar maximum, which is the period of greatest solar activity in the sun's cycle.

APOD 1.7

For this week's APOD, I chose the picture called Globular Star Cluster, uploaded on October 9, 2010.  In the photograph, there is a bunch of stars, and there are a lot of them concentrated in the center of the picture.  There are many star clusters like this in our Milky Way Galaxy, but this one is called NGC634.  The picture was taken by Hubble's Advanced Camera For Surveys.


These types of globular star clusters are in a somewhat spherical shape because they are so gravitationally bound to do so.  And, typically, globular star clusters have older stars than those in an open cluster, and consist of huge red stars that can become hotter than the sun.  In the star cluster in the picture, there are about several hundred thousand stars.  And, this particular star cluster is estimated to be about 10 billion years old, making them older than the galactic disk.  And, because of how old star clusters are, they actually start to constrain the age of the Universe, as the Universe cannot be younger than the stars in it.   NGC634 was discovered by William Herschel in 1785, and originally cataloged it as H I.103. This star cluster is located at about 50,000 light years away from the constellation of Delphinus, which has a common name of Dolphin.  From the distance of the Hubble Camera, the star cluster spans for about 50 light years.

Quarter 1 Biography: Jeremiah Horrocks

             Jeremiah Horrocks was born in 1619  in Toxteth, Liverpool.  He was born into a poor family, who were deeply religious Protestant Puritans, (Father of British Astronomy 1).  His father, James Horrocks, was a watchmaker, and his mother was the former Mary Aspinwall.  Jeremiah spent his childhood in Toxteth Park, before moving to a small village in the proximity of Liverpool, (Horrocks, Jeremiah 1).

            The seventeenth century had a belief system of their own.  Many people believed in magic and witchcraft at the time, as there were no scientific laboratories to conduct real research about the earth and the heavens.  Therefore, there was no organized scientific research, and only the well educated knew that the Earth was round.  Not much else was known about astronomy besides that though.  Since Horrocks lived in Protestant England, it wasn’t necessarily heretical to think that Earth orbited the sun, like most Italians believed, but it still seemed like a fairly radical belief to some people, (Father of British Astronomy 2).  Labour was necessary to establish more observations about astronomy, (Jeremiah Horrocks and His Opera Posthuma 1).  It could have been called the reconstruction of Astronomy, (Jeremiah Horrocks and His Opera Posthuma 1).  Jeremiah contributed greatly to this movement by making many observations, and by challenging the theories of some famous astronomers.

            Jeremiah Horrocks was a theorist, and he was a very cautious observer.  During his short lifetime, he paid much attention to the works of both Johannes Kepler, and that of Tycho Brahe.  He was eventually able to figure out ways to eliminate observational errors.  And, Horrocks carried on the work of Tycho by using a telescope to enhance the findings.  He was able to redetermine the astronomical constants for many planets, correct the scale of the solar system, improve the theory of lunar motion, study the motions of planets, and conduct a detailed study of the tides, (Horrocks, Jeremiah 2-3).

Horrocks was an intelligent student, and at the age of fourteen, he got into Cambridge University.  His college time lasted for three years, and by that time, he had become well educated in Greek, Latin, and the Scriptures., (Father of British Astronomy).  Although he worked as a sizar for his maintenance, he left Cambridge without receiving a degree.  So, he decided to teach astronomy to himself, and he became acquainted with the astronomical works of contemporaries, (Horrocks, Jeremiah 1).   He also became a tutor at Toxteth, where he devoted his time towards astronomical observations, (Jeremiah Horrocks  1).Then, he moved to Much Hoole, Lancashire, where he became a curate at his local church, St. Michaels, (Father of British Astronomy 1).

After departing from Cambridge University, he became acquainted with William Crabtree, who at the time was a merchant in Broughton, which is near Manchester.  He had studied astronomy for many years, and the two wrote to each other about astronomical matters up until Horrocks’ death, (Horrocks, Jeremiah 2). 

Jeremiah Horrocks was a disciple of Johannes Kepler, a major German astronomer.  He agreed with many of Kepler’s ideas, such as that planets had elliptical orbits, and that planets move more rapidly at perihelion than at aphelion.  And, Horrocks studied Kepler’s creation of celestial dynamics, and decided to make a dynamical model of his own.  He corrected some of the weak features of Johannes Kepler’s model, starting out with rejecting Kepler’s idea that each planet has opposite sides “friendly” and “unfriendly” to the sun, which makes it attracted and repelled in the different parts of its orbit, causing them to move in an ellipse.  Horrocks made an analogy to a pendelum, to show that planets can be seen as having a tendency to fall toward the sun, or to go about it freely, just as a pendulum does.  His analogy helped to support the idea that the planets always tend to be attracted to the sun and never to be repelled by it, which contradicted what Kepler had believed.   Using his conception of gravitation and his theory of comets, he predicted that cometary orbits were elliptical.  And, he was able to redetermine the apparent diameters of many celestial bodies.  Horrocks reduced Kepler’s estimate of the solar eccentricity, and subtracted from the roots of the sun’s mean motion.  After discovering that there were irregularities in the motions of Jupiter and Saturn, he proposed corrections to the Rudolphine Tables, (Horrocks, Jeremiah 7-10).

 Jeremiah also read up on the planetary motion laws of Johannes Kepler.  Johannes correctly predicted the Venus Transit of 1631, without any record of anybody to have witnessed it, and then went on to predict that another one would occur in 1756.  But, Jeremiah didn’t agree with his calculations.  So, Horrocks went on to make out that Venusian transits occur in pairs, eight years apart, then either 105 or 121 years later.  This would mean that the next one would be visible from Europe, and would occur in 1639, rather than in 1756 as Kepler had predicted.  Horrocks was soon proven correct, which was a big deal that a man of twenty disagreed with a famous astronomer, and then was right with his assertion.  Using his own data, Horrocks was able to calculate the sizes of the sun and of other planets in the solar system.  He found that the sun was huge, and was also able to show that Jupiter and Saturn were giants, which went against the belief that the earth was the greatest creation, (Father of British Astronomy 3-4).

 Kepler's theory was not the only astronomical belief for Jeremiah Horrocks to prove wrong.  In 1635, Horrocks began to compute ephemerides from Lansberge’s Tabulae motuum coelestium perpetuae.  After consulting with Crabtree and his calculations, Horrocks came to the conclusion that the tables were based upon false planetary theory.  Crabtree suggested that Jeremiah use Kepler’s Tabulae Rudolphinae, and he soon realized that the tables were better than the rest, and that they were actually based upon valid principles.  He then spent the next couple of years correcting errors in the tables, (Horrocks, Jeremiah 5).  The errors that he found in the tables were that Lansberge elevated Venus’ latitude by a big amount.  Horrocks found that even Kepler’s tables displaced Venus too much to the south.  Because Horrocks had corrected these errors, he was able to find out when Venus would transit the lower part of the sun’s disc, (Horrocks, Jeremiah 12).

Then, in 1638, Jeremiah Horrocks confirmed Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s four moons.  He was also able to come to the conclusion that planets shine because of reflected light, and that comets are mere visitors to our solar system.  Before he turned twenty, he was able to make tidal observations, leading him to come up with his own theory of gravity, long before Newton came up with his theory, (Father of British Astronomy 6).

In November of 1639, the first transition of Venus across the face of the sun since the telescope was invented was to occur.  Only Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree knew that it was going to happen.  Horocks observed that, as he focused the sun’s disc onto a piece of card and traced around it, there was a small black spot (which was Venus) starting to edge across the solar disc.  He watched the black circular shape center itself on the sun’s disc, so that the limbs of the sun and Venus coincided with each other, which formed an angle of contact, (Father of British Astronomy 7-10). 

Jeremiah Horrocks made major contributions to the lunar theory.  He included in it the assumptions that the lunar orbit was elliptical an that many of the moon’s inequalities are caused by the pertubative influence of the sun.  He also contributed his studies of moon phases, following Tycho Brahe.  Horrocks was then able to make improvements in the constants for several lunar inequalities.  His most significant accomplishment in lunar theory was that he accounted for the second inequality of longitude by an unequal motion of the apsides and a variation in eccentricity.  But, Jeremiah died a year and two months after his historic observation of the Venus Transit, in January of 1641.  But his work lived on through William Crabtree and his family.  His conclusions were widely circulated, and tested by many.  Jeremiah Horrocks soon became known as the Father Of British Astronomy, (Horrocks, Jeremiah 14-16). 

Moon Observation 10/13/10

This evening, on 10/13/10, I saw the moon from my driveway in Sarasota at about 7:45 pm.  It was a little cloudy, and still fairly light out, so I didn't see any stars.  But, the moon was already out.  The moon was in the southeast part of the sky.  It was about halfway illuminated, and it is in its waxing crescent phase.

APOD 1.6

For this week's APOD, I chose the picture called Io in True Color, updated on October 3, 2010.  It was taken in July of 1999, when the Galileo spacecraft orbited Jupiter from 1995 to 2003.  Io is one of Jupiter's volcanic moons, and in this picture the moon's true colors are shown, as it appears to be bright yellow.



This moon is supposedly the strangest moon in the solar system, because of its yellow color.  It got its yellow color from sulfur (which can also be found in meteorites), and molten silicate rock, which is a mineral.  Because its surface undergoes a lot of active volcanoes (so active that they are turning the entire moon upside down), Io is kept very young looking. Sometimes the lava from the volcanoes gets so hot, that it tends to glow in the dark. And, because of Jupiter's tidal gravity on this moon, the moon tends to stretch.  Io damps wobbles as well because of the forces of Jupiter's about 62 other moons.  Friction between the moons is created, which, as a result, makes the interior of Io to heat, which in turn makes molten rock explode to the surface of Io.

Observation 10/5/10

Tonight, I observed yet another iridium flare from my driveway in Sarasota.  It was 8:05 pm, and I was looking north in the sky, and a little to the right in the sky.  It was very similar to the one from the previous night.  It only lasted about 20 seconds, and the part where it became very bright lasted for about 6 seconds. I could see the satellite moving fairly quickly, and then it increasingly became brighter and brighter.  Then, the light kept getting duller and duller, as it was still moving, and it eventually became invisible.

Observation 10/4/10

On September 4, 2010, I looked up at the sky from my driveway.  At 8:10 pm, I saw an iridium towards the north in the sky.  An iridium flare is very short and it only lasted for about 15 seconds.  What happened was that I saw a satellite moving fairly quickly in the sky, and then it started getting very very bright.  Then, it became more faint in the sky, to the point where one couldn't see it any more, at least not with the naked eye.  An iridium flare occurs when sunlight catches the reflective antenna of the iridium satellites.  Overall, this iridium flare is an interesting phenomenon, and it was spectacular to observe.

APOD 1.5

For this week, I chose the picture called Arp 188 and the Tadpole's Tidal Tail, updated on September 26, 2010.  This is a picture of the Tadpole Galaxy, and it appears to have a rather long tail on the end of it.  The picture was taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys.


There are quite a few outlying galaxies that serve as the background for this galaxy, called the spiral galaxy Arp 188.  The tail is about 280 thousand light-years long, and it has huge bright blue star clusters.  There is a story to the long tail.  It is said that a more tightly packed galaxy crossed in front of it from left to right, and got thrown behind the Tadpole Galaxy because of the gravitational attraction between them.  During the encounter between the two galaxies, tidal forces stretched out the spiral galaxy's stars, gas, and dust, leaving the remnants of a tail-shaped figure.  The galaxy said to have been swung behind this galaxy is apparent about 300 thousand light years, which can be seen through the spirals of the galaxies towards the lower left of the galaxy.  What is most likely to happen is that the galaxy will lose its long tail as time goes on.  And, the tail's star clusters will form smaller satellites within the larger spiraling galaxy.

Moon Observation 9/30/10

On, 9/30/10, I looked up at the sky from my driveway at around 12:30 am.  The sky was pretty clear and a could see a couple of bright stars.  The moon was big and just about half of it was illuminated.  The moon was in its third quarter phase.  It appeared towards the west of the sky.  I am almost positive that I was able to see Sagittarius' teapot like figure in the west, and what might have been Scorpius close by it.

Two Sources for Astronomer: Jeremiah Horrocks

"Horrocks, Jeremiah." Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 6. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2008. 514-516.  Gale Virtual Reference Library.  Web.  28 September 2010.  http://go.galegroup.com/ps/retrieve.do
sgHitCountType=None&sort=RELEVANCE&inPS=true&prodId=GVRL&userGroupName=fl_sarhs&tabID=T003&searchId=R2&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&contentSegment=&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=2&contentSet=GALE%7CCX2830902061&&docId=GALE|CX2830902061&docType=GALE&role=

"Jeremiah Horrocks and His Opera Posthuma." Jstor.org. Ithaka Organization. Web. 28 Sept. 2010.  <http://jstor.org/pss/531137searchUrl=/action/doBasicSearchQuery=jeremiah+horrocks&wc=on&acc=off>.

"Jeremiah Horrocks - Father of British Astronomy." BBC - Homepage. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2769041>.


"Jeremiah Horrocks." NNDB: Tracking the Entire World. Web. 28 Sept. 2010. <http://www.nndb.com/people/305/000102996/>.

APOD 1.4

This week, I chose the picture called Equinox and the Harvest Moon, uploaded on September 24, 2010.  It is a very interesting picture of a special kind of full moon that occurred on September 22, 2010.  It looks like it was a partially cloudy night, and it appears that the moon was in a direction opposite the sun.  The setting is above a church in Hungary, and Jupiter can be seen shining opposite the sun as well.



This particular full moon is closest to the autumnal equinox, and this usually happens towards the beginning of fall.  When this occurs, it it called a Harvest Moon, another name for a full moon nearest the autumnal equinox.In the U.S., September 22nd and September 23rd are the best dates for viewing this in the sky.  For this year, the northern hemisphere autumnal equinox occurred on September 23rd.  Only six hours after the equinox, the moon appeared in full phase.  It is not bigger or brighter than the moon on regular nights.  The full moon near the autumnal equinox causes a narrow angle on the ecliptic.  As a result, there are shorter rising times between the successive moons.  The moon will rise opposite the sun, illuminating fields at harvest time during sunset.

APOD 1.3

This week, I chose to write about the picture called Northern Lights Over Prelude Lake, uploaded on September 17, 2010.  It is a picture of the Prelude Lake in Canada one night.  There are curtains of pretty green, shimmering light upon the night landscape.  These kinds of light are becoming a regular thing for this area.


The lights are called aurora borealis, which are high mesmerizing lights that occur in northern latitudes.  September 23 is upcoming, which means the equinox is on its way as well.  Meaning, nights are going to get longer and these auroras will be in season.  This picture of the night landscape was recorded on September 11, 2010, and at the time the lights spanned to approximately 180 degrees.  This type of light can be called an auroral glow, since the lights are called aurora borealis.  Through this auroral glow, bright stars can be seen.  To the left of the picture, we see a familiar northern asterism.  This would be the constellation of the Big Dipper.  And, to the far right, we see a more compact constellation, which is the Pleiades Star Cluster.

Moon Observation 9/16/10

Tonight, 9/16/10, I looked up at the moon at about 10:15 pm.  I looked from my driveway in Sarasota, Florida.  The moon appeared in the southwest of the sky.  It is about a couple days into the first quarter phase, and about seventy percent of the moon is illuminated.  To the far east of the moon, I saw Venus.  The sky was clear tonight, and I could see a couple of bright stars.  I'm pretty sure that I saw Polaris to the east of the moon.

Moon Observations 9/11/10 and 9/12/10

On September 11, 2010, I looked up at the moon.  I was in my driveway at about 9:00 pm, in Sarasota Florida.  It looks as though the moon was in almost the first quarter.  So, I think the moon was probably in the last couple of days of the waxing crescent phase.  I could see a small crescent of the moon at this time. The moon was in an eastern position on the sky. The sky was pretty clear, and i could see some stars.   But, I couldn't make out any of the constellations specifically.  I saw Venus to the southwest of the moon, and it appeared to be a really bright star.


Tonight, I looked up at the moon (September 12, 2010).  I was in my driveway at around 8:45 pm, in Sarasota, Florida.  Compared to the night before, the moon appeared to have moved slightly to the east.  There was a little bit more of the moon illuminated than the previous night it seemed like.  The moon is still in the waxing crescent phase I believe.  The sky was foggier and cloudier, but the light from the moon was still visible.  I could not see any stars at this time, so I did not see any constellations.

APOD 1.2

This week, I chose the picture called Vela Supernova Remnant.  It was posted on September 10, 2010.  This picture was photo shopped, so one would not be able to see something like this in space with a telescope.  This photo captures what happens after a massive star explodes.  When a star explodes, a huge fireball of hot gas shoots out in all directions.

This star exploded about 11,000 years ago.  When the star first exploded, a burst of light could be seen by the people on Earth.  It generated a shock wave, which is still visible today.  The outer layers of this star crashed into the interstellar medium, making this shock occur.  The shock wave is what is being seen in this picture.Almost spherical, it has become as big as twenty times the diameter of a full moon.  Gas flies away from the exploded star, and produces all of the light seen in the photograph.  Overall, the colorful substance being seen in the photo shocked parts of glowing gas.

In addition to leaving all of this gas behind, the explosions also created a dense, spinning, stellar core called the Vela Pulsar.  The Vela Pulsar is a neutron star, meaning it is about twenty kilometers in diameter, and is bigger than the sun.  It even has the density of an atomic nucleus.  And, it has amazing x-ray like rings and jets that were left over from the Crab Nebula, which was a remnant of a supernova left over from the year 1054 A.D.

APOD 1.1

Astronomy Picture of the Day published on 2010 September 1.  It is titled Earth and Moon From MESSENGER.

This week I chose the picture called Earth and Moon From MESSENGER.  It is a very interesting picture of the earth and the moon from the viewpoint of someone on Mars. The person that took the picture was not actually on Mars though, but the picture was taken from a viewpoint similar to that of Mars.

The MESSENGER took this picture, and it was the first spacecraft to orbit Mercury.  It has gone by Mercury three times since it was launched out into space in 2004, but will orbit the innermost planet in 2011, in March.

In the picture, Earth is seen with the Moon to its right.  When being compared to other planets and their moons, the Earth and the Moon are comparatively close in size.  In other words, the Earth has an unusually large moon.  Neither of them will ever show their crescent phases from the viewpoint of Mercury, they will both appear as small circles of reflected light.